We have been fighting in Iraq in one way or another for 23 years.

[kpete]

.........You've been hearing for more than two decades, from presidents on both sides of political aisle. At this point, bombing Iraq is practically a American presidential tradition.

1991:

1998

2003:

2014:

MORE:
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/11/watch-each-of-the-last-four-presidents-a
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-23-year-long-war.html

[indepat]

1. History, imo, suggests TPTB will expend unlimited American resources, both in lives, limbs, and

other body parts, and in treasure, over extended periods of time to exert hegemony in an oil-rich area with almost all of this cost in lives and financial resources inuring almost exclusively for the benefit of big oil. Of course, I just might have a jaded view.

[liberal_at_heart]

3. absolutely shameful and embarrassing that two of those are democratic presidents.

[golfguru]

4. Why we won't learn from China?

While USA is again bogged down in middle-east war, China is not spending a single Yuan in middle-east wars.

While USA is up to it’s eyeballs in debt, and borrowing Billions more, China keeps buying up mines and business assets world wide.

While USA protects oil flow to China from middle-east, China is busy expanding it’s trade surplus with USA.

While USA worries about threats from ISIS, No planes dare fly into tall buildings in Beijing. Reprisal would be swift and harsh.

[CJCRANE]

5. We're back to following the neocon script.

Obama had a more positivie message in his first term, but I wonder now if that was just cover to allow the neocons to regroup and regain strength.

In fact, I think the PTB wanted Romney to be the one reading the script as it gibes more closely with his talking points, and they expect Hillary to be the next one reading their script.

[RandiFan1290]

6. Formidable foes!

That is one tough enemy!

[golfguru]

7. That was before fracking was discovered n/t

[Octafish]

8. It's like Vietnam. But with more oil.

CIA Helped Bush Senior In Oil Venture

By Russ Baker
whowhatwhy.com on Jan 7, 2007

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a ‘real shocker.’

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush’s oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush’s original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The ’75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine’s role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

It was while Devine was in his new CIA capacity as a commercial cover officer that he accompanied Bush to Vietnam the day after Christmas in 1967, remaining in the country with the newly elected congressman from Texas until January 11, 1968. Whatever information the duo was seeking, they left just in the nick of time. Only three weeks after the two men departed Saigon, the North Vietnamese and their Communist allies launched the Tet offensive with seventy thousand troops pre-positioned in more than 100 cities and towns.

While the elder Bush was in Vietnam with Devine, George W. Bush was making contact with representatives of the Texas Air National Guard, using his father’s connections to join up with an elite, Houston-based Guard unit – thus avoiding overseas combat service in a war that the Bushes strongly supported.

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.com/2007/01/07/cia-bush-senior-oil-venture/

[bemildred]

9. Quagmire. That's the word. Morass. Entanglement.

This is a quagmire.

[golfguru]

10. Absolutely quagmire! What is the positive?

Can someone tell me what do we gain in shedding blood and treasure in the middle-east while China does not spend a dime or shed any blood, and gets lion's share of oil from there?

[Initech]

11. Same shit, different day.

Want things to change? Let's start prosecuting the BFEE and the corrupt war contractors and oil companies who are profiting off Iraq's destruction.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. We lost. Get out. Get over it.