So why not invade Pakistan who does have a dictator and a bomb.

QUOTE FROM DICK CHENEY
Cheney, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments."

People really are naive if they think that invading Iraq is because US *truly* believes Saddam is will build nukes and throw them at the US or give them to the likes of OBL. Pakistan is 10 times more likely to do that than Iraq.

The reason to invade Iraq is simple

1) Saddam is an Arab

2) Saddam wants to have the 1st Arab nuke - his countrys desire to do so is no less than any other modern nation such as Israel, Pakistan, France, Britain (a tiny island off the coast of France), *naturally*, no one else wants him to do this.

3) ***Iraq sits on and alongside the worlds major current *cheap* oil reserves***

4) US policy dictates that no *Arab* nation near this oil is to have a nuke. Long before the Gulf war and before Saddam had been turned into the devil by the US, Israel *invaded* Iraq in 1981 and blasted the then Iraqi nuke facility to bits because they had intelligence that Iraq was working to build a nuke. Israel secretly built nukes & to this day denys it has them. We all know they are lying. Why did Israel (or US) never bomb Pakistan when it was doing the same (watch my lips: Pakistan doesn't sit on or near the biggest oil reserves)

5) If Iran or Saudi or Kuwait or any nearby Arab country tries building nukes they will get the same treatment

It **IS* about oil

The logic behind this whole process is so screwed up in propaganda that people are losing the thread.


[link|http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm|Details of Israeli strike on Iraq]

Excerpt: ...
"At 15:55 on 07 June 1981, the first F-15 and F-16's roared off the runway from Etzion Air Force Base in the south. Israeli air force planes flew over Jordanian, Saudi, and Iraqi airspace After a tense but uneventful low-level navigation route, the fighters reached their target. They popped up at 17:35 and quickly identified the dome gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. Iraqi defenses were caught by surprise and opened fire too late. In one minute and twenty seconds, the reactor lay in ruins. "


Doug Marker

#1 added Israel strike on Iraq link
#2 added below oil politics link - please look at the highlighted sections

===
[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1493-2000Jul29.html|http://www.washingt...00Jul29.html]

Political Oil Slick

By David Ignatius
Sunday, July 30, 2000; Page B07

Politics is ultimately about personal relationships--the handshakes and
winks that provide a semblance of trust among often untrustworthy people.
The oil business is that way too, and maybe that's why the two have become
inextricably bound together.

We're now facing the bizarre prospect of a presidential campaign in which
three of the four candidates have intimate personal links to the oil
industry. George W. Bush made his start running a flaky little
oil-exploration company; Richard Cheney, the GOP vice presidential
candidate, has for the past five years been CEO of Halliburton Inc., a huge
oil-services company that thrived on Cheney's global contacts; and Al Gore's
biggest asset is a family trust that holds hundreds of thousands of dollars
of stock in Occidental Petroleum Corp., where his father worked for many
years.

The Democrats hope to make the Bush-Cheney oil connection a winning campaign
issue, and there's certainly some tantalizing material to work with. But
Gore's Oxy connection raises some uncomfortable questions, too.

What's clear, looking at the three candidate's relationships with the
industry, is that oil is a kind of original sin in American politics. It's a
big, messy (sometimes dirty) business, and it has touched everyone and
everything in our political system, from the days of the Rockefellers to
Bush and Gore.

The industry has become so intertwined with U.S. foreign policy over the
years that sometimes--as in Operation Desert Storm (which Cheney oversaw as
defense secretary) or the recent scramble to secure Caspian Sea oil (which
has been a Gore project)--it's impossible to tell the difference.

Bush's oil connection is the most quixotic, because he was such a failure at
the business. He started his first company, Arbusto Energy Inc., in 1977,
and got friends to invest in various drilling ventures that mostly went
nowhere. (Thanks to tax loopholes, it generated more than twice as much in
tax deductions as in profits.) Friendly investors arranged a 1984 deal in
which Arbusto was acquired by another drilling company called Spectrum 7;
it, in turn, was bought in 1986 by Harken Oil and Gas, which seemed to
recognize that Spectrum's biggest asset was the Bush name.

