WorkingForChange-It's STILL the oil:
"...was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, 'I want to talk to the Iraqi people.' That Dick Cheney didn't tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic … well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, 'Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don't shoot them.' Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis,
'Do not destroy oil wells.'
Nevertheless, the Bush Administration said the war had nothing to do with Iraq's oil. Indeed, in 2002, the State Department stated, and its official newsletter, the Washington Post, repeated, that State's Iraq study group, "does not have oil on its list of issues."
...In all the chest-beating about how the war did badly, no one seems to remember how the war did very, very well -- for Big Oil.
The suspicion is that Bush went to war to get Iraq's oil. That's not true. The document, and secret recordings of those in on the scheme, made it clear that the Administration wanted to make certain America did not get the oil. In other words, keep the lid on Iraq's oil production -- and thereby keep the price of oil high.
Of course, the language was far more subtle than, "Let's cut Iraq's oil production and jack up prices." Rather, the report uses industry jargon and euphemisms which require Iraq to remain an obedient member of the OPEC cartel and stick to the oil-production limits -- "quotas" -- which keep up oil prices.
...In other words, the war has gone exactly to plan -- the Houston plan. So forget the naïve cloth-rending about a conflict gone haywire. Exxon-Mobil reported a record $10 billion profit last quarter, the largest of any corporation in history. Mission Accomplished."