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It Was Oil, All Along
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire, and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be... the bottom line. It is about oil.
Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, "... Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." He elaborated in an interview with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first gulf war."
Remember, also, that soon after the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the press that war was our only strategic choice. "... We had virtually no economic options with Iraq," he explained, "because the country floats on a sea of oil."
Shades of Daniel Plainview, the monstrous petroleum tycoon in the movie There Will Be Blood. Half-mad, he exclaims, "There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet!" then adds, "No one can get at it except for me!"
No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except... guess who?
Here's a recent headline in The New York Times: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." Read on: "Four western companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power."
There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts -- that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places.
Let's go back a few years to the 1990's, when private citizen Dick Cheney was running Halliburton, the big energy supplier. That's when he told the oil industry that, "By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty-million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Fast forward to Cheney's first heady days in the White House. The oil industry and other energy conglomerates have been headed backdoor keys to the White House, and their CEO's and lobbyists were trooping in and out for meetings with their old pal, now Vice President Cheney.
The meetings are secret, conducted under tight security, but as we reported five years ago, among the documents that turned up from some of those meetings were maps of oil fields in Iraq -- and a list of companies who wanted access to them. The conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed suit to try to find out who attended the meetings and what was discussed, but the White House fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the press and public from learning the whole truth.
Think about it. These secret meetings took place six months before 9/11, two years before Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq. We still don't know what they were about. What we know is that this is the oil industry that's enjoying swollen profits these days. It would be laughable if it weren't so painful to remember that their erstwhile cheerleader for invading Iraq -- the press mogul Rupert Murdoch -- once said that a successful war there would bring us $20 a barrel of oil. The last time we looked, it was more than $140 a barrel. Where are you, Rupert, when the facts need checking and the predictions are revisited?
At a congressional hearing this week, James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who exactly twenty years ago alerted Congress and the world to the dangers of global warming, compared the chief executives of Big Oil to the tobacco moguls who denied that nicotine is addictive or that there's a link between smoking and cancer. Hansen, who the administration has tried again and again to silence, said these barons of black gold should be tried for committing crimes against humanity and nature in opposing efforts to deal with global warming.
Perhaps those sweetheart deals in Iraq should be added to his proposed indictments. They have been purchased at a very high price. Four thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded for life, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an "energy protection force," doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others or the earth itself. One thinks again of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. His lust for oil came at the price of his son and his soul.
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82 Comments so far
Show AllBill Moyers says, "the secret meetings took place six months before 9-11,"
9-11 was an inside job.
An inside job INSIDE the world's most heavily protected airspace.
Guarded by the USAF. But not that day.
Goodbye Twin Towers and WTC-7,
Hello Iraqi Oil.
Another example of blog threads that illustrate the impotence of intelligent people commiserating amongst themselves about corruption and injustice, thwarted by the machinations of those motivated by fear and profits...
I DO NOT advocate for assasination, but what is the political equivalent of the townspeople in Missouri so many years ago offing the bully who wouldn't listen to the rule of law and nobody saw it happen? We've tried electing Democrats, we've tried reason, we've tried everything we can think of, yet the paranoid machismo in the Bush adminstration continues. Perhaps the next administration, if it doesn't continue the Bush doctrine, will make repairs, but it will take more than one presidential term. Perhaps some of us will have to decide that the good of the nation is more important than our own singular lives, and act accordingly. Isn't that the attitude of a true patriot?
Momentary profit in oil (and pharmaceuticals, insurance, investment, ad nauseum) and the modern rise of barons and imperialists is not what we're about. At what cost do we wrest our nation back from them? It's a pacifist's challenge par excellence. While we are frustrated in the things we've tried so far, we still haven't lost our creativity. And that's hopeful.
The House voted 268-155 to provide $162 billion in additional "emergency" funding for the Iraq war last week and the Senate voted 92 to 6 to approve it. Obama voted yes. All that is need is 41 resolute Senators to stop it and keep in mind that Democrats control both houses of the Congress.
