Here (pasted in below) is an interesting story from the Sunday London Times. Leftists are regularly mocked in the halls of American intelllectual and political power for daring to think that (imagine) the invasion of Iraq was about oil (as in the chant "No Blood fo Oil"). I’ve heard Barack Obama (for example) criticize this claim as a form of self-defeating cynicism. And of course the White House has long insisted not only that the war wasn’t launched because of oil but in fact that oil has had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal occupation of Mesopotamia. Putting aside for now the different things one can mean when they say the "colonial war" (to use Democratic imperial statesman and Obama advisor Zbigniew Brezinski’s description of "Operation Iraqi Freedom") on Iraq is "about the oil" (there’s a big difference between the claim [ala Ted Koppel and the Carter Doctrine] that the U.S. has a benevolent concern to keep Persian Gulf oil flowing to the global economy and those who follow Chomsky in seeing the motive as the enhancement of critical imperial leverage though placing the military boot on the super-strategic Middle East spigot). how interesting it is to see that well-known radical peace and justice activist Alan Greenspan saying that "the Iraq war was largely about the oil." Enjoy….
From The Sunday London Times
September 16, 2007
Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil
Greenspan on the ‘irresponsible’ Bush
AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,â€
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