The US might pay so called market price for it’s purchases, but it’s the tax payers of this country
that ultimated get shafted, because WE
in the end get nothing for it.  This war in Iraq will be paid for by me and you and our desendents for years to come.  The ones who are truely benefitting from this war are the pals and companies aligned with Bush and Cheney.  And heaven forbid if China and Japan call in their markers.

As with Iraq, I suspect the real reason is Saddam didn’t want to play ball with the US so the powers that be sought to have him put in his place by getting him out of the way.

They knew there were no WMDs.  They had all been destroyed and Iraq had been under a no fly zone for years.  To imply they had some type of capability to fire a missile over Asia and the Pacific Ocean, or over Africa and the Atlantic Ocean to reach us only proved that the people in this country knows nothing about geography.  Iraq is even in a different hemisphere.

No the Bush administration thought Iraq was an easy target.  They forgot that just as we in this country say what we would do if another country tried to invade us, the Iraqi people also have their country pride instilled in them.  They are fighting with everything they have, even their lives. And the interesting thing is, with nothing more that sticks and stones, they are giving us with all of our sophistication a run for our money.

I feel for those valient military men who went to Iraq thinking they were fighting for our country.  How dare Geo W do that to his own countrymen, after he so cowardly got out of fighting himself in another unjust war.

It is my hope that when his shenandigans come to light, that he is impeached, kicked out of office and tried on criminal charges for treason.  However I hope that when he is found guilty, he not be executed.  No!  Someone woulod try to make a martyr out of him.  No, he should be exiled to any country willing to take him, minus his riches.  It is my hope that the same things he has bethowed on others will be visited on him.

Neatly sneaked around my challenge to the stupid assertion that Bush wanted to steal Iraq’s oil, didn’t you?
The United States has always peid market price for whatever we buy, even when the asset was of no value to the country until we located it and invested in the plant to extract it.
The worst kind of blindness is idiological blindness.

As long as we, the most powerful country on earth continues to insist that it’s the rest of the world against us, instead of US against the rest of the world, we will continue to have politicians who will come with bullhorns and manipulate us into believing that everyone else want what we have.

Yes, I believe that other societies would like the economics that our country seemingly enjoy, but we pay a steep price for our delusions of superior grandour.

The truth is, we are no better than anyone else on this earth, every human being have value.
We cannot use our military strength to invade other countries under the pretense of democracy when in fact we have not crossed all of our ‘T’s
and dotted all of our ‘I’s toward our own citizentry.

The way to have other societies follow our lead is by setting a good example to follow.  We have not done that, and under Geo W, the situation is worst than history has ever written about our country.

Truth is, we are now being “lead” by an idiot.
And unless you are a very wealty person, I doubt
very seriously that you have anything including a big car, fancy clothes, expensive and expansive
house or any other of those American trappings that advertisers and clueless people insist that one must have in order to have ‘made it’ in this country.

Bush lied big time about why this war was necessary. He also lied about 9-11.  He wasn’t going to listen to any intelligence that suggested he was wrong. That wasn’t part of his agenda. He was going to invade Iraq from the minute he was sworn in, if not before. Incrediouly 9-11 happened giving him and his minions the ammo necessary to sell it to the American public.  And the American public being the sheep that we are, bought it.
And the reason we bought it it is because we believe that we have something that others want who are willing to kill us to get it.

That sound more like our policy than the policy of others.

So those weapons of mass destruction shown on TV just before the invasion were not WMDs?

And If it was all about oil, does anybody doubt that Saddam would have willingly signed the US as sole agent for Iraqi oil in return for letting him alone?

I guess to be a lefty you need to be well on the left side of the bell curve, and these answers demonstrate that.

On the Daily show the other night John Stewart said this about the NIE report “it is only a report from a U.S.intelligence organization “take it with a grain of salt”

I have heard John Bolton Bush, Cheney, Odum (on Diane Rehm today) dismiss this report…it is a war on intelligence

How odd that Scheer didn’t mention the generals’ response to Hillary’s question about pulling out of Iraq.  Oh, it was the same conclusion as the NIE, that a win in Iraq would discourage the jidhaists.  Never mind…

It is sickening to imagine how much good the tax dollars squandered in Iraq and sending men to the moon would have done for creating benign energy for America!  The Earth endowed its’ inhabitants with everything they need for survival.  It does not include gutting her for oil which is not needed.  That is the easy way, however, and humans are famous for seeking the easy way.

Bush’s insane attack on Iraq for the purpose of stealing the country’s oil is inconceivable and unforgivable.  In this sense, whatever the extremists jihadists do to avenge this invasion is justified in their minds.  It is also demanded by their Koran.  Because of this evil incarnate action of GW Bush, our country will never see another safe day so long as it may stand.

