Vital Perspective

Greenspan is wrong. The war is not about oil.

Allegations that the Bush Administration was driven to invade Iraq by a lust for the country’s oil have been part of the anti-war movement’s narrative even before the war’s first shots were fired. The image of a White House hijacked by a cabal of former oil executives who steer foreign policy to advance Big Oil's interests gained credence as disillusionment from the war grew. This idea is now being reinforced by former chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan whose memoir hits bookstore shelves this month. "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war is largely about oil," wrote the man dubbed "The Oracle." As long as such allegations came from Michael Moore they could be brushed aside but echoed by Greenspan, one of Washington’s most influential yet least controversial figures, it's time to expose the charge to serious scrutiny.

We'd be last to deny the toxic influence oil dependence has on America’s foreign policy, its international conduct and its selection of "friends and allies" in the Middle East. There is no doubt that since the 1945 meeting between President Roosevelt and Saudi King Ibn Saud the U.S. has been militarily committed to the stability of the Persian Gulf and time and again has used its muscle to guarantee the supply of oil from the region. But while there is no gainsaying America’s oil dependence, attributing oil motivation to every U.S. activity in the Persian Gulf is a gross extrapolation.

While proponents of "it’s the oil, stupid" view offer little evidence to support their claim, the evidence to the contrary is ample. Take for example the bedrock of the Administration's energy security strategy, the 2000 National Energy Policy Development Group, also knows as the Cheney Report. This policy paper, composed by no fewer than eight cabinet members, reflects the pre-9-11 mindset within the Bush White House on how to achieve energy security. Yet, it has almost no mention of Iraq and its vast oil reserves. The opposite is true: the report warns against concentration of world oil production in one region and calls for the U.S. to diversify its energy supply away from the Middle East.

Despite the involvement of Saudi nationals in 9-11 the Bush team not for one moment contemplated invading the oil rich Saudi Arabia. Instead it chose to invade Afghanistan, the only country in central Asia that doesn’t have oil. Furthermore, the administration decided to end the decades long American military presence in Saudi Arabia, a country that produces five times as much oil as Iraq, and move U.S. bases to Qatar, which produces one tenth as much as Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain which has essentially ran out of oil. A questionable move for someone whose supposed main driver was oil.

The Administration's actions prior to the 2003 invasion beg another question. At the time Iraq was hardly exporting any oil and was under a strict sanctions regime which prevented international companies from investing in its ailing oil industry. For profit driven companies like Exxon and Halliburton the sanctions were an impediment to business and they lobbied the Administration to review them. The last thing they wanted was the uncertainty associated with war. Yet, since his inauguration in early 2001 and up until the war start in March 2003 President Bush was persistent in maintaining the sanctions regime, providing competitive advantage to non-American companies bidding for Iraqi oil. Bush's decision to go to war against the interests of Big Oil rather than lifting the sanctions pokes a huge hole in the Iraq-is-about-oil narrative.

Prior to the war the U.S. hardly imported any oil from Iraq and oil stood on $30 a barrel.  Today, only four percent of U.S. oil imports come from Iraq and oil is at $80. With 160,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq America’s oil companies are nowhere to be seen. It is Russian and Chinese companies that are enjoying the spoils of war. If Greenspan is right and Iraq was truly about oil, then our failure there is even bigger than thought.

But he isn’t. Oil played at best a supporting role in the decision making process that led to the war. Greenspan’s statement has only one significance: it serves as a painful reminder of the Administration’s failure to provide a compelling explanation why we are in Iraq. And in the absence of such explanation even the Oracle can misconstrue.

Su-Shi Watch: Sunni thugs murder Iraqi security forces to 'avenge Sunni woman's rape'

AP reports:

An al-Qa'ida-affiliated group said it killed 18 kidnapped Iraqi government security forces yesterday in retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shia-dominated police, posting an online video of the officers being shot in the back of their heads while kneeling in a field.

The authenticity of the three-minute video, posted on a website previously used by the Islamic State of Iraq, could not be immediately verified.

The group also said it had killed 14 policemen, whose bodies were found at the weekend in the northeast province of Diyala, in retaliation for the alleged rape. Some of the victims were decapitated.

[...]

The execution video released at the weekend first depicts the 18 men, some in Iraqi military uniforms, blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs and lined up in three rows before a screen. The men in the front row are kneeling. Masked men point machine guns at the captives.

