Scorpian:

Really care to provide the both that we rushed in and secured the Oil Fields be carefull now some of us might now the truth on this one.

Wall street journal March 7, 2003:

Special army units assigned to occupy the fields were also bing given intensive training in oil-field maintenance. At the same time, the Department of defence awarded a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract to a subsidiary of Dick chneys old firm, the halliburton company, to repair any damage iraqi forces inflicted on the installations during the war and to commence the rehabilitation of the countrys massive oil infrastructure once it was over.

Newyork times March 22nd, 2003 James Dao-embedded reporter:

Navy seals siezed two iraqi oil terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwheling lightly armed iraqi guards….other forces then secured iraqs southernmost oil fields i the basa area, and when american forces later entered Baghdad they quickly occupied the oil ministry protecting the facility from looters..

No you hate America.

What is your point? America is involved in Iraq’s oil Industry, your point being?

You can quit trolling now, because speaking with you is a waste of time.

one other point I find rather amusing about you is when you cant substantiate an argument you lead to acusing people of hating countries and being genocidal dictator supporters. Since when has any of that got any relevance to the topic at hand. Just shows how weak your arguments have been.

All explained on page 10.

The fact that you are unable to even give the country a capital letter really furthers the point.

Try reading articles before linking them, all the Australians are saying is that oil is a vital natural resource and careful consideration must be given to insuring its safe supply, that is a very long way from claiming that Iraq was invaded for oil.

Page 10 has many explanations, b something flex, garry, soc, pla, me and others have also discussed in. If thats your explanation for the war not being about oil, im afraid thats a weak argument.

So by me not giving capital letters means i must hate america….get real dont you see how stupid that sounds?, maybe its also to do with rushing while im typing not really paying attention to spelling and punctuation. or is that stating the obvious.

The article I posted qoutes:

“The Middle East itself not only Iraq is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world, and Australians … need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq,” Dr Nelson said.

“We need to ensure, notwithstanding the significant natural resources that our country has been blessed with, that we are able to access the energy requirements in our region and throughout the world,” he said.

Sounds very oil centric to me.

No it can only be said for you.

If that makes you sleep better 🙂

The WMD assertion does appear to have been bogus, yes, but the intelligence we had at the time pointed to the existance of a WMD program. More than one nation believed both our and their own intel regarding the existance of WMDs in Iraq. Saying after the fact that oil was the reason is not based on any sort of factual evidence, is it? It’s just a logical progression of the antiwar movement to allow themselves to continue discrediting the US government.

The intel that has been cited had come from unreliable Iraqi dissidents, to me it looks more like an excuse. Do you not remember how just after september 11, Bush was trying to say how al-queda was in north of Iraq and trying to link iraq into september 11.

You talk about the antiwar movement, the fact of the matter is your government has been discredited and was clearly wrong. Who in their right minds apart from those who voted for them going to believe the war was to liberate iraqis, bring them democrasy and the rest of it. Just have a look at the post war planning, they obviously had no clue at all into what they were getting themselfs into. If America had such a great plan for the region why was the planning more focused on the war than the aftermath of it?. Yes i do believe these could of been other objectives in invading Iraq but the primary reason was oil, as it has been for the last 60 years in this region.

Securing the oil fields during open conflict was a logical strategy to preserve Iraq’s post-war economy, or have we forgotten what Saddam’s troops did to Kuwait’s oil wells in 1991 when things started to go badly?

yes I agree with you it is a logical strategy, as oil is the bread and milk for Iraq. This was not the point of my argument, it was more to do with how putting 150k men around oil fields was not feasible because you had said if it was for oil why didnt american and coalition of the willing forces not go there and leave rest of iraq.

The idiots in DC love to trump up China as a threat as well. And Iran does have legitimate terrorism connections to consider.

The problem is american leaders would never come out and say “China is the single most biggest threat to world peace”. The crux again of my point was this struggle is again for oil politics. I however dont descedit the fact that if Iran went nuclear, so would other Gulf nations which would be a bad overall scenario. However its like deja vous all over again.

can’t argue that a good portion of the reason we’d like to see a stable Middle East is to protect the flow of oil.

You know theres nothing wrong in wanting stable prices and delivery of an important commodity in a secure manner. But you have to look at what your leaders are doing, you supply the middle eastern countries very advance and new weapons to use exactly for those purposes (to use for protecting their oil assets) yet you station thousands of troops/advisors ect and house the US 5th fleet in 4/5 of the countries littered around the persian gulf. What is that all about?.

I never said any deaths were alright for any reason, oil or otherwise, but the notion that you cannot be prepared to take casualties in an armed conflict isn’t logical either. And best protection? Surely you jest…if we were actually prepared to fight this kind of war like we should’ve been a lot of those deaths could have been avoided.