What kind of person would steal the first presidential election and buy himself the second?  The most poisonous snake in the grass that has ever held power in our country.  Moreover, he is just as poisinous to his own people as he is to the Iraqis.

Whether or not it gets down to his last six months in the oval office, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfelfd and Rice must be impeachecd!  It is a vital action that must be taken for the sake of our descendants and for anyone who aspires to hold the highst office in our land.

How the hell can an insane man lead the most powerful country on the planet?

I find it amazing how you can just ignore everything else released in the NIE’ report that didn’t support your claims.  The report specifically says that winning in Iraq would lower the morale and most likly the number of willing recrutes, while a defeat for America would only encourage possable recrutes to join some kind of terrorist group.  Getting into Iraq might have been a mistake but any idiot can figure out that losing this war by choice would be an even bigger mistake.  The very report your using to support your thesis comes to the exact opposite conclusion that you do, maybe there is something wrong with your conclusion

Just before the invasion, weapons of mass destruction were shown being cut up on television. Were they mockups?

After I read this article, in the author’s world, Mohammed never lived. There were no Islamic attacks any where in the world before President Bush. None in the US.  There were no attacks on Israel either.

Would it not be nice to live in his world? Where you can negotiate with those who want to kill you?  (Would you take a foot and leave me my life? No? how about 2 feet?)

And this is how one of the major parties act, what the main stream media publishes, and how near half of the US voters, and all of the lawbreaking Aliens Vote, for a total of 65%.

Please walk softly so not to awaken the dreaming.

Start with the recognition that Islam’s Koran repeatedly cites Muhammad’s antipathy toward Ishamel’s brother and his discendents with particular focus on Jesus Christ.  Continue with ‘any excuse is a good excuse’ for carrying out activities that guarantee Paradise - dying in holy Jihad, that which even Muhammad did not have.  Understanding this rationale makes inevitable the extension of holy Jihad to our shores - or haven’t you heard the call to prayer 5 times a day in Detroit, MI?

Each day reinforces my sickening belief that we are being herded like sheep deeper into a crowded pen where we are to be slaughtered.  When the great lie was being sold us, the WPMD farce, I uttered, as I often do when being pitched a phony sales commercial (most of them), ‘they had better find those weapons’.  And, surprise, they found nothing, nada, zip.  The polical ad agencies did it again, duped we the gullible with their mass spin.  And the beat goes on.  The latest: Detract we blind-sided fools away from the War, and blame it all on someone else; in the latest case, prior admistration.  Karl Rove should be writing children’s tales; religious fantasies, fairy tales, and moral stories for hapless children.  How appropiate he has as his primary and most gullible student is our precious and born again child W.

What has been and is happening in Iraq reminds one of an Alice in Wonderland scenario where “nothing is as it seems to be”.     

Bush & Co. keep claiming that we are in Iraq to spread democracy and freedom. The reality of our being in Iraq is far different and goes to the neocon dream of creating a Corparate American world empire starting with Iraq including the construction there of permanent military bases as are currently under construction.

The scary thing is that if the neocons aren’t stopped Iraq may well be only the bebinning.

Re Comment #25783 by SamSnedegar:

Here and in past posts you’ve claimed that Scheer, Conason, et al. are afraid of discussing the “real” reason for our invasion of Iraq. . . unlike, say, SamSnedegar (with a curt nod to Greg Pallast).

While this contrarian pose may be flattering, your self-congratulation is misplaced. I doubt that any of the writers you’ve mentioned would question that the major motive for the Iraq invasion/occupation is summed up in the title of one of Gore Vidals’ recent pamphlets: “Blood for Oil.” Crude and reductive? Yeah. Also—what is the word?—-true? You bet.

Yes, I—-and Scheer, etc.—-get it, which is why I’ve handed out T-shirts emblazoned with that three-word message at previous anti-war protests. The underlying assumption about our reasons for going Over There is like one of those “primitive” axioms in mathematics that are so basic and self-evident as to require no Q.E.D. Why belabor the obvious?

I’m sure Scheer knows the following quotes as well as anyone else interested in the sources of our oleaginous fetish: 

“By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? ... While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”—-Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, in a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in London, 1999.

Cheney was simply playing variations on an old theme:

“The UK and US have long had their eyes on the massive energy resources of Iraq and the Gulf. In 1918 Sir Maurice Hankey, Britain’s First Secretary of the War Cabinet wrote:”

‘Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian [now Iran] and Mesopotamian [now Iraq] supply… Control over these oil supplies becomes a first class British war aim.’