Cheney's oil resume is more distinguished, and it illustrates how oil and
politics can be nearly inseparable. Despite his lack of experience in the
industry, he was named Halliburton's CEO in 1995, three years after leaving
the Pentagon. Cheney's real drawing card was the network of contacts he had
developed during the Persian Gulf War. Grateful Saudis and Kuwaitis were
eager to fete Cheney--and to shower his company with contracts.

Cheney, like most oilmen, has been unhappy when human rights or other
foreign policy issues intrude on the pragmatic needs of the industry. And he
has opposed U.S. sanctions that prevented oil companies from doing business
with Iraq, Iran and Libya. According to Petroleum Finance Week, he told a
1996 energy conference in New Orleans: "The problem is that the good Lord
didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic
governments."

Cheney's raw pragmatism also extends to Russia, where Halliburton recently
was involved in a controversial deal with an oil company called Tyumen Oil.
Halliburton sought a $292 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Export-Import
Bank to help refurbish an oil field for Tyumen. The Clinton-Gore
administration, stung by charges that it had been soft on Russian business
"oligarchs," waged a pressure campaign to persuade Ex-Im to drop the Tyumen
loan.

The Cheney nomination may thus undermine the Bush campaign's plans to attack
Gore as soft on Russian corruption. Hard to be indignant when it turns out
that Cheney was lobbying hard to help Russians the Gore crowd regarded as
corrupt.

Gore's oil connection is hereditary, and it may seem unfair to tar him with
the sins of his father. But if he attacks Bush the elder, then the Oxy link
will be fair game.

A devastating account of the elder Albert Gore relationship with the late
chairman of Occidental, Armand Hammer, is contained in Edward Jay Epstein's
1996 book, "Dossier." He decribes how Hammer first made Gore a partner in a
cattle-breeding business back in 1950, when Gore was a congressman,
providing him with "a substantial profit." The FBI was wary of going after
Hammer's connections with the Soviet Union, Epstein notes, because he had
influential "political support," including from Gore.

Two years after Gore's father left the Senate in 1970, Hammer made him
chairman of a coal company Occidental owned, Island Creek Coal. Young Al
Gore knew that Hammer was a family friend and benefactor. He invited Hammer
as his guest to the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan, according to
Epstein. And according to a new biography by Bill Turque, Gore took in more
than $300,000 through the early 1990s--his largest source of income outside
his congressional salary--from a land deal his father had made with Hammer
in 1973.

Oil and politics mix all too well, as these three case studies show. Oil
isn't a bogeyman, to be sure; it's a legitimate business. But it shouldn't
have a secret key to the White House.

re WMD - that just doesn't wash. You may not be aware of the scandals that broke out in Europe after the gulf war, where govts tried prosecuting companies that had shipped componets & materials to Iraq during the 1980s.

Thse prosecutions blew up in the Brit govts face when one of the companies produced documents from the prior govt asking the company to ship the goods in spite of their illegal nature..

Also US & Europe lend very large sums to Iraq to help fund their weaponry when they were containing the Iranian revolution for the west (or so Iraq thought).

These loans were called 'Agricultural' loans & grants. The other country most heavily involved was Germany.

Not sure what Bull's Babylon cannon really has to do with this other than Bull loved maging super guns.

Saudi Arabia was supposed to have loaned many billions to Iraq & Kuwait also (something like 10billion from Kuait). US & UK & Saudi wanted Iraq to fight Iran.

But Israel was helping Iran attack Iraq & provided Iran with intelligence that enabled Iranian jets to attack Iraq nuclear facilities over 20 years ago.



Reality Alert !
Why the hell do you think Saddam wanted to build up a strong army and powerful weaponry apart from invading Iran ????

*to protect the mineral rights of Iraq* - hardly likely

Cheers

Doug Marker
Guess we can agree to disagree over this oil matter - it is quite clear there are two very distinct views with little room for agreement & from our side we see people who cant see the forest because there are too many of them things with branches blocking the view