Yes an armed conflict will take casualties, but if the armed conflict is for securing oil as im claiming then it outright wrong. American troops are more protected than an iraqi civilian because they live in secure bases, have body armour and weapons support. An iraqi has non of these. This was my point.

Take a little bit of time out and have a look at how your leaders from the last 60 years have conducted themself in the middle east. Then tell me how this conflict and other conflicts have not had the all too familiar theme.

Because either this is a fact-based position, or it is merely another opinion.

You know the facts, the WMD claims backed with powerpoint presentations was bogus. The whole notion of the claim led to the war which itself was a big lie/intelligence failure call it what you will. The bottom line is the US lost credibility when no WMD’s were found as Hans Blix and hes team were saying all along. So yes it was about oil and the fact you cant see that is down to you.

If we went in for oil, then we would’ve concentrated our forces among the oil fields and worked to ramp up production capacity. Oops. We must be stupid to not get that part right, huh.

American forces rushed in and first secured the oil fields. Now securing the country is important, as you cant station 150k troops around the oil fields can you. And by just concentrating your forces around the oil infrastructure and only caring for ramping up production off oil would of clearly been a massive PR disaster on your part, as even a blind man could of seen the clear intent for the war.

Easy, they won’t really do anything, as OPEC nations will cut back their production accordingly.

Yes and that remains to be seen, so does the fact that in this scenario Iraq could import more oil to the US to overcome such adjustments/cutbacks.

And given that they’ll be out of power in less than a year, and the fact that any action before then is unlikely now that we’ve made the no nuke statement, what does Bush calling Iran a threat have to do with anything?

American leadership is anti-iranian, so whether Bush or someone else is in power wont change your policty for the last 30 odd years now with Iran would it. You will allways cite them as a threat until you carry out another farce war against them.

America cares because 1) if Iran got real irate they could mess with oil traffic in and out of the Strait, and 2) because we are stupidly allowing ourselves to be led around by a pro-Israeli foreign policy.

So basically it is down to oil, the reason America is in the middle east. And the israeli lobby obviously is not helping that.

IBC says closer to 60,000, and the Iraqi government says this 600K figure is bogus as well. So again, where are the verifiable hundreds of thousands of deaths you speak of?

So is 60,000 deaths still ok then for america to quench its oil thirst?, and that is just for Iraq going by that figure, which I find hard to believe considering over 3,500 american soldiers have died who have the best protection in Iraq. Why are you skirting around the point, how many deaths need to be taken to jusitfy your countries thirst for oil?.

A statement which you have yet to prove.

On the contrary you havnt dis-proved anything either.

Dont buy it, just stay wrong. Not a shred of evidence to say that Iraq was invaded for oil. In fact if it was it would be a diversion from a very successful approach, the example you gave being perfect. Cooperation and behind the scenes meddling works fine, invasion does not.

Invasion works well

-if the country being invaded has very large oil deposits that some years down the line can be utilised by the cranking up of production, breaking OPEC hold of prices.
-The country being invaded has started to do its oil contracts in Euro’s
– The country houses an anti american government.

Co-operating with Saddam was highly unlikly now wasnt it, even though some speculation about Saddam wanting to co-op exist. And im sure the american government tried covert action inside Iraq obviously it wasnt good enough for toppling saddam.

Also answer this, why is America creating the worlds largest Embassy in Iraq, talking about stationing troops there on a permanent basis while having bases all over the mid-east anyway. American leaders talk about leaving Iraq, yet its clear they have no real intentions to leave completely. Which area of the world houses the largest concentration of american troops outside of america itself, yes the middle east.

I wasn’t aware that it had been proven, and by proven I mean factually and not in the court of public opinion, that the United States, England, and the rest went into Iraq to take over the oil fields.

How can it be proved factually, in a court intent/motivation provides a strong case for an argument. The US openly says its reasoning was for WMD but most of the world knows it was for securing oil. yes there are other reasons as well (promoting democrasy in the middle east ect) but they all are not important enough for war. The point being every non american is happy for america to do what she likes within her own borders, but when you wage phoney wars of WMD and terror that is when you can expect to be criticized.

Tough. If we can afford to buy it on the world market, then that is our prerogative.

That is fine America and rest of the world who can afford to buy oil should do so, but as long as you dont meddle in the affairs of other nations who are oil producers to control oil prices.

The main reason america has been criticized in relation to oil, because americas foreign policy is closley tied in with its energy policy which is tied with OPEC/Mideast oil imports. This bothers many people for the simple reason for america to quench her thirst for oil she has caused allot of instability in the mideast and other regions which has resulted in the deaths of countless hundreds of thousands of people. Iraq being the most recent example. On the same premise America now threatens Iran.