Why We Fight. (Uncensored)

According to a survey in the London Times, 85 percent of soldiers fighting in Iraq believe they are there because of 9/11 while about two-thirds of the American people believe this as well. Meanwhile, back on Earth, even our President has said in response to whether or not Iraq played a roll in the 9/11 attack: "Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. Now I said, going into Iraq, we've got to take these threats seriously before they fully materialize. I saw a threat." So who's going to break it to the American people?

Since 9/11, the Administration has done everything in its power to force our nation into war with Iraq. Remember weapons of mass destruction? Remember enriched uranium? Remember mushroom clouds and anthrax? It was all a lie to get you to buy a war you didn't need. But why? There are plenty of terrible dictators out there we could have taken a moral high ground against, so why Saddam Hussein? Why not Islam Karimov or Kim Jung Il or the enitre House of Saud? I hear they're available. The Al Qaeda threat had been decreased exponentially after we illegally invaded Afghanistan (but that's a blog for another time). We had essentially dismantled the only nation in the region in which Osama Bin Laden could operate, so why did the Administration start a war that diminished its political credibility, treasury and the lives of its bravest soldiers on a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 while actually increasing the threat of terrorism? This would have been like invading Canada after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Prepare to be bored: Oil. It's that simple. During the Clinton Administration the Pentagon had already drawn up plans to invade Iraq for several reasons and let's go through them point by point.
1. The world's oil supply is eventually going to run out. Some estimate we have roughly another 50 years, others say 100 but either way, any nation not prepared will quite literally find themselves in the Dark Ages. If we can control oil output, we can ... well, you can guess the rest.
2.Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. It was run by a dictator who was despised by muslims for being too secular, despised by his secular population for being too despotic and militarily weakened by twelve years of sanctions. You couldn't have asked for a more minimal risk with a higher yield.
3. Contracts for all of Vice President Cheney's friends was the nail in Iraq's coffin. Before the United States even set foot in the region, KBR (A subsidiary of Halliburton, the company which Cheney sat on the board for just before being appointed Vice President.) had already been issued - issued, mind you, they didn't need to bid - contracts to rebuild Iraq. Members of KBR were at the planning sessions with Pentagon officials to discuss what they should bomb. It has been reported in the London Times that certain targets were actually selected for a higher profit margin. That's right. Our 6 million dollar bombs were used to make sure Dick Cheney's friends made more money. For a mind-blowing account of their corruption go to: http://www.halliburtonwatch.org, it's a real eye-opener.

As I said, I was for the war in Iraq because after 9/11 we needed a base in the Middle East from which to stop terrorist groups and to demonstrate American military might. Yes, it's barbaric. Yes, it's unfair. But so are our enemies. My problem is that the Administration did such an incompetent job; if they had been prepared to immediately rebuild their infrastructure, if they had sent in the U.N. to police the nation until they had formed a solid coalition goverment, if ONLY they had done their homework and researched the delicate patchwork of religious and social networks that existed, then perhaps we wouldn't be facing a civil war and the death toll of almost 2,700 American soldiers and at least 50,000 Iraqi civilians. It was only a matter of time before we went into Iraq, but under a Gore or Kerry administration, it probably would have been done a lot smarter and without such obvious corruption. Donald Rumsfeld is wrong again: were not fighting fascism. Iraq's only crime was that it was rich in oil and poor in leadership and that is why we fight.