Swimming In Oil, Drowning In Lies
David sent me this. Wolfowitz is on a tear recently. Either his meds have been upped, or are not working, or he’s gone weirdly self-destructive or cunningly obtuse. Anyway, now he admits that attacking Iraq was all about oil, which everyone and their dogs knew but apparently in the US it had been verboten to say in public.
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 … His latest comments follow his widely reported statement from an interview in Vanity Fair last month, in which he said that “for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction.”
The dispute over the presentation of intelligence evidence is a serious one for Mr. Blair, who regularly appeals for public trust but whose government has continually been accused of spinning information in its favor.
Whatever the cause of Wolfie’s wild shenanigans, the (non)existence of Iraq’s WMDs has become a hot topic again.
The US and UK were yesterday scrambling to explain why they had failed to unearth Iraq’s weapons programme as United Nations inspectors said Baghdad had stepped up efforts to answer outstanding questions even on the day before US-led air strikes began.
The mystery of Iraq’s missing weapons of mass destruction has become a lot less mysterious. Recent reports in major British newspapers and three major American news magazines, based on leaks from angry intelligence officials, back up the sources who told my colleague Nicholas Kristof that the Bush administration “grossly manipulated intelligence” about W.M.D.s … Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues ranging from tax policy and Social Security reform to energy and the environment. So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy?
Let’s look at those 26 former Iraqi officials?out of the 55 most-wanted playing cards?who have surrendered or been captured, and have certainly been interrogated, since the war’s end … If Iraq had been developing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, several?perhaps all?of these officials would have known about it. They could have told the U.S. interrogators where to look. Yet, it seems, they haven’t muttered a clue. Is there not a single cad among them who would trade his loyalty to Saddam for a slice of Andalucian beach property? (Spain might as well donate something for its “coalition” status.) Or could it be?big gulp?that they haven’t given up the goods because there are no goods to give up?
Earlier here.
From the Guardian
Correction
Paul Wolfowitz
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, “The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.” The sense was that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.
The Guardian story was basically one big lie. As has already been noted by another commenter, they have published a “correction”. Are you going to do the same?
I am not responsible for the Guardian’s re-intepretation of Wolfie’s insensitive remarks. Why don’t you make up your own mind about what he “meant”?