why does Bushi and his junta want to invade Iraq?

1. Saddam Hussein is a confirmably erratic and aggressive despot who has invaded another nation, launched missiles against two others, used extreme military force against his own nations minorities and dissidents, attempted the assassination of a former United States president, etc. etc. etc.

2. Saddam Hussein has long been attempting to procure or develop powerful weapons that would likely, juding from previous experience, be used for similar purposes to the ones enumerated above.

3. Whether you agree with points (1) or (2) I think it's at least worth giving the Bush administration the minimal credit of supposing that they might, just possibly, believe that Saddam Hussein presents a threat to peace and that the removal of that threat is a worthwhile investment.

Another explanation is that the US HAS decalred a war on 'terrorism,' and Iraq has a history of involvement with it. But, most people have assumed that to mean a war on Osama Bin Laden, which may be more appropriate given the circumstances, but nonetheless misuderstood.

Also going after saddam distracts from 'the war against terrorism', which hasn't been going very well. Osama bin Laded may or may not be alive but his ideals are still very much be alive and his methods are still being used all over the world. There has been no significant evidence that the war against terror is succeeding. It would be very hard to do so; we are looking for an absence of attacks, something that doesn't manifest itself very obviously and on the face of it has not been achieved. By linking Iraq to terror Another 'easy victory' can be had. The trouble is that, although Iraq has been a long time sponsor of palestinian nationalist terrorism, Saddam is unlikely to side with Osama. Osama and Sadddam lie at opposite ends of the Arab spectrum; Saddam has been largely secular, Osama is a rabid fundamentalist. They may of course been pushed together by cornering Saddam.

Oh yeah, and Bush wants cheap oil for his Tex-ass buddies, pull the US economy out of recession, and to break OPEC and Russia.

saddam and osama might not become allies, but if saddam is removed, osama will suddenly find plenty of iraqi allegiance, from factions not favoured the the US

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. I'm not so sure about the recession though. It could always be the opposite, war has caused both in the past.

Which will be bad for the states. But if the control over the oilfields ends up with the oil companies which the current administration go back to in 2/6 years, then in the long term, they're the winners.

I am not saying this makes any sense, just that it makes as much sense as that 12-ft-lizards document from the Project for A New American Century from a few months ago.

There are conservative think-tank types in Washington who drool over this scenario. Since Texas is tapped out, we just go out and colonize another oil patch. They figure 'foreign oil' is not a threat to US hegemony, it's the 'foreigners' who muck things up. Control them and the oil follows. They tend to look past the problems presented by this solution and see only the rosy possibilities.

bnw: by reading quickly!! remember i am v.v.old and don't have to do backstory much!!

Don't misunderstand America's motives: it is fear, not greed, that drives Mr Bush - Fergal Keane

Why do you say the Bush administration is not really interested in this scenario? Open markets! No angry loser terrorists! Money Money Money! Non-hostile source of oil! Cannot explode in PR disaster 10-15-30 years down the road like a friendly evil dictator would (and has)!

As an index of kneejerk attitude, cf the shriek of hate and fear from the US Right — only a part of the full Bush constituency, I agree, but still, a fairly significant part — when Luba just now became President in Brazil: democratically far more sweeping than Bush's own victory, and a genuine achievement in the establishment of western-style liberal democracies in a region plagued, historically, with friendly evil dictators. I wd love to believe the White House had finally grown out of its perverse love affair w.the latter, as a lesser evil than populist leftist democracies, but — even tho I'm not feeling quite so cynical and gloomy as I wz last night — I don't, unfortunately.

Iraq under Saddam has probably been the *least* theocratic of major Islamic states: it's dedidated to the utterly secular cult of Saddam, and its overthrow will (in the short run) probably increase the thrall of theocracies over the young in the region — on the whole, al quaeda notwithstanding, this has been declining recently.

1) Oil. Iraq will be a de facto US oil colony. Yes it will cost a lot of money to invade and occupy Iraq, but the taxpayers will pay for it (see #2), while the oil companies (all with close ties to BushCo) extract the profits.

