So many theories on Why GWB invaded Iraq.

[busterbrown]

My opinion...

Not because of WMDs
Not because of the Smoking Gun(Nuclear Weapons )
Not because of the Oil.
Not because of global terror connections
Not because of his daddy being threatened

Simply because the economic interest boys (1%) wanted a war time president so that they could pass
every political economic plan they desired. This would be done under the guise of “If you don’t support our
President’s lead than you don’t support our troops and and the fight against tyranny”

Dress up Soldier Boy just loved the whole concept. For Fuck sake’s, he had the same mentality as we all
did when we played war with our air pumped rifles when we were 10 years old.. We just loved it all!

[Cleita]

1. I kinda agree with you.

Also, they conveniently had 9/11 thrown in that sealed the deal. No one wanted to cross the President at the time of crisis or they wouldn't have gotten away with half of what they did get away with.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

2. And is there a theory as to why Obama gave immunity to openly-admitted war criminals?

[PDJane]

3. I personally suspect that it had to do with the fact that Saddam Hussein didn't stay bought.

Plus, of course, if Saddam Hussein was sent to the Hague, the information he had on the Bush family would have landed one or two of them in the docket with him.

I think it was just opportunistic; it really had nothing to do with terrorism or freedom or weapons of mass destruction, it was just proposed as a by-product.

[Wellstone ruled]

4. As a freind once said,

we are going into Iraq to clean up any evidence left behind by Poppy Bush,Cheney,and Rumsfeld,this was in regards to the pre 91' garbage. Saddam was a CIA tool,Rummy ran the poison Gas deal with Cheney. Georgie Boy was just a the sock puppet for the Neo-Cons in their stealing of U.S. money assets and setting up a Libertarian State in Iraq. The friend made many a trip in and out of Iraq during his lifetime. Rummy, Bush,Cheney,and other Neo-Cons need to be in the Docket at the Hague. It's all about the money.

[lunatica]

5. Actually it was all spelled out in PNAC in two very short paragraphs

The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

The Project for the New American Century intends, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism, conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails. It will also strive to rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America's role in the world.

William Kristol, Chairman

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

It was to become the sole Military Superpower Empire.

[Zen Democrat]

6. I was a Well-Oiled Shock Doctrine.

[DFW]

7. I look upon the invasion as a cold-blooded business decision

Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton, wasn't doing too well in 2000. Their stock, at the time Cheney took office in 2001, was at $19. Prior to placing his portfolio in a blind trust before taking office, Cheney took out 200,000 stock options for a dollar per share. This means he could, for $1 a share, buy Halliburton stock at $19 any time he wanted to, no matter what the true market price.

And that was just Dick Cheney. He wasn't the only one with a horse in that race. Sure enough, Iraq got invaded, Halliburton was awarded numerous "no-bid" contracts by the Cheney government, supplied out troops with substandard logistics by cutting cost corners, and made a fortune. Their stock shot up to $87 a share. So, Cheney's $200,000 investment netted him 200,000 X (87-19-1), or about $13,400,000 in profits, and that's just the one trade I found out about, and just Cheney's deal. You have to think that every other Halliburton exec was in on this deal as well.

Add to this all the other Cheneybush-friendly companies that profited, plus the $9 billion of OUR cash that simply disappeared in the Iraqi desert somewhere (and if you believe that one, I have some ocean coastline property in Wyoming I want to sell you).

War is hell-aciously good business.

[grantcart]

14. Cheney sold his shares before the campaign

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/e98/e2397.htm

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/may/24/chris-matthews/chris-matthews-says-cheney-got-34-million-payday-h/


A footnote: Cheney's timing was impeccable. As the disclosure forms indicate, he held a large number of stock options, which means he had been given the right to purchase shares of the company for an old (and, hopefully for the holder of the options) lower price than the current market value. When the holder chooses to exercise those options, they can buy the shares at the low price and then sell them at the market price, pocketing the difference.

It's not clear when Cheney sold his stock options, but it likely was within weeks of his being named to the ticket -- a period when Halliburtion shares hit their 2000 peak, in the low-to-mid $50 range. By November 30, 2000, the stock had fallen to $33 a share. If he'd waited until then to sell, his payday would have been one-third lower, or roughly $14 million rather than $22 million.

But Cheney does appear to have had timing on his side, so we find Matthews' statement -- that Cheney had a payday of $34 million -- to be accurate. If anything, it may have been a bit low. Either way, we give it a rating of True.


(The irony of this is that Cheney complained bitterly about having to sell and made it seem that he was making a great sacrifice to be on the ticket when the facts are that selling the stocks at that point made him a rich man.)

[quaker bill]

8. I think it is this simple

As the Sec. of Defense said "there is nothing good to blow up in Afghanistan". (this is mostly because the Soviets blew that stuff up years back).

There were tall shiny buildings in Iraq to bomb, and they did not like Saddam anyway. The thing was done to provide the RW base with gun camera footage of big buildings being blown up in the middle east as a "response" to 9/11. This is why there was lots of gun camera footage and no counts of the Iraqi dead.

[Cosmocat]

9. There was Afganistan

They had a war on the table already, no need to drum up another one to have one.

They could have done all the other BS with Afghanistan.

Now, they did do it 10 times more with Iraq.

But, they can't even tell you why they did it.

They just had egg head conservative intellectuals who thought it was a good idea, had a lot of people who could make A LOT of money off of it, and Jr. in his simple minded way was easily led to it over his father issues.

If you notice Jr's trend over time, he spent the first 3 years or so just letting these clowns do what they want, lead him around. I think once he saw what a disaster Iraq turned out to be, he had a good deal of resentment toward Cheney et al, and moved to be his own man a little more.

There is a reason he is a VERY deep hole now and does not stick his head out, while the rest of these jackasses are running around acting all knowing.

[Starkiller228]

10. I guess him breaking the rules put on his country after the Gulf War

Wasn't enough. Silly rules, but yeah that's a basic reason that corrisides with the whole WMD fiasco. Oil pipelines were extremely ruined from his war with Iran in the 80s so that's out of the question, globel terror is new to me and doesn't make much sense, and I'm not sure why his dad would give a crap about Iraq.... at all.

Your idea isn't that bad, but with how things turned out from 2003 to now, it seems those so called economic interest people were lazy. Let's just bury this Iraq burden and not make it more of an issue than what it needs to be. It was a bleak and black picture on America's history, lets move on. With how the Middle-East is anyway, if the U.S left the whole place would be like Chicago, everybody attacking everybody. 0.o

[pinto]

11. What's your take on Chicago?

An odd analogy.

[Starkiller228]

13. It seems that everybody over there are killing each other.

Probably a dated analogy.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. He was already a war time President after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan

And he would've won re-election by 10 points and possibly managed to privatize social security had he not invaded Iraq.

Dipshit invaded Iraq because of his ego and nothing more. He actually believed that using 9/11 to wage war on the entire Arab world (starting with Iraq) was following FDR's example by attacking Germany after Pearl Harbor. Nevermind the fact that Germany declared war on us before we declared war on them. Also nevermind the fact that we're a superpower and there is no conceivable way that Saddam Hussein could ever possibly have been an existential threat to the United States in the way that Adolf Hitler was.