Two militants, with checked scarves on their heads, then fire handguns at close range into the backs of the men's heads, while a third militant carries a black banner ahead of them. As they are shot, the victims fall, head forward to the ground. The shooting is accompanied by chants of "Allahu Akbar" (God is the greatest). "At your service, sister" is chanted repeatedly in a likely reference to the revenge for the allegedly raped Sunni woman.

Another male voice is heard saying the Islamic State of Iraq had ordered the 18 security troops executed because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Government had failed to meet the group's demands to hand over the officers who allegedly raped the woman in Baghdad last month, and to release all Sunni women detainees from Iraqi prisons.

A 20-year-old woman had told Arab television stations that she was detained in a Sunni area of west Baghdad on February 18, taken to a police garrison and assaulted by three officers. The woman gave a name which identified her as Sunni.

Mr Maliki, a Shia, announced an investigation but cleared the officers the following day, stirring outrage among Sunni politicians. Mr Maliki said the rape claim was fabricated to tarnish the reputation of the police and the security crackdown in Baghdad.

Su-Shi Watch: calling for reenforcements

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qarahawi would like the Kurds to join in the melee on the side of the so-called opressed Sunnis of Iraq.  Yeah, because the Sunni dominated dictatorship of Saddam Hussein just treated the Kurds oh so well. Sheikh Yousuf must have clean forgotten about Halabja.

"I call upon our Kurdish brothers, I call upon Jalal Al-Talabani, Mas'oud Al-Barazani, and the Islamic and national Kurdish leaders... I call upon them to fulfill their duty – first of all, through mediation. They should mediate between the two sides. They constitute an
influential force. They hold the posts of president and foreign minister, and
they have significant power. They should mediate. "If two parties of believers
fight one another, make peace between them. And if one party acts unjustly
towards the other, fight the one acting unjustly, until it complies with
Allah's command." This is Allah's decree to the nation. The Kurds are now
required to take this stand. If their mediation is rejected, they must fight
the party that acts unjustly. In my opinion, the Sunnis will not reject this
mediation, because they are the oppressed ones. They are the ones being
attacked. They are the ones being expelled from their homes. They are the ones
whose mosques are being plundered. They are the ones who are being kidnapped
from their homes. They are the ones whose decapitated heads are rolling in the
streets. They are the ones who are severely tortured before being killed. They
are the ones who suffer these tragedies. If the Shiite brothers reject [the
mediation], the Kurds are required to support the oppressed."

Sheikh Yousuf also conveniently appears to have forgotten who started the bloodbath in Iraq. A brief glimpse at news archives might serve to remind him that the Shi'a swallowed quite a bit of Sunni murder and mayhem before finally having enough and hitting back. MEMRI link also contains video.

Su-Shi Watch: The natives are restless

To those who still believe that there is a snowball's chance in hell that Su-Shi Mania will come to an expeditious resolution, you may want to watch this, ahem, altercation on al Jazeera.  The beaten wife mentality of much of the Arab world is quite eloquently on display as well, with the following statement: "Saddam executed my own brother and many of my relatives. He executed the uncle of my children but the way he was executed proved Saddam was a brave man. He has truly become our martyr, and we will visit his grave like the graves of the righteous."

LGF also links to Su-Shi mayhem in Detroit.

UPDATE: We neglected to mention, the first clip features what must truly be one of the worst insults ever: "You Persian shoe" (you might miss it in the rapid Arabic, so here is the transcript.)  But do watch the video, you won't regret it.

The coming Sunni-Shi'ite nuclear arms race

Gal Luft portrays an unsettling scenario of the face of things to come:

"As tension between Sunnis and Shi'ites mounts from Iraq to Lebanon another front is opening in the deepening strife between the two parts of the Muslim world: The race to acquire nuclear capabilities. Iran's uranium enrichment program en route to a Shi'ite bomb has already whetted the appetite of its Sunni neighbors to follow suit. The December meeting of the of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a new milestone on the road to a Sunni Arab nuclear capability. In the meeting, GCC leaders decided on a joint program in the field of nuclear technology for "peaceful purposes". "Possessing nuclear technology […] has economic and scientific significance," the spokesman for the Council of Ministers explained. Two weeks later another Gulf country, Yemen, announced its aspirations to acquire nuclear technology. On the African side of the Middle East, Egypt and Algeria, two Sunni nations blessed with energy resources, have also declared their intension to pursue nuclear power. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak drew roaring applause when he announced in a November speech before a combined session of the People's Assembly and Shura Council that Egypt was not "in need of anyone's authorization to develop peaceful nuclear energy".