2) Fat military contracts. 1/6 of the money spent in the Bosnian war went to a contract w/ Haliburton (Cheney's company) for services rendered to the US military. Now imagine the money defense companies will make off Iraq. Also, invading Iraq will stretch the resources of the military very thin, leading to increased privitizaion of the military, and yet more fat contracts.

3) Bases in the mideast. Once you have guaranteed bases in the mideast, and a guaranteed source of oil, you can tell the rest of the mideast to go fuck themselves.

4) Distraction. In the short term, the only way the war can be a negative for Bush's popularity is if there are high US casualaties, which is doubtful. But it will still work to distract people from the economy, etc. In the long run yes the war will look foolish, but that is true with any of Bush's policies.

(also iran is far more democratic than saudi arabia or pakistan, so this is still unrelated to thinking or talking about actually existing institutions and how they might be changed...)

(interesting piece on the possible costs of the war)

all i know is that this whole 'you gas us, we'll nuke you' (actual quote from aol welcome screen this morning) game is making me slightly nauseated. and did anyone read the 'mayberry machiavellis' piece on karl rove?

anyway, here's a nice quote:

But Washington is not just sitting around feeling scared. It's not just preparing to prosecute the Iraq war. Amply conscious of being the imperial capital of the most powerful country in the history of the world, it is also beginning to think big about the path to a peace that is supposed to end both wars. An administration that came into office ideologically opposed to American involvement in nation-building in foreign countries is now plainly committed to the long haul of nation-building in postwar Iraq.

And that's for starters. A new, democratic and prosperous Iraq is to be a model for its neighbors, as West Germany was for its unfree neighbors during the cold war. Some in Washington now talk of encouraging a velvet revolution to democratize Iran. Then there's the United States' rich and friendly but oppressive ally, Saudi Arabia, with its Wahhabi hate wells beside those oil wells. No one in the administration yet says this publicly, but there is a logic that leads from the democratization of Iraq to that of Saudi Arabia.

And so people are talking quietly here about a Wilsonian project for reshaping the whole Middle East, a plan comparable in its ambition to those for Europe in 1919 and 1949. World-weary Europeans, and people in the Middle East, may doubt the feasibility of this idea and the United States' capacity to sustain it. We Europeans would better spend our time thinking how to complement and improve it.

going back to a much earlier point - does anyone have any examples of "terrorism" that Iraq has been involved in? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is from more than 20 years ago, when Saddam Hussein was one of our dictator friends. I'm sure there must be more recent examples... aren't there?

Depends on what you count as terrorism, DV. He has invaded a couple countries and gasses his own people from time to time. If America did that, it would qualify as terrorism, wouldn't it? He pays the families of palestinian suicide bombers. That's funding terrorism. Regardless, fighting terrorism is an indirect objective to taking out Saddam. It'd be like you asking, "Why are you cutting out all these tumors, THIS MAN HAS A FEVER FOR PETE'S SAKE!"

1. We have a large surplus of ammo to get rid of, to make way for the new technology.
2. We can't find Osama and need a new Muslim to bomb.

This makes me wonder a couple of things: 1. Is Iraq our real problem? I mean, it seems whenever we ask one of these Middle Eastern figures who wants to eliminate America, they usually seem to mention "America's actions in the Middle East!", when asked exactly what those are, they think for a minute and say "Well... Palestine. They're uhh... doin' somethin' bad over there." We really should be focusing on fixing that problem. 2. Since most of our problems with the Middle East seem to stem from the fact that we just totally blew off everything that was happening there while we were busy with the cold war. If a country had a problem, we just set up some bullshit puppet government and got back to our real problems. This makes me wonder, now they we're obsessed with the Middle East, what problems are we currently ignoring that will grow into our new Enemy of the Minute. China? Korea?

I know, there are probably less obvious countries. But then, N. Korea had the nukes and we didnt even bother with them. That has to come to something.