Can someone please tell me what is going on concerning Iraq? Are we blind or mentally conditioned?
With Iraq (as with any war) there are usually many pros and cons to the "equation" (what is a pro or a con depends on you're personal political outlook).
There was the Saudi Arabia problem. The US have been based there since gulf war 1, to protect Saudi from their nasty neighbour Saddam.
This caused internal strife in Saudi, whose people don't really appreciate foreign forces bolstering the position of a monarch they don't like anyway. (This led to terrorist strikes on American targets and eventually 9/11).
Once Saddam was gone, the US forces moved out of thier Saudi bases.
There's also the "free market" priciples and the sanctions on Saddam's Iraq. As long as Saddam was in Iraq, the sanctions had to stay in place. As long as the sanctions were in place, investors couldn't touch Iraq's national markets (Water / Electricity / OIL etc).
Another part of the aim was get rid of Saddam, open up the markets and let them do their job (we destroy, you re-build - $$$).
These had to be opened to enable the economic growth (i.e. increase in demand in petrol use) forcasted in Cheney's energy strategy (National energy policy available on the white house web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/ ). Factor in peak oil, and I suppose you'll need an army based in the middle east to make sure you can keep that oil for yourself: http://www.newamericancentury.org/ .
(Michael T Klare's book "Blood and Oil" is nn excellent resource for explaining this.)
The global free market ties in to both parts of the discussion, - as for shipping jobs abroad, this can be summed up by the phrase "race to the bottom", see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom
Also worth a mention here is the Euro factor. Have a read of this article by Richard Heinberg: http://www.museletter.com/archive/149.html
Basically that's about how the "world oil currency" is the US$ and how a switch the the euro could debase this, removing a huge financial resource for America. So that couldn't happen!
Curiously, there's also a planned oil exchange "in the pipeline" for Iran, also based on the euro (due to sanctions again) http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA410A.html
I wonder who the next target will be?
If you find all this (just a bit) depressing then you'll probably be glad to take a look at this link www.simpol.org and read all about it.
Well, I feel a bit confused as to "Which are the TRUE motives" concerning the Iraq war. We spent more there than in most benefit we could of extracting any future hold on getting oil "maybe". So, What's Up? It's amazing but during the learning process we are taught to "think logically" and to solve problems. I remember taking math in the past and having a word problem that would almost "crack my brain" into trying to solve it and after going through the "givens" or parts of the facts then I would solve the problem. This gave me a sense of accomplishment, and aha! I got it "Problem solved", and then I would see through the cloudy mirrors and see how a professor almost "tricked me" into the wrong formula or equation and tested my knowledge or mastering of the subject. Now, please, Could someone please tell me something that would make some sense in this Iraq equation? However tough it may be, I need to know some of the variables in this deadly equation costing precious lives.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist but I clearly see that while soldiers are in Iraq toughing it out, and being further placed at risk by publicity of the London Times Downe Street memos all over the arab world, we have those in leadership allowing the outsourcing of THOUSANDS OF JOBS, and selling pieces of American companies such as Maytag? part of a computer co., now Unocal? etc. etc. GM going to China to build cars there while giving us a sappy story? etc. In my opinion something deeper is at the heart of all this nonsense. This equation given to us is not computing? Are we that conditioned mentally that we do not really see what is wrong with this future picture? What are we going to do? Any comments?