Bush Reveals True Reason for War in Push for Iraqi Agreement

Ah, finally. They couldn't keep it up forever. Well, maybe for that hardcore 23% of true-blue Bushies they could. For the rest of us, as we knew all along, it was about oil and securing "our share". That the US seems to think that consuming one-fourth of the worlds resources as perfectly reasonable makes this completely criminal invasion seem justified.

Oh, and Israel "may" have had something to do with it too.

Blue Ibis
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Bush Reveals True Reason for War in Push for Iraqi Agreement

Bennet Kelley
Huffington Post
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:12 EDT

For five years the Bush administration has played wack-a-mole with the American people as to why we are in Iraq, with a new justification quickly spawning after the hollow core of the prior position was exposed. WMD's was followed by fighting Al Qaeda and ultimately bringing democracy to the Middle East. Last week the proverbial mole may have met his maker and exposed the true reason over a million Americans have been put in harm's way.

Comment: And why American millionaires put them there.

In May 2004, President Bush explained that our mission in Iraq was "to see the Iraqi people in charge of Iraq for the first time in generations." A week into his second term, Bush said he would "absolutely" honor any request for withdrawal of U.S. troops by a sovereign Iraqi government, only to then ignore multiple request over the next three years and polls showing near unanimous support among Iraqi's for a timeline for withdrawal.

All this was laid bare this month as the Iraqi government went on the offensive in its call for U.S. withdrawal by 2010. Far from embracing the desires of a sovereign Iraq, the White House instead feebly attempted to claim Prime Minister Maliki's statement was mistranslated, while the McCain camp argued that Iraqi's really want the U.S. to stay until 2020. Apparently their view of a "free Iraq" is an Iraq that is free to do what we tell them to do.

The Iraqi demand for a deadline for withdrawal of U.S. troops comes in the context of ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over a Status of Forces (SoF) Agreement in which the White House is seeking to define its legacy through (i) an indefinite occupation; (ii) more than 50 permanent bases (including five mega-bases); (iii) the unlimited ability to pursue the "war on terror" in Iraq (including ability to arrest Iraqis without consulting government); (iv) control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 feet; (v) supervision of Iraq's defense, interior and national security ministries for ten years; and (vi) immunity for U.S. forces and contractors. In addition, the U.S. wants the right to unilaterally determine whether an act by another country (i.e., Iran) constitutes a "threat" to Iraq and respond as it deems fit in order to "protect" Iraq.

Comment: All of which sounds about as far removed from withdrawal as you could get. In fact it sounds exactly like the consolidation of colonial power.

The Iraqi's have rejected this invitation to be an American colony as "arrogant" and an affront to their sovereignty, but the White House is playing hardball and recently cost the Iraqi's $5 billion by blocking the transfer of certain Iraqi currency reserves out of the declining dollar.

From the start of the occupation, the Bush administration has shown little regard for Iraqi sovereignty and international legal prohibitions against making significant changes to the legal and political institutions of an occupied country. Instead, the administration pursued what, former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz characterized as "an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world," as it completely reshaped Iraq's legal and economic regime to turn it into a Club Med for corporate interests.

The shock therapy was administered by Paul Bremer, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority, through 100 separate Orders which suspended all tariffs and import fees (Order 12); immunized foreign contractors (Order 17); calls for the sale of 200 state owned enterprises through 40-year ownership licenses (Order 39); allowed foreign corporations to fully own Iraqi businesses and remove profits tax free (Order 39); cut corporate income taxes by two-thirds through a 15 percent flat tax (Order 49) and even restricts Iraqi farmers from using certain seeds without paying a license fee to seed suppliers such as Monsanto (Order 81).

The Bush administration also has ignored Congressional restrictions on the use of government funds "to exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq," as the State Department recently assisted the Big 5 oil companies in winning rights to develop some of Iraq's largest oilfields. Soon they will join Halliburton and others who have made billions off the war while protected by our troops.

The current spat over the SoF Agreement once again raises the question of why we fought this war to begin with. After five years of war at a cost of approximately $539 billion, 90,000 Iraqi lives, over 35,000 American soldiers wounded or killed, we now know what we suspected all along -- that Operation Iraqi Freedom was never about liberating the people of Iraq but instead about liberating its assets for foreign exploitation. Naomi Klein was right four years ago when she described the Bush mission as "pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia."