“After World War II both the US and UK identified the importance of Middle Eastern oil. British officials believed that the area was ‘a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or domination’, while their US counterparts saw the oil resources of Saudi Arabia as a ‘stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.’”

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2005/crudedesigns.htm  (See especially the section on the role of “production sharing agreements” between Iraq and muiltinational oil companies.)

I think anyone who has analyzed the origins of Iraq debacle at any length understands all this.

Our presidential system of government allows a president to usurp far too much power.  If he is an individual secure in his humanity, our democracy and ultimately our nation can survive in tact.

If, however, the character of the individual is seriously flawed as it is in the case of Mr. Bush whose battles with his private demons determine how he governs, the power that he is able to legally usurp under our Constitution can and will destroy our democracy and ultimately our nation.

The tragedy is that the only check on his madness lies at the feet of a congress apparently unable or unwilling to exercise its Constitutional duty and remove him from office. 

It is naive to believe that further revelations of his flawed presidency will not be forthcoming and, more ominous, that further disastrous decisions by Mr. Bush will not be made before his term in office expires.

This piece ought to rekindle the debate about the Bush administration’s obsession with classifying information. Why was this report considered secret? Were the president and his aides afraid of “the terrorists?” Most islamic extremists know very well that this administration’s imbecilic response to 9/11 bolstered their cause.

It’s hard to not conclude that the reason for the classification of this intelligence report was that the administration was afraid that U.S. voters may become aware of it.

This, of course, opens a big can of worms. Anyone wants to revisit Robert Scheer’s recent piece on the 9/11 conspiracy theories? Check out the link on the upper-left corner of this window. You may read it from a different angle now…

The good old days, it would almost be refreshing to have soem Russian post that his country has 17 intelligence services.

Scheer overstates the “dissent” in the NIE report.  Generals Eaton and Batiste also call for more, not less, US involvement in Iraq.  Neither the NIE nor the generals propose any “cut and run.”  Only Ret. Gen. Odom, who has nothing to do with post 2001 policies, has argued for anything close to that.

The NIE report is quite W friendly.  It acknowledges blowbacks from the US Iraq occupation, but does not label it a mistake or call for withdrawal.  It does not question a single neocon concept or premise that the world is filled with mortal enemies.  Read: it says these foes might even be joined with anti-globalization or other anti-US causes (global warming, etc).  It alleges infestations of secret cells everywhere.  The increased dangers simply justify greater appropriations for security and defence operations: more agents, interrogators, police, inspectors, devices, detentions, weapons, and unfettered executive authority.

“But that assumes that George W. Bush values intelligence.”

In order to value intelligence, you must have intelligence.  Bush proves almost everytime he’s in public that it’s not the case.

“Isn’t having sixteen separate intelligence services overdoing it a bit? “

Apparently not, considering how little intelligence is actually gathered.

With such low approval ratings, you wonder if “W” is just simiply out of touch with reality. You have to give some credit to his spin doctors. The leader of the free world delivers his speech in front of the hand picked media and chastises those “Americans/Un-Americans” for even daring to question his policies. According to the “W” adminstration everything is fine in Iraq and Afghanistan. The real problem is the Americans who dare question his policies.

As I watched “W” criticize me for daring to question his ignorant policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, I almost felt guilty. Then reality struck, and I realized I was watching the guy who says he speaks to God.

I still have people say, “George Bush is afterall the President. He has more information than you or me.”

I also did talk to a guy yesterday who just did his Guard duty in Germany and is trying to retire. “If they try to get me to go to Iraq,” he said, “they’ll be dealing with my lawyer.”

I just wish all the college kids driving Beamers and Hummers with “W” stickers would enlist so that the poor guys in the Guard won’t have to do multiple tours overseas.

Pogo’s comment re pollution seems appropos - “YEP, SON, WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.” With Congress and the Whitehouse controlled by neo-cons, religious fundalmentalists, and multinational corporations, who needs enemies. We now have a quasi-Nazi government complete with torture.

Is the NIE really about the lack of intelligence that the Bush-Cheyney minions with all of their collective brains don’t have?

If anyone were to ask me about the latest National Intelligence Estimate I would have to say that, based on the “leaders” we have selected, it would have to be close to zero.

Recently, Karen Hughes, White House Spin Doctor, was recently dispatched to Indonesia to promote the Bush doctrine.  Her reception at a speaking event was sparce and contentious.  A short time later, the President of Iran made a similar speaking engagement and packed the house and was received enthusiastically.  At the conclusion of his talk, he was approached by young university students who offered their bodies to Allah to serve as bombers.  This is in a country with one and half billion Muslims.  Somehow, I do not feel safer, Mr. President.