To the Democratic Party apologists: Why is your lament not about what your traitorous Democrats do in your name but instead that we point it out?
Go Democrats! Go change! Go hope! Go Obama!
I agree. It was for Israel all along.
Oil is important for money. But it is more important as energy. Transport is 95% oil. When the oil runs out or becomes expensive, it effects the economy and hence the popularity of the political party in charge. The real problem is the physical world of energy and matter. It underlies the paper economy.
Dear Future Archaeologist (who finds this note buried under the remains of our former industrialized city),
We're sorry. We fucked up. Industrialization was so much fun, at least in the short run. We fast laned, fast fooded, bargain shopped, and fastly got deluded. Sorry we left the place worse off then we found it, we just didn't have time to remedy the polluted. We got scared and built ICBM's. Watch where you step, it's still radioactive for the next 400 millennium.
Yours truly,
The Brainwashed Generation
PS. Please print and redistribute at your local decimation.
war with Iran is next - before the new president is sworn in January 2009 - about 7 months from now. Read this interview with former UN Weapons Inspector and military intelligence (in his case, accurate)expert. And pass it on - today.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0806/S00383.htm
It was a lot of things. Oil being a biggie. Business people do cost-benefit analyzes before making decisions. It *is* complicated, because Iraq is the battleground, but the real war is between the USA and its capitalist competitors (EU, China, etc.). The USA's economy is in the tank, the dollar is sinking. What to do? Invade Iraq (and then, Iran). So, they invade Iraq for the oil, construct permanent American military bases from which to launch further imperialist wars, install banana republic regimes in the Middle-East (that is, regimes friendly to American corporate interests), "reconstruct" Iraq (see Naomi Klein's articles and book on this theme), establish hegemony in the Middle East, and wage war on civil liberties in the US and across the globe. Can anyone think of more to add?...
My protest is that I will not vote for anyone who voted for funding for Bushs's war and will not vote for anyone who does not hold Bush/Cheney accountable by supporting Impeachment .
How else can the "people" make a difference?
hmm...marlee, good thought for changing the focus of my energies: make a list of the enablers and what they enabled and shout it out to the world. Bush Co. gets the spoils (have to give them credit for that - they wanted carnage more than anyone wanted peace and human dignity) of their murderous torturous ways while the enablers get table scraps and the rest get shit upon. Here's to recognizing and joining the "Untouchables" and wiping up the shit!
Just because one day the USA administration will agree its major invasions of terror are about oil, does not mean that the USA is suddenly going to be embarrassed and say, "gee I am sorry, I will pull out now". It means that the administration no longer feels the need to make excuses, and can project naked absolute power and destruction apon whatever target they percieve. The USA administration has always known its about oil.
ISRAEL.............OR............ISR-OIL?
Has that ALWAYS been the underpinning?
The physcial proximity of our 51st state to OUR OIL? (ALL over the ME?)
Isroil, it just rolls off the tongue, a chosen word.
Twas oil that brutalized that journalist at the checkpoint, from whence the power (energy) came. amassed over 60 years.
It's why America subsidizes that socialist country, giving them a standard of living better than ours. free health care, housing assistance (bye Araboushkin)...
These criminals ain't done yet. did anybody read the article last week that predicts a false flag terror attack on Houston on the 4th of July or thereabouts? Supposedly an FBI agent working with Fatherland Security was killed when he uncovered huge gaps in security at the ports and found Israeli agents snooping around. If anyone can find that article, please do so and send it to everyone you can. Cockroaches only come out in the dark, perhaps by shining a light on this, we can forestall it.
I found the article from above. Please, please, pass it on. At worst, nothing happens and you sound a bit paranoid.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/13/9596/
simo; I just read that. thanks a lot. poor Carnaby.
I predict a more straightforward approach.
Israel attacks Iran.
We do too.
Iran defends itself with SS-N-22's and sinks a carrier.
