I can buy into your idea about Al Qaeda's motives for the 9/11 attack as a reasonable explanation.

I am not quite convinced that Bush invaded Iraq because he thought it would help the republicans stay in power. I think Occum's Razor still applies in that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I also think the anthropologists have a valid point and all of that indicates oil. Now maybe Bush saw it not only as a route to riches for the big money that put him in office but also saw it as a way to curry favor with the knuckle dragger element in America as well to keep his popularity or expand it and an opportunity to grab more power which he certainly has done. But that does not prove that oil was not the main motivation.

What was the first thing the troops did when they invaded Iraq? They secured the oil refineries and let the museum in Baghdad be plundered. Bush comes from an oil family, Cheney is connected with Enron, Rice has an oil tanker named after her.

I am not saying I know for a fact that I am correct about the oil element and that you are wrong in your idea which is well thought out and plausible but Bush is the only one who really knows and I doubt he is going to tell us somehow.

sk,

I'll thank you not to bring up any more books that have to do with reality. This seems to be a habit of yours, and I don't appreciate it.

rob,

I don't think we're in disagreement here. I would define Bush's desire to empower his coterie more broadly than just winning a few elections. Seizing the oil is part of that -- the money they hoped to make off the oil would also make them more powerful vis a vis their American enemies. Moreover, controlling the mideast's oil would enable the U.S. political system to continue in a way that leaves them in power, whereas if we don't control the oil the U.S. might remain as powerful as a country but we'd be forced to make internal adjustments that would lessen the power of Bush's clique.

So I'm not saying oil isn't a large part of it. It definitely is. But it all goes back to making themselves more powerful within the U.S.

To look at this more clearly, think of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Saddam's overriding reason for that was to keep himself in power. (He was concerned his army was getting restive after the end of the war with Iran, and might overthrow him.) Of course, the oil was part of it too, but only in the sense Saddam would be able to use the oil revenue to reinforce his own power. He wouldn't have seized Kuwait and then distributed the oil revenue equally among Iraqis.

I don't think it's a matter of making Republicans more powerful, nor is it a matter of oil money. Oil money is nothing compared to weapons money. It's a matter of making a certain segment of American industry and society--a segment that was suffocating in 2000--incredibly powerful. It's about providing an excuse to suck out the wealth and productivity and power of the rest of society into that segment. Oil is just a part of it.

Jonathan,

That makes perfect sense to me. I also agree whole heartedly that it is about much more than a few elections.

Saheli,

I am quite sure the weapons industry is part of it as well, after all, it is about the only thing we manufacture any longer, weapons that is, and it certainly is big business.

One need NOT look for a conspiracy when GREED AND STUPIDITY fit the bill so nicely. Sure one can search the tea leaves for that master plan, but there is none. Now there is a GOAL but no plan. Look at how they run everything---into the ground. No need for a plan to do that, that's LACK of planning. The goal? Feed the GREED. The plan? STUPIDITY, ain't no plan.

Oh, I never meant anything about a conspiracy. Looking for conspiracies is the king of Red Herrings. Maybe it's there, maybe it's not, but there is a system that has evolved--without a designer--to take care of itself.

I would suggest that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by more than one factor. Not 9-11 or WMD, or course, but ... picky, picky ... this dependence on truth.

Like it or not, we are heavily oil-dependent, even down to the individual level. The oil we consume has to come from somewhere, and even the anti-environmentalists know Alaska will yield only about 6 months' worth.

We are also the 1 remaining superpower, but extremely leveraged. China is a still-mostly-silent, ever-nearing second in geo-political power struggles. But, we like to view ourselves as the world's leader.

Thus, I would posit that we invaded Iraq for oil and global positioning (an actual presence in the Middle East; somewhere for our military to re-fuel), and I would not rule out other reasons.

The neocons make my skin crawl, but I wonder if some of them truly see the Iraq War and the control of the Middle East's oil supplies as the U.S.'s only option to continuing global dominance and truly visualize this as a good thing.

That some of them get to make the big bucks from their oil and military-industrial connections, well, that's just icing on the cake.

I wish that once, just once, some TV or radio news person would point out that Bush's whole "terrorists hate out freedom" schtick is simply idiotic, bone-headed blather.

Not just the Administration's GREED AND STUPIDITY, ours too.

"they hate our freedom" to make their bed.