18 months later, Iraq was invaded by a coalition leaded by the USA. As a result,"In meetings on September 11th and on September 12th, the defence department officials, including Secretary Rumsfeld, began talking about the need to attack Iraq. I first thought that they were kidding and it became clear that they weren't. Rumsfeld said, well yeah, we could attack Afghanistan but there aren't very many targets to bomb in Afghanistan and they're not worth very much. So we should bomb Iraq where there are much better targets.
I thought there's no connection between what just happened and Iraq. That didn't seem to bother them. I said well attacking Iraq actually will make it more difficult for us to get the kinds of support we need in the world particularly in the Muslim world. That didn't seem to bother them. [...]
Secretary Powell said look the world is not going to understand if we don't go after Afghanistan. That's where the attack of September 11th was launched from. So reluctantly, during the course of the week, the defence department came around to a consensus and the consensus was called Afghanistan first. That's what the President approved, an Afghanistan first policy. It was very clear what was second, and what was second was Iraq." [1]
- More than 4,000 US soldiers have been killed [2]
- More than 33,000 US soldiers have been wounded [2]
- More than 88,000 iraqui civilian deaths from violence have been documented [3]
A growing number of people believe that the main reason for this war was to secure US petroleum supplies and to make Iraq safe –and lucrative– for the US oil industry.
Here are some articles of mainstream media reinforcing this idea:
- BBC: The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks.
- The Boston Globe: Bush gives new reason for Iraq war: preventing oil fields from falling into hands of terrorists.
- Times: Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil.
Here is a 1998 letter of the PNAC to President Clinton urging him to remove Saddam Hussein’s regime from power in Iraq in order to secure "a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil".
The PNAC (Project for the New American Century) is a group of highly influential neo-conservatives, many of whom have interests in the USA government and/or the oil industry. Among their members are Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. On their website they make it very clear their attitudes to the USA, the world and oil.
Green energies as an alternative to oil wars
Environmental activist, Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore has been calling for years for a move towards replacing a dependence upon "carbon-based fuels" with green energy, in order to provide a remedy to the systemic effects of global warming. [4]
The generalised use of green energy would not only help solving climate crisis but it would also reduce the dependence on imported oil (and thus the need of more oil wars).
Last week, green energy found an unexpected supporter. This time it was not a pacifist, an ecologist or even a politician, but one of the most powerful businessmen in America. His name is Eric Schmidt and he is Chairman and CEO of Google.
In October the 1st, 2008, Schmidt presented a plan called “Clean Energy 2030”, proposing solutions to reduce CO2 emissions, improve the national energy security, reduce energy costs and create millions of new jobs - All that with a net benefit by 2030 of $1.0 trillion over the initial investment.
You can watch here Eric Schmidt discussing this proposal:
References
[1]↑ "The secret history of 9/11" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3337932315461124693 [from 1:24h to 1:26h] See transcript at CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation): http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/secrethistory/timeline10.html
[2]↑ International coalition casualties: http://icasualties.org/oif/CasualtyTrends.aspx[3]↑ Iraq Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
IBC’s figures are not ‘estimates’ but a record of actual, documented deaths. IBC records solely violent deaths. IBC records solely civilian (strictly, ‘non-combatant’) deaths. IBC’s figures are constantly updated and revised as new data comes in, and frequent consultation is advised.
[4]↑ Al Gore's challenge "We can solve the climat crisis": http://www.wecansolveit.org/
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