Amerikans will then support another several years of Arab and Persian slaughter over the oilfields and to Israel's delight.
Oil is the blood of the earth, and the vampires are sucking her dry!
Ride a bike!
Take a hike!
We are the change we've been waiting for! Be the change!
Bill Moyers, having been involved with LBJ for so long ---
the "clinically psychotic" LBJ -- knows the role that
OIL has played in our history.
Reflect on the gene pool which delivered genocide
against the Native American and gave us a Constitution
which proclaimed "equality for all" while embracing slavery,
degrading females and doling out property to elites.
It's always been about the wealth and resources of the
nation and control over them for power.
That includes DRUGS -- like any other asset, from gold
to oil.
Bill Moyers has never been known to actually get any
one up off the couch to do anything. That's why PBS
continues to run him.
Will Bill Moyers tell us the truth one day about LBJ
and the coup on our government in 1963?
When LBJ gave us VN he also brought Brown & Root along
and introduced new levels of warprofiteering in PERPETUAL
WARS.
Unregulated capitalism is merely organized crime.
I actually think it a bad idea to write letters to the local newspaper. I would boycott newspapers entirely. They were part and parcel of the conspiracy.
Currently newspapers are seeing a plunge in advertising revenues. Let them go. If no one reads them it does not matter how much their advertisers pay them.
Newspapers retain the illusion of control when one writes to them. They might well allow one or two dissenting opinions or letters of outrage, then in the next weeks issue will allow dozens of rebuttals wherein the former dismissed as some sort of nutcase.
They help to maintain the illusion that those who believe 9/11 a massive coverup are part of the nutty few and that any in their RIGHT minds would never believe in such twaddle.
I would not play their game by writing them.
Simo said,
"I found the article from above. Please, please, pass it on. At worst, nothing happens and you sound a bit paranoid."
You mean at "best" don't you?
I agree with GwNorth. Don't give Main Stream news anything. Continue to Ignore them and hopefully they GO AWAY.
We're on our own with this one, on our own with any sort of intelligent criticism. MS Media is part and parcel of this power structure.
Luckily we have mere numbers on our side. Unluckily, the masses are not united, educated, etc., at best, and at worse, dis-informed, dis-educated by MSM.
And, yes, we need to move beyond the net, printing web pages out is a good idea.
Many, many folks, don't have access to the internet, especially this nation's oppressed, it's slaves of the day. We need to try to reach out to these people too, somehow. Any more ideas? What about those who don't read English or are so distrustful of any media that they don't even read the alternative stuff??!
Well, Duh-uh!!!
...Billy come lately.
For the past few years Moyers has adamantly dissed the folks urging (nearly begging) him to...
...look into and publicize the connections between our government's complicity in 9/11 and the quest for oil.
Giving Moyers that benefit of the doubt, he may have concluded that the political climate wasn't safe enough to do so. And, that he'd quickly be side-lined as a kook at the fringe of things, and his overall effectiveness radically diminished. If so, it was likely a correct assessment.
Fine and dandy.
That was then.
The reality is that he and anyone else who deals with the "oil issue," will sooner or later need to contend with the astonishing work of Michael Ruppert on 9/11 as a "home-made Pearl Harbor."
There is a statue of Gandhi outside the the King Center for Non-violent Social Change with King's words inscribed under it,
"…if humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inevitable. We may ignore him at our own risk."
In the same way Ruppert's work, and the very serious questions he raises, need to be confronted if we are to move forward.
So, Bill Moyers: Ready to face the music?
Research the guys who are researching the RFK assassination. Besides the audio tape from the cameras that were rolling- which now provide conclusive proof that two guns were fired- there is another key piece of evidence in their hands. It's a photograph of some very interesting individuals hanging out in the front lobby at the Ambassador prior to the shooting.
So what's new? But we don't hear enough about the other real reason for invading Iraq. Mainly, ISRAEL. It was pretty obvious to me that going into Iraq was the results of an agreement that was concluded during Cheney's energy meeting with oil companies and corporations (probably Black Water USA) and others. The attendants are still mainly a secret.
