So all of my assertions that Gulf War II being more than about oil have just been blown out of the water. "'No blood for oil'" is too simplistic!" I said. But then Paul Wolfowitz opens his yap...
"Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil", London Guardian, June 4, 2003. www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,970331,00.html
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.The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. 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."
Mr Wolfowitz went on to tell journalists at the conference that the US was set on a path of negotiation to help defuse tensions between North Korea and its neighbours - in contrast to the more belligerent attitude the Bush administration displayed in its dealings with Iraq.
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."
At least you can't say he puts a pretty face on his true beliefs, unlike some of his cronies. Wonder if he's still going to have a job by the end of the week.
Addition: Yeah, he'll still have a job. The quote was taken out of context (and apparently translated from English to German and back to English)
www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/ tr20030531-depsecdef0246.html