That sticky morass in Iraq that we have made and found ourselves stuck in, is claimed by Bush to be a kind of fly paper for our enemies.
Sometimes you have to just laugh, and enjoy our stupidity for what it is. The greatest irony of all is that we are spending our fortunes at this insanity, while the world begins to die, due to our ignoring our more important problem of pollution.
Thanks to Bush, we are laughing all the way to our graves! Thanks for this funny ending!
BBD

What McCain and other apologists for this administration’s failed initiative in Iraq ignore, as they suggest that terrorists would be seizing on some other cause if there wee no Iraq occupation is that after 9/11, when we attacked Afghanistan, we had the sympathies and support of all of the world - all but the most entrenched Middle Eastern haters and distrusters of all things Western. We commanded extraordinary allegiance to our cause of - let us not forget – protecting ourselves and the world from relatively small and disparate collections of murderous ideologues. Instead, this administration seized the moment to advance its own ideological mission – that of the neocons – of conquering Iraq and forming an Arab democracy sympathetic to our global vision. In the bargain, we lost world opinion and confirmed the fears and distrust of countless Arab Muslims, turning quiet critics into active jihadists – thus swelling the ranks of terrorists. And because, as all ideologues throughout history have done, they ignored realities that were inconvenient to their cause, we have in Iraq a festering resistance and civil war that will inevitably leave in its wake anything (who knows what at this point?) but the Western-friendly democracy they planned on.

In his presidential speech days prior to the invasion, Bush said on television that god told him “george, go to Iraq”. I doubt intel means anything to him.

King George doesn’t need “additional authority”. He already grabbed “excessive and unwritten powers” which are lying to Americans; spurning the legistators; and defying the civilized world with barbarian policies and acts of war against humanity. Under his eyes the human value and rights are invaluably rated !

According to NY Times there’s only 25% in poll approve of the Congress. Should we applause this rating ? But this is still too high and it will surely be down below minus zero when King George is still on his throne through the last day of his dynasty. He then became “THE LAST EMPEROR” !

I find it insulting to my intelligence that Robert Scheer will discuss the war in Iraq and calls it a “failure” without once mentioning the real reason for the war, occupation, and the doctrine of “staying the course,” meaning essentially, “we went to all this trouble to steal the oil, we won’t give it up now.”

I understand why the GOVERNMENT won’t discuss our motives and methods: to do so would lay bare our transgressions on the ten commandments, particularly the four about coveting, lying, murdering, and stealing, and I understand why George Bush won’t discuss much of anything of substance (he can’t UNDERTAKE anything more complicated than breathing or chewing and swallowing), but except for the threats by his publishers to withhold money, I cannot fathom a reason for Scheer’s refusal to return to the kind of truth that got him fired from the Los Angeles Times.

Alas, Mr. Scheer has a lot of company these days including every democrat politician I know of and many of his cohorts on this web site like Ivins, Conason, Cocco, and Goodman, but Greg Palast has found a way to make money publishing books and not having to run from the truth, so I guess it comes down to a matter of HOW MUCH money has to be given up to be able to discuss oil.

Here’s a clue: why do you think that PNAC wanted to invade and occupy Iraq, and why do you think Cheney went to the corrupt Supreme Court to keep from releasing anything, even the names of the attendees, about his “energy meetings,” and why do you think the USA refuses to restore potable water and consistent electricity to the people of Iraq?

And why do the media AND the Truthdig gang keep hiding from the name that applies to the USA today, i.e. “police state?”

This confirms that Cheney-Bush are arrogant.They cherry picked,cooked the books,in preparing us for the war in Iraq and now ignore the report.What should we expect from this team of faith-based arrogancy?

Isn’t having sixteen separate intelligence services overdoing it a bit?
.

This report is right here right now and your points on it are valid.  But it is chaff on the radar screen, a leitmotif for distraction from the bonehead moves by Lord Rummy and Lord Cheney-that have created a post-post industrial government of the oil, by the oil, for the oil that has succeeded at foisting a new “ism” on the American people to replace the “Cold War.”  Why are no major MSM influencers suggesting the focus go back to the git-go and the collapse of the fabled “Northern Front” into northern Iraq via Turkey and the subsequent overflight problems.  “Touchdown Tommy” Franks fumbled big time there as did “Moral Compass” Powell. While the Shia jihadsters are destablizing Iraq, those actions have been fomented by Iran and others from “international Islmaic brigades.”  Giving this a big time importance level cuts both ways,  giving new credibility to the Iraq - Bin Laden connection that Bushco continues to try and stay “on message” with.

If certainties such as the war in Iraq and the axis of evil are based on a religious belief that God is on our side - versus we should be on God’s side as Lincoln said - then certitude creates foreign policy problems,” Ms Albright said.