Jim Glover
"Oil under LA, the Great Lakes, Montana and the Gulf but why would they drill it if the price rises faster by having a shortage?
Third world and growing industrial nations can always drill and produce oil cheaper just like everything else we buy from them."
The problem with this sort of thinking is that it values oil in terms of an entirely abstract commodity called money. Instead of thinking in Euros or dollars or what have you, think in terms of the commodity itself. How many barrels of oil does it take to extract, refine, and deliver how many barrels of oil? We are fast approaching a situation where it will take more than one barrel of oil to produce and market a barrel of oil and that's when the whole house of cards collapses.
To play Devil's advocate for a moment: The country that controls the largest number of resources maintains the greatest power over others and prospers the most. The neo-con gang recognized many years ago that because of the dependence of not only the U.S. but other economies and developing nations on certain resources, oil in particular, in order for the U.S to maintain its top ranking in the world it would need to gain better control over the oil in the Middle East, and of course other resources elsewhere. If another country controls this oil, it gains control over the oil dependent U.S. economy, other world economies, and profits greatly in the selling of the resource.
If the current administration and those in the past would have said, listen U.S. citizens, we need to gain control over these resources or else our status and economic standing in the world will suffer greatly, you can imagine that most Americans would not have been willing to send troops off to fight to secure it. After all, it's only the kings of old that openly admitted that they were after power and spoils with war - nowadays, people will only go to war for things like justice and freedom, so that's the message we are sold, in whatever way they can sell it. The reasons for war have not changed, all that has is the justifications we must create for it.
Americans are not happy with how the U.S. standing in the world has fallen because of our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan (which is largely about access to oil as well). And they are not happy with the rising oil prices, which are now a lot farther out of our hands than ever before because of growing demand from India and China. And they would not have been happy if we hadn't taken any action in the Middle East and oil prices still rose because of growing demand elsewhere in the world.
Most U.S. citizens will only be happy when they can have it all, peace, cheap resources, top world standing, etc. Most Americans, it seems, don't want to share the world's resources with anyone else, otherwise they wouldn't continue to consume to the extent that they do with little regard for the actions needed for us to do so (usually exploiting other peoples and nations) and the consequences of doing so (other peoples and nations not liking us very much).
In their own way, the neo-con gang believes that its actions are all about perserving the power and glory of America, that let's face it most Americans have loved over the past century. The neo-cons saw the rising of other powers on the horizon and knew that for the U.S. to remain on top, action needed to be taken. For them, that action means securing U.S. power by military and economic warfare.
Americans want to have their cake and eat it too. They want all that they want, as cheaply as they want, and don't want to know, think about, or take any responsibility for the dirty work needed to ensure this. And it's not just Americans, people in general want an easy, guilt-free life of luxury. Fact of the matter is, with so many people competing for resources on this planet this just isn't possible - it never really has been possible.
Someone is going to profit from these resources such as Middle East oil, so why not U.S. companies vs. foreign ones. If it helps us to continue to live as oil junkies and live high on the hog as we have over the past century, what's the problem.
For the record, I actually believe that the only sustainable and fair way to live is for people to survive solely on the resources in their immediate environment and by preserving ecosystems that provide those resources. If resources are needed from elsewhere, they must be traded fairly in exchange for resources needed by the others, but this exchange, too, should be as local in nature as possible.
"Dick Cheney was running Halliburton, the big energy supplier."
It's no big deal, it's just that I'm tired of hearing everybody talk about Halliburton being an Oil Company, a big energy supplier. Halliburton is a service company, you know, like rotor router or Servicemaster. Dick Cheney doesn't know any more about the oil business than George Bush does. George Bush tried to buy his way into the oil business, of course with other people's money, and as far as I know he never found a drop of oil. These guys know about as much about the oil business, as they do about running a country. Not to mention running a war.
