Motives For the Iraq War

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Introduction Torture Glossary Cindy Sheehan Protest
9/11 Bush’s Five Big Lies The Muslims Will Kill Us All!
Bush’s Untrue WMD Statements Don’t Marry A Soldier
American Terrorists How You Know Bush Lied about WMDs Don’t Enlist
American War Criminals Iraq War Motives Do Enlist
Disrespecting American Soldiers Altruistic War Motives The Coming Draft
Joke Selfish War Motives The Ideal War
Iraq War Casualty Pictures Popular War Motives Spoken Word Links
Abu Ghraib Torture Pictures Economic Cost of the Iraq War Video Links
Navy Seals Pictures Beheadings Books
Fallujah Pictures History Related Essays by Roedy
DU Baby Pictures Why The Iraqis Fight So Hard Links
Culprit Pictures What The Iraqis Want Taking Action
Protester Pictures Republican Denial What You can Do
Links To Pictures Republicans Pretend Not To Notice Mark Twain’s War Prayer
Body Counts Saddam Hussein War Is A Racket
Defense Science Board Future Wounds by Dr. Norman Bethune
Atrocities Mind Your Own Business! How Will The Iraq War End?
Tortures Why I Despise Most Americans Conclusions
Guilty of Torture God On Our Side

The Motives

Cui prodest scelus, is fecit.
The one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most likely to have committed it.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC 65 AD age:68)
If Iraq produced pickles and lettuce, do you think they would have been invaded? Of course not.
~ Noam Chomsky (1928-12-07 age:89) 1927-12-07— On the Iraq Election. Radio Netherlands. 2005-12-18  click to listen

There are two classes of motives, the altruistic motives used to sell the war to the public and the ones that serve the self interest of George Bush 43.

Altruistic Motives

I contend there is not a compassionate or altruistic bone in George Bush’s body and the following altruistic motives are 100% hypocrisy.

Selfish Motives

Even if you imagine Bush is an honourable man and he could not possibly be influenced by these selfish motives, you surely must accept that he was at least aware of them. Nobody could be so naïve as not to notice these massive benefits of the war. The motives of the common people for supporting the Iraq war, at great expense to themselves and sacrifice of their sons and daughters, are not necessarily the same as those who control the war. These are the motives used to sell the war to the gullible and depraved.
  1. Desire to rape, murder, torture and pillage without fear of retribution. This is mainly what motivates soldiers and contractors who sign up over and over for a tour in Iraq. Just listen into them talking over beers, or look over their trophy sites where they display their body part collections. Sit quietly and overhear their conversations on a Greyhound bus, near a military base, doing your best to disguise your disgust.
  2. Fear of terrorists. Even though the odds of being harmed by a terrorist are much lower than drowning in your bathtub, many Americans have a panic-stricken fear of terrorists. Many people still refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that 2001-09-11 was an inside job. If you believe the Bush story, Bin Laden seemed to have supernatural powers to flout the entire US military with the skill Bugs Bunny has to dance circles around Elmer Fudd. bin Laden appears hundreds of times more dangerous and capable than he really is. The American news media like to refer to the resistance in Iraq fighting to oust the American invaders as terrorists. This is a misuse of the term.
    Terrorism : killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.
    ~ Caleb Carr (1955-08-02 age:62), military historian

    I would modify that definition slightly. I don’t think nuts who act completely on their own should count as terrorists. I think they need to be associated with an organisation to count as terrorists.

    Terrorists are people who kill civilians. Americans have killed the most civilians in Iraq, so properly speaking the term terrorist applies much more accurately to Americans than Iraqis. Even in the early stages of the war the American had killed over 100,000 civilians dwarfing the suicide bombings of Sunni against Shi’ia and Shi’ia against Sunni. This improper tarring of the Iraqi resistance with the term terrorist fools the population into thinking Iraq is full of people who at any moment will be flying planes into US office towers. It is nonsense. The average Iraqi earns only $5.00 USD a month. They have not killed a single American civilian other than mercenaries in Iraq aiding the invasion.
  3. Racism and religious intolerance. If you listen to the language on Internet newsgroups, many people are racists or intolerant Christians who want to kill all Arabs and/or non-Christians. The have an irrational hatred with as much intensity as Hitler had for Jews. This is just a continuation of a centuries old rivalry between Christianity and Islam. The blood lust and self righteousness is not that different from that motivating knights in the middle ages to go to the middle east to slaughter entire cities, including even the Christians and animals, on the grounds they were contaminated by contact with heretics.
  4. Sheep. Most Americans have almost no understanding of what is going on in Iraq or the politics behind it. They parrot the attitudes that FOX and similar US military propaganda organs feed them. They don’t want to be considered unpatriotic or sympathetic to terrorists so they vote against their own best interest. They don’t even care if their views are logically inconsistent. They want to blend with their peers.
    As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
    ~ Gore Vidal (1925-10-03 2012-07-30 age:86)

Cost Estimates For the War

Current estimates suggest the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion.
~ Representative Jan Schakowsky (1944-05-22 age:73) (D-IL),

As of 2008-08 is it about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.

