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April 03, 2008 01:11 AM UTC
12 Comments
…about having a place for a permanent U.S. military presence in the region to protect the flow of that oil.
The story of Iraq started in Kuwait, which Saddam accused of stealing Iraqi oil by drilling at a slant. Invasion followed, after which came U.S. rescue of poor Kuwaitis. GHWB decided NOT to pursue Saddam’s army all the way to Baghdad, which seemed unnecessary. The U.S. had troops stationed in Saudi (for the first time) and was in no hurry to remove them.
Meantime, in this corner… the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan left Osama bin Laden a man with a mission but without a country. His fundamentalist vision of a new caliphate didn’t sit well with most regimes in Muslim countries. From Afghanistan he moved to Somalia, where the strongman was experimenting with an Islamist state. Pressure by Clinton administration–not wishing to see bin Laden’s influence and ideas spread–succeeded in getting bin Laden evicted from Somalia, from whence he went back to Afghanistan where, in the meantime, the Taliban had taken power or at least had occupied Kabul.
Bright idea occurs! Bin Laden, in danger of being sidelined in a remote, inaccessible country but dreaming of bringing about a new, fundamentalist global caliphate, seized upon the presence of infidel American troops in Islam’s holy homeland–Saudi–as a new marketing/recruiting tool for his envisioned global jihad. Bin Laden’s fundamental idea: easier to sell the idea of driving out the Americans than on a variety of local regimes. He quickly achieved some success: the Saudis asked the Americans to leave.
Where then to put troops to ensure the steady flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, a peaceful environment around the Gulf, and uninterrupted oil production in the major fields? Iraq was the answer.
This was Cheney’s strategic thinking, backed by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (he of “neoconservative” fame) and easily sold to Bush for whom “strategic thinking” was a mostly a foreign concept largely limited to his daily bicycle ride. It was Cheney’s re-run/correction of GHWB’s decision not to pursue Saddam’s army all the way to Baghdad (remembering that Cheney was defense secretary during the Kuwait war).
This really is no particular mystery about this. And no real doubt about it!
And it is something that needs to be taken into account in thinking about the future of American involvement in the region.
but we converged on the same conclusion.
It is going to take a mesure of political courage for any US politician to challenge the fundamental assumptions of our geopolitical imperialism. We’ll see how that goes.
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that she was misquoted 17 years ago.
She denies that in July 1990 she green-lighted Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
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in any article that discusses the Sayyid Moktada al-Sadr by name,
you must use his given name (given to him by the Bush Administration)
“Firebrand” the first time he is mentioned.
I suppose in blogs it would be OK to substitute “hothead” or “mercurial” or “psychotic.”
…..
and how come we don’t hear about the influence of Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani anymore ?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04…
Report on the desertions all over Iraq as entire units, rather than a handful of corrupt JAM cops here in Nasiriyah, or another station over there in Sadr City, and so on, as though it were really the primary outcome of the fighting.
Clearly, it wasn’t. Maybe reporters can report on the desertions and losses suffered by JAM.
Who do the people think won? Well, I’ll give you a hint – the losing army doesn’t often have people flocking to join.
in Iraq are you posted, Yokel? If we may know. Invaluable to have factual reporting from the scene to counter the conspiracies of the MSM, with their reporters distorting the facts from perches 10,000 miles away.
But I’m home by now, fortunately. I’ll admit the one place I didn’t get to was down in the south area. I’m familiar enough to know that it’s a damn long way from Baghdad. From that, my take is that to lead an army against an entrenched insurgency that far from the capital, in that large of a city, would be quite a feat in most of the third world, let alone Iraq.
A source I like to check out is the Long War Journal. They don’t drink the standard MSM kool-aid, but they’re honest. (They have a decidedly different take on the Basra thing than the NYT has) They send embeds, and back that up with sources from various Iraqi media organs and MNF-I, to come up with some pretty interesting and in-depth analysis. Good stuff.
Its three major financial backers.
A DoD contractor who makes money off the Iraq war.
A neo con millionaire backed charity that has John McCain on its board.
And a charity that profiteers off of military families.
http://www.charitywatch.org/ar…
Not a balanced source, but useful for getting a different perspective.
That arch-conservative group called the Columbia Journalism Review wrote a rather glowing report on the New Journalism as carried out by the LWJ.
It’s better journalism – true journalism – than the AP copy everywhere else. Granted, the editorial take is pro-“We want to win this war,” but, once again, that’s more in line with American journalism pre-1968 than what the AP writes.
And it doesn’t limit the LWJ from pointing out issues with operations and strategies in a negative light. Heck, I’d argue it gives them more credibility on that subject. When they write “I’m afraid to say, we are lost,” there’s no question that they are afraid to say it, whereas if Reuters said the same thing (as they have repeatedly for 6 years), you’ve got to wonder if they’re afraid to say it at all.
It the reason I read it. I know it is biased but the LWJ is dense on information even if I think the analysis is often flawed.
According to Iraqi and Arab-language press via JuanCole.com (2 April, 4 April), the recent large scale recruitments by the Maliki govt are members of Badr Brigades and Da’wa militias, not deserting Sadrists. That is, Maliki-SIIC faction is overtly gearing up for forceful suppression of al Sadr.
Escalation of this conflict could have significant repercussions against US troops around the country, not to mention political reconciliation by the Iraqi govt.