Welcome back! As before, your posts make it increasingly clear what they did, certainly important if the new Congress will ever investigate their prewar sheenanigans. At issue now is "Why did they do it?"

For a time, I think most of us thought it was what the P.N.A.C. said, to flex our American Dominion muscles. But, increasingly, I've become convinced that it really was to take over the oil fields - that all the lofty talk of "protecting American Interests in the Persian Gulf" equates to "gain access to Iraq's oil reserves for the American oil companies."

You got an opinion?

Mickey,

Like everyone else, I'd be speculating here. Oil is part of the equation. However, I don't think the Iraq war was primarily about oil. I think it was primarily about a bunch of cowardly and pathological chickenhawk neocons with deep inferiority complexes using the American armed forces as a proxy to flex their (non-existent) muscle and showoff American power (pretending that it was somehow theirs even though it wasn't). The unprecedented incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism, egregious fraud, and the resultant train-wreck-of-all-train-wrecks etc. are all just natural symptoms of what is a deeper malaise that afflicts their sick and conscience-free minds.

eriposte, you may be right; I'm remembering all the talk early on after 9-11 about the US having all that firepower and what a waste it would be not to use it. The US was the only "superpower" left in the world, ignoring China, and should be able to pursue its interests without question. It never occurred to Cheney that the rest of the world would object.

Thanks for the post, there's more pieces of the puzzle in place.

Thanks for the fix, Eriposte. It has been too long.