Tom Lantos agrees with Alan Greenspan: Iraq War was for Oil
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Stumble ThisIn his new book, The Age of Turbulence, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan asserts, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows. The Iraq war is largely about oil.” Today on CNN’s Late Edition, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) said he agreed with Greenspan “to a large extent,” adding, “I think it is very remarkable that it took Alan Greenspan all these many years and being out of office for stating the obvious.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/16/lantos-agrees-with-greenspan-iraq-war-was-largely-about-oil/
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/16/lantos-agrees-with-greenspan-iraq-war-was-largely-about-oil/
here greenspan gives an interview in which he adds the following context to the statement he made in his book...
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN1728646120070917?pageNumber=1
"Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that "the Iraq War is largely about oil," said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy.
"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."
In The Washington Post interview, Greenspan said at the time of the invasion he believed like President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction "because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something."
But Greenspan's main support for Saddam's ouster was economically motivated, the Post reported.
"My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day" passing through," Greenspan said.
Even a small disruption could drive oil prices as high as $120 a barrel and would mean "chaos" to the global economy, Greenspan told the newspaper.
Given that, "I'm saying taking Saddam out was essential," he said. But he added he was not implying the war was an oil grab, the Post said."
The war in Iraq wasn't about freeing a country from tyranny but assuring a steady oil price for OPEC, by taking out Saddam who used to either dry the pump or maximize the output. The other set of reasons are simply morale posturing infront of world leaders who know better. Not to mention the case for WMD was cherry picked information from unreliable sources to justify an incursion in into Iraq in the first place.
Is this worth the price in American lives? More importantly look at the high price of oil currently. Clearly this hasn't benefited the US at all, but rather meant we are stuck in a quagmire.
The war in Iraq to me is nothing but the establishment of a American hegemony through military force.