Remember why we're in Iraq

While it has become rare, amazingly I still encounter people that think we're at war against Iraq because they're the terrorists that attacked us.

Once again, al Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us. We invaded Afghanistan with the minimum possible troops in order to push out the Taliban, who were providing safe haven to al Qaeda. We stopped short of killing or capturing the army of terrorists, because the master plan was to keep them alive.


Iraq has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. The brutal civil war in Iraq was started by the US invasion, as it was designed to do. Indeed, this has attracted foreign terrorists to come to Iraq to fight Americans, but most of those are inspired by the horrors that we have unleashed on the Iraqi people.

Dubya's war against Iraq is about oil and money. Plain and simple. If anyone still has any lingering doubts at all, you need to watch Iraq for Sale and Uncovered: The War on Iraq from BraveNewFilms. Also, read the latest summary in Rolling Stone.

Here's a summary of the Rolling Stone article from BoingBoing.net:

The Rolling Stone has a long article about the vast sums of taxpayer money pouring into the coffers of sleazy US contractors in Iraq -- and how that money isn't being used to make things better for anyone but the ultra-rich in the US.

In short, some $8.8 billion of the $12 billion proved impossible to find. "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" asked Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "But that's exactly what our government did."

Because contractors were paid on cost-plus arrangements, they had a powerful incentive to spend to the hilt. The undisputed master of milking the system is KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary so ubiquitous in Iraq that soldiers even encounter its customer-survey sheets in outhouses. The company has been exposed by whistle-blowers in numerous Senate hearings for everything from double-charging taxpayers for $617,000 worth of sodas to overcharging the government 600 percent for fuel shipments. When things went wrong, KBR simply scrapped expensive gear: The company dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they were too short, and left the Army no choice but to set fire to a supply truck that had a flat tire. "They did not have the proper wrench to change the tire," an Iraq vet named Richard Murphy told investigators, "so the decision was made to torch the truck."

In perhaps the ultimate example of military capitalism, KBR reportedly ran convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the insurgent-laden desert, pointlessly risking the lives of soldiers and drivers so the company could charge the taxpayer for its phantom deliveries. Truckers for KBR, knowing full well that the trips were bullshit, derisively referred to their cargo as "sailboat fuel."