Thanks, Tsunami, for the reminder about ISRAEL. Especially now that they and our 'leaders' are pushing war with Iran.
And, as for the big 4 oil companies back in Iraq, as the NY Times put it, this "news" seems a bit suspicious.
Given the PR campaigns by the big 4 about how they're here to help guide us through the 'energy crisis', how all but Exxon are going green, (obvious greenwashing) but, nevertheless, an attempt at placating the masses, making people believe that we can trust them to help solve the crisis in energy.
This trusting relationship with energy producers combined with a war for oil makes me envision a way for them to get popular support for an unpopular war. Our economy won't survive without oil, at least that's been the pitch lately. The pitch I'm hearing goes something like this:
"Of course we're concerned about global warming, BUT, we need to take care of our own, and these responsible companies can help us do it."
Be wary when the administration lets the NY Times say it was a war about oil. Recall?--the NY Times was the lap dog that led us to war in the first place.
JFI makes an important observation that encapsulates the neo-con agenda: "In their own way, the neo-con gang believes that its actions are all about perserving the power and glory of America, that let's face it most Americans have loved over the past century. The neo-cons saw the rising of other powers on the horizon and knew that for the U.S. to remain on top, action needed to be taken. For them, that action means securing U.S. power by military and economic warfare."
The sole beneficiary of their policies has been the oligarchy -- the richest 1% of the populace not just in America but in every country that has fallen to the domination of multi-national capitalism. The daily atrocities perpetuated by this cabal, enabled by the junta that seized power in America in 2000l, cause many of us to ascribe to them none but the most egregious motives: a pathological drive to dominate any country they can through overwhelming military force -- the "shock and awe" of the Bagdad invasion. Once a country has been decimated by war (or natural disaster), the multinationals, working through the IMF and the World Bank, apply a carrot and stick approach: the government of the country is offered aid to rebuild, with the caveat that it allow foreign corporations to take over control of the infrastructure. The attempt by the oil consortium to force the Iraqis to surrender control and most of the profits of their oil fields described in this article is but the latest example of what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism". It's hard to perceive these kinds of operations as anything other than the rankest kind of raw greed, and the stench of corruption that accompanies the rape of vulnerable countries (including areas of the US) makes the neo-con cabal agenda seem truly diabolic and their leaders sociopaths.
Throughout the term that followed the coup d'etat of 2000, the Bush/Cheney cabal sought, under the sway of their "Goebbels", Karl Rove, to cloak themselves first in the mantle of defenders of the reich (sorry -- the republic) against an enemy possessed of weapons as lethal as our own; later, as crusaders with a mandate to free the suffering Iraqi people from the cruel tyranny of Saddam; then with a different mandate: to save Iraq from invasion by terrorists trained (if not actually from) Iran -- the next country to fall under the sniper-scope of the cabal.
Not until quite recently have they finally admitted what most of us realized before the invasion began: that this was a war of unprovoked aggression against a country that had assets we wanted: "It's the oil, stupid!" This new openness on the part of the junta was expressed brilliantly by Cheney, in an interview in which he reacted to a question regarding the American people's disapproval of the administration's current Iraq campaign with a single word: "So?" This arrogance of this monosyllabic reply was breathtaking. It meant the gloves were off; that Cheney, for one, could no longer be bothered to cloak his contempt for the half-wits who voted for him and his pardner. Those were the same dupes who Leona Helmsley termed "the little people" (those who paid taxes), and whom Iron Lady Thatcher dismissed as "not one of us" (and therefore not worthy of notice.)
Because these open expressions of disdain confirm what we have always suspected about the neo-con gang -- that they were a crew of sociopaths whose sole agenda consisted of the transfer of wealth and power to themselves and their cronies -- the international "1%'ers"), it is easy to dismiss anything any one of them might say as hypocrisy and pandering to voters.
