"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 5 Feb 2004 09:23:26 -0500, "George Z. Bush"
wrote:


You're entitled to your opinion. There certainly have been lots of reasons
advanced for launching this war and, as quickly as one proves to be untrue,
another one is presented until it, too, proves to be untrue, followed by
another
one.....etc. You may be gullible enough to believe what you are told by the
government, but after the second unsubstantiated reason, I no longer believe
anything they have to say on the subject. Just between the two of us, I've
already concluded to my own satisfaction that the real reasons we entered
this
war were (1) to complete the Gulf War, left undone by the President's father,
(2) to topple Sadaam Hussein for his attempted assassination of the
President's
father, and (3) to secure de facto control over the sea of oil on which Iraq
sits. Since none of these reasons would have sat well with the public if
presented, alternative reasons had to be contrived. Unfortunately, each of
those alternative reasons upon examination was shown to be quite obviously
contrived .

But, that's my take, and you're entitled to your own. However, I'd be
willing
to bet that with the perfect vision provided by hindsight, history will
eventually accept one or all of my reasons as the true reason(s) for
launching
this war rather than those offered by our government.

Since you acknowledge the perfection of hindsight, you might review
what we did after we took control of the sea of oil on which Iraq sits
in 1991. We turned control back over to Sadaam. We turned Kuwait back
over to the Kuwaitis (after we put out the fires for them.)

Different war and different administration.

You might want to check who buys and uses Iraqi oil--the French and
the Russians mostly. Less than 5% of American oil purchases come from
Iraq. It mostly goes to Europe and N. Asia.

You might want to take a look at the following link, which will provide you with
a fairly comprehensive report on the condition of the Iraqi oil fields as of
last May:

http://www.csis.org/hill/ts030514ebel.pdf

If you can dig your way through it, I think you'll agree that we are controlling
Iraqi oil, and precious little is going anywhere without our OK. Do you really
think we'd approve selling and shipping oil to two of the countries that
insisted that we direct our anti-Sadaam efforts through the UN? We gave up
French fries, but we'd send them oil?

George Z.