More Thoughts On Iraq

            Like many Democrats, I have frequently indulged in the dubious artifice of viewing the Bush-Cheney administration as simply inept, incompetent, and dishonest. 

            Dishonest they most certainly have been.  But the more we learn of what they are being dishonest about, the more we must conclude that “the Cheney Gang” (as Graham Leonard liked to describe this administration) has been extremely skillful and distressingly successful.

            We now know that, even before the attacks of 9/11, Cheney’s energy task force (the membership of which he has repeatedly refused to reveal) had already decided to seek regime change in Iraq.  The plan was, and still is, to topple Saddam, install a puppet government, and coerce that government into agreements that would give Western petroleum companies easy and long-term access to Iraq’s extensive petroleum reserves.

            The problem they faced was how to convince the American public to support such an extraordinary power and resource grab.

            Then came September 11, 2001!  A bunch of well educated, wealthy, Saudi Arabians, for reasons of their own, highjacked four airliners and caused a great deal of death and destruction in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.  Over the following year or so we launched an attack on Afghanistan, where the plot was apparently hatched.  The Bush team also launched a huge misinformation campaign designed to persuade Americans that Saddam was somehow responsible for the attacks.  Judging by the number of people who, to this day, believe that lie, we have to admit that it was an effective, if unbelievably dishonest, campaign.

            In March, 2003 team Bush deftly shifted our attention from Afghanistan and mounted a preemptive attack on Baghdad.  They lied to us then about the reasons for the attack, and they’ve been lying to us ever since with one fabrication after another.

            But now we know about the huge, and permanent, Baghdad embassy complex.  We know about the permanent bases that have been built.  We know about the “Declaration of Principles” that was signed by Bush and al-Maliki on Nov. 26, a binding “executive agreement” that neither the U. S. Congress or the Iraqi Parliament get to review.  Wayne M. O’Leary, in the “Progressive Populist” (3/1/0 describes it as the “…mother of all power grabs by an administration that increasingly shows no respect for the U. S. Constitution…”.  Finally, we know about the “Production Service Agreements”, reportedly drawn up in the White House, that would effectively permit American Oil Companies free access to Iraqi oil fields for at least the next thirty years.  That’s thirty years during which American Armed Forces will be required to protect the al-Maliki government and our oil agreements with it.

            While these facts are known, they have not been widely reported by the mainstream media, and they have never been honestly reported by the White House.  So when Bush, and now McCain, insist that we cannot leave until we have “won”, we know what winning means.  It means signed contracts and sufficient security to assure continued protection for al-Maliki and his puppet government.  It has absolutely nothing to do with freedom or democracy for the Iraqi people.