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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
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Author:  Jim Wrenn
Bio: Jim Wrenn
Date:  September 21, 2007
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Alan Greenspan was right: The Iraq war is "about oil" because it's "about [toppling a terror-supporting, genocidal, totalitarian regime that had spent, and would now be spending, vast] oil [revenues on WMDs]."

What does reality really reveal about the relationship between the war in Iraq and "oil"?

According to an interview of Alan Greenspan by Bob Woodward regarding Greenspan's assertion (in his latest book) that the "Iraq war is about oil," Greenspan meant that protecting the free world's access to oil from threats or WMD-blackmail by Saddam Hussein's regime justified toppling Saddam. The entirety of Woodward's article is here), and here are excerpts:

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.
"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."
He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, "I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive." Greenspan said that he made his economic argument to White House officials and that one lower-level official, whom he declined to identify, told him, "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil." Asked if he had made his point to Cheney specifically, Greenspan said yes, then added, "I talked to everybody about that."
Greenspan said he had backed Hussein's ouster, either through war or covert action. "I wasn't arguing for war per se," he said. But "to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B" -- an alternative to war.

Indeed, it's manifest to anyone with common sense and a modicum of knowledge of recent history that our motive in toppling Saddam Hussein was not "about [acquiring Iraq's] oil." Rather, in reality-- above and beyond Greenspan's rationale (as an economist wisely fearing totalitarian strangulation of the free-market forces of liberty)-- the war in Iraq is "about [ending a terror-supporting, genocidal, prior-WMD-using totalitarianist's ability to expend vast] oil [revenues on WMDs]." The answer to the "we're not intervening in Darfur" canard is that if the genocidists in Darfur were to have access to, and control of, vast oil revenues, and were to have previously demonstrated a willingness to use such revenues to build WMDs and to use them, we'd need to topple them also. At present, we lack the resources to topple totalitarianists everwhere, and our alleged "allies" in Europe are manifestly unwilling to carry their share of any such burden.

Characterization of President George W. Bush's toppling of Saddam by Bush's critics as a manifestation of mendacity or folly or both requires a half-hindsight rewinding, rewriting and replaying of history. A full-hindsight (i.e., realistic) rewinding, rewriting and replaying of history demonstrates that mendacity and folly are manifest in attacks on Bush rather than in Bush's actions in toppling Saddam.

So, the next time one hears someone say the Iraq war is "about oil," one should remember, it's "about" ending a terror-supporting, genicidal, WMD-using, totalitarian regime from using vast "oil" revenues to build, maintain and improve weapons of mass destruction and threatening to use, or using, them and/or covertly making them available to terrorists for use against us and/or our allies under the Middle-East rubric, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Jim Wrenn, Editor at WrennCom.Com; also Editor at PoliSat.Com.

Permanent links to this commentary:

http://wrenncom.com/CommentaryArchives/2007/20y07m09d21-01.asp.

http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=wrennj&date=070921

http://polisat.com/DailyPoliticalSatire-Commentary/du20y07m09d21-01.htm

Jim Wrenn
Political Satire/Commentary at PoliSat.Com (Editor)

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Biography - Jim Wrenn

Jim is a proud descendant of 18th Century criminal exiles from England who swam to the Outer Banks when the British ship taking them to a Georgia penal colony sank in a storm near Cape Hatteras. Having the prescience to prevent their descendants from becoming "TarHeels," they immediately migrated to Virginia, where, within just a few generations they worked their way up into poverty. Jim's grandfather was the first in the family tree to see the distant horizons, but his career was cut short by severe injuries he sustained when a cousin cut down the tree.

After a brief stint in the Amry (ours) following graduation from law school, he began his legal career in the state bureaucracy but was never able to break into the federal bureaucracy. Several years later, he entered the private practice of law and co-founded a small law publishing company. Later, finding the publishing of small laws unstimulating and finding his private practice too private to be lucrative, he began writing political satire/commentary. His greatest vice is taking himself too seriously.

He wrote the definitive books on the Clinton Era Error: the Clinton Liebrary Book (pre-October, 2000), which he later updated as the Clinton Liebrary Book 2001 Edition to include Election 2000, the post-election shennanigans, and related events through August, 2001. The 2001 edition is the only known literary source that conclusively shows why Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal but not Webster Hubbel. It also presciently contains the Billary/Hillary Dueling Memoirs. At every opportunity he shamelessly promotes his books for orders on-line or by fax at www.ClintonLiebraryBook.Com. He's also the Librarian at the Clinton Liebrary (www.ClintonLiebrary.Com), which owns exclusive rights to Bill Clinton's most famous speech as well as Bill Clinton's comments after revelation of the identity of Deep Throat in 2005.

As an amateur scientist as well as a scientific amateur, he de-bunks the man-is-causing-Global "Warming" theory, and predicts that by the middle of the 21st Century (when he will be safely dead) physicists will discover the obvious flaws in Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which will lead to vastly-faster-than-light travel through polarization of gravity. As a constitutional-law scholar, he's trying to teach those who hold a static, zero-sum-game view of economic and social theories to understand that "property" is not a "thing" but rather is a human right.

Although he regularly teaches Continuing Legal Education courses to lawyers, he's too-often available through he Rubber Chicken Speakers Bureau to speak on politics, satire, etc., at luncheons, dinners, root canals, funerals, etc. His speaking fees are so outrageously high they border on criminal price-gouging, but as a free-market advocate, he defends his fees on the higher moral ground of charging whatever the traffic will bear. For more information (surely more than one would want or need), go to www.PoliSat.Com.


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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Wrenn
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