That is why with or without the SoF Agreement, Bush's legacy is secure. The hollow echo of Operation Iraqi Freedom reminds us that while other presidents may have failed the American people in one way or another, no president has failed, deceived or betrayed the American people like George W. Bush.

Beginning with the End: the Bush Logic and His "Legacy"

GAAAAK. Here is a man(?) who thinks raining death and destruction down on millions of people is a legacy of greatness?????? And he was dreaming about how to do this TWO YEARS before 9/11? Where is the famous SOTT "sick bag". We really need to impeach this lunatic and his truly evil puppeteer Cheney as soon as possible. Better yet, try them as war criminals. I can dream can't I?

Blue Ibis
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"A Legacy of Greatness": the Morality of a Psychopath

Stephen Saperstein Frug
Attempts Blog
Wed, 28 May 2008 11:45 EDT

©Unknown

Andrew Sullivan, writing about McClellan's new book is most taken with the fact that McClellan claims that Bush intentionally ignored the WMD evidence, saying "if the president intentionally ignored data refuting the existence of Saddam's WMDs, he should be impeached."

Frankly, the fact that Bush did this is old news; and impeachment is the least of the appropriate responses -- a war crimes trial would be called for. (I sort of thought Sullivan was farther along than this, actually.)

What struck me was the reason that McClellan gave for Bush's desire to go to war, which led to this "intentional ignoring" of evidence in the first place:

In Iraq, McClellan added, Bush saw "his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness," something McClellan said Bush has said he believes is only available to wartime presidents.

Of course, this isn't really news either:

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

But McClellan's admission is further confirmation of this.

It's worth pausing to reflect on what this really means. Bush went to war -- in part, let us say for the sake of argument -- to be "seen as a great leader... as a commander-in-chief", to "have a successful presidency", "to create a legacy of greatness".

It is almost impossible to overstate the evil of this.

People died -- hundreds of thousands, most likely more than a million Iraqis; more than 4000 Americans -- for Bush to be seen as a leader. To have a legacy. (And how many more Iraqis have been made refugees, been wounded, had their lives otherwise destroyed? How many more American soldiers have been injured beyond recovery?)

They died for his gain. For his image. For his "greatness".

He took actions, knowing that many people would die -- for that. For gain: for glory. (Even if he didn't know how many... an assault that kills people, with malice aforethought, is charged with murder for each person killed, even if the assailant didn't intend to kill quite so many as all that.)

This is the morality of Raskolnikov -- murder as greatness. Death as greatness. It's the morality of a stock villain: to kill the innocent for power or greatness or glory. Except Bush has gained a far larger legacy than most of those who set out to do so by means of other's deaths.

I'll say it again: for Bush's "greatness" -- hundreds of thousands, probably millions, have died.

If murder is the greatest evil, aggressive war is its most powerful form: the death of others for profit or pleasure or greed or ambition. This is what Bush has done. What so many others eagerly helped him do.

Of course Bush should be impeached -- for this, among so many other things. But really, impeachment wouldn't even be a beginning of a reckoning for his crimes -- something that, for those who don't believe in a literal hell, is probably impossible in this universe. But to put him on trial for the most colossal form of murder there is -- aggressive war, a "crime against peace" -- is all that we can do, here, on Earth. It is what must be done, for the least scrap of justice to be achieved.

In my original conception of this post, I was planning on including some of the images of the Iraqi dead -- murdered children, people blown in half, row upon row upon row of flag-shrouded coffins. For that is what Bush has done -- that is his legacy. But the truth is, I'm weak. I don't have the stomach for it.

But Bush should look at them: should be forced to look at them, in the course of his trial for "crimes against peace". And as a just sentence, perhaps he should be forced to look at nothing else for the rest of his natural life. Just bodies blown to bits in pursuit of his "legacy of greatness".

And he's not the only one, by a long shot.

The murder of more than a million: that is Bush's "legacy of greatness". The least we can do is make sure he reaps the full consequences of that legacy, as much as human action allows.