Have 1,000 U.S. Souls Died for Oil?
by Ivan Eland
http://www.liberty-news.com/showNewsletter.php?id=200409191

 The tragic milestone of 1,000 U.S. deaths in the Iraqi quagmire should cause introspection about why the United States really went to war and whether it has been worth it. While the Bush administration’s public justifications never really added up, evidence exists that there was a hidden agenda behind the invasion of Iraq: securing oil.
http://i.am/jah/politics.htm

 Saddam never had a collaborative relationship with al Qaeda. Even if Saddam’s nuclear weapons program had made more progress than his crude attempt at a restart-the worst case-it was known to be less advanced than those of North Korea and Iran. As for giving expensive nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons to unpredictable terrorist groups: Iraq was less of a state-sponsor of terrorism than Iran or Syria and didn?t sponsor groups that focused their attacks on the United States. After no “weapons of mass destruction” or Iraqi links with al Qaeda were found, the Bush administration’s fallback rationale for war was liberating oppressed peoples and creating democracy that would spread throughout the Middle East. Of course, this social engineering project also could have been attempted in Syria, Iran, or with U.S. Gulf allies, such as Saudi Arabia, albeit probably no more successfully than in Iraq.
http://i.am/jah/democra.htm

 So if the many and shifting stated justifications for the invasion fall apart under scrutiny, the average citizen is left to search for a legitimate secret reason for what has now become a deadly debacle. More evidence exists to support the unspoken theory of securing oil, than other covert motives. Some have alleged the war was a neo-conservative plan to take out a potential enemy of Israel. There may be some truth to this argument. But after making peace with the most menacing Arab nation-Egypt-and purportedly possessing hundreds of nuclear weapons, Israel is now relatively secure from existential threats. Besides, most experts agreed that Iran was closer to being a nuclear threat to Israel than Iraq. Syria was a bigger conventional threat than Saddam’s regime because of its contiguous border with the Jewish state.