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Thursday, October 07, 2004

Evoilution

The slumbering news media slowly evolves to reporting the real reason for going to war in Iraq. As the president runs out of defensible positions, he begins to slide:
Bush said: "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions."

It's a war of attrition; the early rationales for the war -- WMD, 9-11 terrorism, liberation from a despot -- have gone by the wayside. Soon the administration and press will simultaneously arrive at the last and only predicate for conquest: control of oil.

Note last semester's scorecard (from Atrios)

If Bush is looking for a redo, today's quote will only get him half-credit on question #3.

Update: Is there any doubt within the deluded administration that the USA could have done a much better job controlling oil? From Znet, true effectiveness lies in the eyes of the beholder:
Iraq used to produce close to 3.5 million barrels of oil per day under the rule of Saddam Hussein. It exported about 2.5 million barrels daily within the now-defunct, United Nations-guided oil-for-food program. It produced another half a million barrels for its own internal consumption to feed its now-looted and destroyed refineries. And it managed to "smuggle" about 300,000-500,000 barrels a day to Iran, Jordan, Syria and Turkey, with the money going into Saddam's treasury.

The reason oil prices have been hovering around $50 a barrel now is that most of these Iraqi exports disappeared just as oil consumption began to skyrocket around the world.

To consider it "skyrocketing" may be exagerrating, as a slow inexorable rise coupled with continual depletion has the same effect, and in any case has caused us to enter an enormous briny pickle of a predicament.

1 Comments:

Professor Blogger @whut said...

Quite stubborn in their thinking. I had an idea a while ago which is getting some press as part of Kerry's vision.
The idea that America and its allies, sharing resources and using the latest technologies, could track the movements of terrorists, seize their bank accounts, and carry out targeted military strikes to eliminate them seems more optimistic and more practical than the notion that the conventional armies of the United States will inevitable have to punish or even invade every Islamic country that might abet radicalism.from NYTDuh, seize their bank accounts. It will get Switzerland, Cayman Islands, etc all upset, but who cares!

11:03 AM  

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