"What is at stake today is not just a nuclear Iran but a full blown nuclearization of the world's most dangerous region. With this in mind the U.S.' and Europe's strategy should go beyond just preventing Iran from acquiring nukes. As this battle may already be lost, the focus now should be on the next wave of nuclear hopefuls. This will require the development of a fresh set of carrots and sticks as well as a candid dialogue which includes not only Sunni Arabs who desire nukes but also Russia, China and Pakistan, the countries most likely to provide them with the technology they need to meet their ambitions.

As the world transitioned from the Cold War to the war on radical Islam former CIA director James Woolsey said: "We have slain a large dragon. But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." If subsequent to a failure to prevent a Shi'ite bomb comes another failure to prevent a Sunni bomb this unsavory jungle will be populated in no time with some of the worst of dragons."

Hopeless Iraq

Charles Krauthammer reminds us how much the rushed and botched execution of Saddam Hussein exposes the hopelessly sectarian nature of the Iraqi government.

"Consider the timing. It was carried out on a religious holiday. We would not ordinarily care about this, except for the fact that it was in contravention of Iraqi law. It was done on the first day of Eid al-Adha as celebrated by Sunnis. The Shiite Eid began the next day, which tells you in whose name the execution was performed."

He continues: "Worse was the content of the taunts: "Moqtada, Moqtada," the name of the radical and murderous Shiite extremist whose goons were obviously in the chamber. The world saw Hussein falling through the trapdoor, executed not in the name of a new and democratic Iraq but in the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose death squads have learned much from Hussein."

Its time to face reality: Iraq, which thousands of years ago was the cradle of civilization, is showing us today the worst form of mankind. Iraqis are more interested in killing each other than in putting their country on a new course, and we should seriously question if putting more US troops in this dreadful country is a smart idea.

Good bye from Saddam

The Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office has received hundreds of requests from volunteers wanting to hang Saddam Hussein, who will be executed in the coming month after his appeal was denied. Many of those who have volunteered to hang the former dictator are people whose family members were murdered by Saddam’s regime.

Saddam, for his part issued a good bye letter urging Iraqis to be patient and rely on God's help in fighting "against the unjust nations." "Long live jihad and the mujahedeen," he signed off.

Some Saddam loyalists have already threatened to retaliate if he is executed, warning that they would target US interests.

For a preview of the execution click here

David Zucker Takes On Iraq Study Group and Implications of Engaging Iran

We're taking a break for Christmas, but we've left something good for you to occupy the next two minutes. Check out the latest from David Zucker - it's a commentary on the ISG recommendations and the implications of engaging Iran.

Here's one more. It's a special message from al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the true meaning of Christmas.

Report: Saudi Arabia to Back Iraqi Sunnis if U.S. Troops Withdraw from Iraq

MediaLine reports that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has let President Bush know that if a war between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites erupts as the result of an American withdrawal from Iraq, the Saudis will back the Sunnis. The message was received by Vice President Cheney when he visited Iraq two weeks ago.

Abdullah let it be known that he is unhappy with talk of American efforts to engage Iran. The Saudis and Iraqi Sunnis fear growing Iranian influence in Iraq which, when seen in the context of the Iranian nuclear program, is potentially disastrous in their eyes. A similar fear that the Iraqi army would be used against the Sunni population if Shiites gain control was recently expressed by Jordan's King Abdallah II.

Saudi Ambassador to U.S. Abruptly Resigns as Prince Saud's Health Declines

Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., flew out of Washington yesterday after informing Secretary Rice and his staff that he would be leaving the post after only 15 months on the job so he could spend more time with his family.

The abrupt departure is particularly striking because his predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, spent 22 years on the job. The Saudi ambassador is one of the most influential diplomatic positions in Washington and is arguably the most important overseas post for the oil-rich desert kingdom.

The exit -- without the fanfare that normally accompany a leading envoy's departure, much less a public statement -- comes as his brother, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the highly influential Saudi foreign minister, is ailing. Saud has held the post since 1975, which makes him the longest serving foreign minister in the world.

As Saud's health has declined, Turki has increasingly been rumored as a possible replacement for his older brother. He would symbolize continuity in Saudi foreign policy at a moment of tension over Iraq between Riyadh and Washington. The Saudis are deeply concerned about the change in the balance of power in Iraq to Shiites. Earlier this year, the kingdom announced it will build an elaborate barrier along the remote desert frontier, with ultraviolet night-vision cameras, underground sensor cables and command posts.