Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil
“Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.”
Update: From a comment to this post by Bob Goodsell:
According to Tom Tomorrow’s blog, the Guardian didn’t get the quote right. The actual quote is:
“Look, the primarily difference — to put it a little too simply — between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.”
See my blog aapeace.org or This Modern World for more.
Bob further points out on his blog:
“So to summarize: illegally changing regimes in both countries was/is a given for Wolfowitz. North Korea is likely to starve into regime change without a war being required; Iraq would have taken longer because of its oil wealth. Not much better, but not really saying that the war was all about the oil.”