The cost of the Iraq war will be a maximum of 1-2% of GNP (Gross National Product) (about $100-$200 billion).
~ Lawrence Lindsay (1954-07-18 age:63) White House economic advisor, 2002-09. MD Director Mitch Daniels subsequently discounted this estimate as very, very high and stated that the costs would be $50-$60 billion.
Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that’s something under $50 billion for the cost.
~ Donald Rumsfeld (1932-07-09 age:85), secretary of War, 2003-01.
When we approach the question of Iraq, we realize here is a country which has a resource. And it’s obvious, it’s oil. And it can bring in and does bring in a certain amount of revenue each year… $10, $15, even $18 billion… this is not a broke country.
~ Richard Armitage (1945-04-26 age:73) Deputy Secretary of State, 2003-03.

As of 2008-08 is it about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.

I sincerely believe… that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-04-13 1826-07-04 age:83) to John Taylor 1816.

These low-ball estimates suggest to me the hawks were lying in order to sell their war.

Who Wants War?

We would not have planetary evils such as war, hunger and ecological collapse if there were not powerful groups who wanted things that way. So who on earth wants war? There are four main groups who love the Afghanistan and Iraq wars:

  1. People who like bullying, raping, torturing and killing. They may prefer men, women, boys, girls or infants. If they head off to Afghanistan or Iraq they can indulge their sadism with little risk of legal repercussions and little risk of being killed themselves. They can even get paid for indulging in serial murder. The Afghans and Iraqis are have only the most primitive arms to defend themselves. It is like shooting fish in a barrel or Cheney shooting endangered species penned at a game ranch.
  2. People who profit from war. This includes those who sell armaments and provisions, mercenaries and military contractors. If one war shuts down, they demand another take its place. The must have continuous, predictable war.
  3. Oil executives. They want to be able to sell oil far into the future, especially as the price skyrockets. They want to own the oil and they want to transport the oil with minimum fuss. This means forcing Afghanistan to provide a free oil pipeline right of way. They want Iran to be afraid to even think of blocking the narrow Straits of Hormuz. Obama auctioned off all of Iraq’s oil reserves to European and American oil companies on the very day he announced the troop withdrawal.
  4. Israelis. In 1948, Jews invaded Palestine, fueled by a whacko religious belief they were the legitimate landlords and set up an apartheid system. Disgracefully, Britain and the USA supported them because they wanted a place to get rid of their Jews. The Palestinians are still boiling mad about this, as are their Arab neighbours. The USA supports the Israeli apartheid regime largely because of the incredibly well-organised AIPAC lobby that is able to both bribe and threaten politicians of both parties. Israel wants the USA to block any of Israel’s Arab neighbours from helping the Palestinian independence cause.

None of these motives fly well with the general American public. So these four groups lie outrageously about why they favour the wars. They pretend they are defending America or defending freedom. Oddly, Americans buy these lies even though they know Afghanistan and Iraq are impoverished, unarmed and incapable of harming the USA. They know the USA attacked first, unprovoked and illegally. So why do they fall for the lies? Propaganda organs like FOX News and CNN (Cable News Network) keep the population in a constant state of paranoia where they cannot think straight. The United States has sacrificed the truth for entertainment. The population have not yet caught on that the news is no more true that episodes of the Outer Limits.

Summary

I think the motive is mostly oil. It is the only motive that anywhere near justifies the $3 trillion investment so far in the war. The war is run by Republicans. Republicans would never dream of investing $3 trillion without expecting a huge monetary return. Iraq’s #2 oil reserves on the planet are the only motive with a sufficiently juicy payback. The administration has shifted all over the map giving excuses for the war. What I find revolting is how obediently average Americans have dutifully swallowed all their lies.

The essential problem is that the $3 trillion spent on the Iraq war went into pockets that have a vested interest in continuing that flow. The beneficiaries of war, (e.g. Bechtel, Blackwater, Halliburton…) do everything in their power to try to convince people that killing kids is either:

  1. not happening.
  2. happening only at the hands of Iraqis. Iraqi parents are killing their own kids in order to create pictures to discredit Americans, (because? they are furious with Americans for killing their kids? What strange reasoning!).
  3. fully justified as a side effect of killing terrorists (people defending Iraq to oust the American illegal invaders).
  4. necessary since all such children will grow up to be terrorists and attack America. They must be exterminated like vermin.
With all that money flowing toward them, the war mongers have plenty of money to get their way. They donate to politicians. They use financial clout to convince the media to modify their editorial policy. They fund pro-war lobbyists and websites. They are fully aware how decent people can’t bear to see innocent children suffering in war and so they work tirelessly to keep such pictures out of the media.

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