This comment by JFI adds some perspective that is sorely needed lest the one-dimensional, cartoon version of each of the neo-con crew be accepted at face value. If his remark applies to anyone, it is most pertinent to Bush. Certainly the man who first appeared an affable bungler, a light-weight elected in large part by those who thought he'd be someone they could sit down in the living room and drink a beer with, in contrast to his opponent who, like Stevenson almost half a century before, was an "egghead", a man the MSM consistently characterized as an amalgam of policy wonk and lying buffoon. This persistent anti-intellectualism did indeed bring us a man who fit the profile of "lowest common demoninator", whose worst failing was one of his most endearing traits: his inability to speak a coheret English sentence. Those of us who were intellectuals could relax; the man was never at work anyway, so how much harm could he do?
What we falied to realize was that what appeared to be a typical middle-age crisis on the part of an aging party boy, which led Bush to Jesus instead of a Porsche, was much more serious than that. The real danger he poses, that the neo-cons collectively pose, is their nature as "true believers", which makes them far more dangerous than mere greed and power-lust alone could do. As JFI remarked, the neo-cons believed what they were doing was for the good of the country. Oh, and if they and their friends happened to profit on the side, well, what was wrong with making a little money? We do live, after all, in a capitalist country -- not a capitalist democracy (a more accurate description of the US is an oligarchy) -- and the profit motive is what keeps the engine running.
That the American people could not stomach real-politik meant that those with stronger stomachs would have to do it for them. So they didn't want to get their hands dirty, or sully their conception of the US as a benign force for good in the world; others would do the nasty work needed to ensure that the US survived in a world which is headed inexorably closer to a series of resource wars - not just over oil, but over water, food, air, medical care. If action is not taken on a timely basis, the US may find itself reduced to the status of a 2nd or 3rd rate power, a has-been nation off the team of power players. It was essential to act now, when the collapse of the Soviet Union left the US the sole great power, to take control of what assets we knew we would be needing before competition grew greater and people more desperate.
First and foremost among assets is oil. With only limited supplies available to us, it was essential that we move quickly to secure control of those countries who might be vulnerable to takeover, who had the biggest oil reserves. Iraq and Iran had been their target of interest for decades. Now, after 9/11 gained the US more international sympathy than it had enjoyed in years, it should be possible to use this sympathy to gain support for our plans to conquer the "Axis of Evil" (the use of "Axis", the name used by our WWII opponents was no accident): let the invasions commence.
I can easily imagine Cheney/Bush et.al. sitting back complacently in their studies at home, dreaming of the day when their real contributions to the survival of the US would be recognized. Then, the history books would have to be re-written to give the neo-cons the credit they were due as visionaries who had the courage to do what their convictions told them must be done for the sake of America. Then, all those who had despised and derided them would be humiliated in their turn, when the American people woke up to the fact that without the Iraq (and Iran) invasion, they would be living in a third-world nation without the luxuries that drive our economy. And when global warming really kicks in (they're not stupid; of course they know what's coming; that's why they're trying to seize control of the oil and secure a mid-east base) and the resource wars rage, we in the US will be able to barricade ourselves securely, safe in the knowledge that we have what we need because a few people had the courage to do what was necessary, however unpopular they became. When Americans were still bleating about collateral damage and greedy oil companies, those who really knew what was happening took action; now the people recognized who had had their best interests at heart all along. If those lily-livered liberals had been in charge, we'd be as desperate as the rest of the world; fortunately the neo-cons had taken what we needed, and -- having got our priorities straight for once -- got rid of entitlement programs that only fostered the weak -- and invested all our wealth in building a military that stripped those upstart little tin-pot dictatorships of their nuclear arsenals -- a military so powerful that no other country in the world would ever dare challenge us again.
Leisure Elf
Thanks for the thoughtful reponse and feedback to my posting. It's good to see someone else who recognizes that there's a lot more going on here than pure greed. The agenda and thought process of the neo-cons was very well outlined in one of the reports by the Project for a New American Century. More people need to take the time to read the words of and understand the other side - it's the only real effective way to fight a battle and to understand your "enemy".