George W. Bush's CIA Briefer: Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public

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45. For some people, the instinctive competition for status and power that marks our species is

so unbalanced and uncontrolled that they cannot rein in their efforts to amass the markers for status and power--which in our world are wealth and social and political control.

But there were other very important reasons.

(1) One was the belief that the US, under the "leadership" (read dictatorial control) of the "right" people, would be able to take over a large part of the world's dwindling oil supply, thus cementing the power of thus country, controlled by THEM.

(2) Another was that they wanted to establish a puppet regime and use Iraq as a base for staging further operations in the region. Look at that *huge* "diplomatic" compound they built (though so badly that it can't be used).

(3) Yet another was to impose their version of the ideal economy--a cutthroat kleptocratic state in which they and their minions could exploit everyone and everything, with no check whatsoever on their actions.

The criminal inner circle are nothing but warlord wannabes, but they envisioned themselves as warlords of the whole world, not just of some defined territory in some part if the world.

The drive to create such kleptocratic, unregulated versions of capitalism on steroids is part if the current Republican Party's DNA, and though the Koch brothers might be the most powerful and influential of the billionaires and corporations directing and funding that effort, there are many others as well.

That effort to establish a state if unregulated economic exploitation of the many by the few continues even here in the US. That's why Brownback here in Kansas continues to follow the Koch playbook, even though the resulting economic devastation is so obvious that no one can doubt that he and his legislative minions have destroyed our economy. Walker and Scott have, as much as possible, followed the same playbook, though no other governor has had as clear a field as Brownback for implementing these programs, because all of the more reasonable "moderate" Republicans in the Kansas legislature (which always had a large Republican majority) were primaried out by extreme Teapublicans with overwhelming Koch backing. (I strongly believe, though, that elections are being rigged and stolen here in Kansas and all over the country.)

With such a huge Teapublican majority in the Kansas legislature, Brownback can implement any program the kleptocrats want.

That was also the case for a long time in Iraq. Iraq's political and military classes were swept away, to be replaced by ignorant, incompetent administrators and apparatchiks at all levels, people who were completely loyal to the extreme rightwing's social and economic ideology. Read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine. She explains the destructive version of capitalism that for these people is virtually a religion.

The criminal gang that pushed for the Iraq invasion and then handled everything in a way that made them even wealthier but that destroyed so much, killed so many, and created such a mess in the Mideast are the same people behind PNAC--The Project for the New American Century--the position paper that spelled out the plan that was followed in the CheneyBush years to invade Iraq and attempt to take complete control of its government and, most important, of its oil. Even before the invasion, Cheney had meetings in his office with oil companies to work out how they would divvy up the oil they assumed they'd appropriate as spoils if war.

These three factors are probably the main reasons driving the architects of the Iraq debacle.