Iraq Study Group

The ones I knew, as well as people who went to rebuild the country
afterwards, had negative experiences for the most part. I never said it
was a scientific sample, but that was their experience and it did happen.



Yes, Al Qaeda is an organization devoted to commiting acts of terrorism
against the U.S., its military and its interests and those of its allies. We
are at war with Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Iraq weren't one in the same.

The people who've actively participated in Al Qaeda should be brought to
justice. We also have to eliminate the environment that's promoting
participation. Look, if you have a mosquito problem do you just sit around trying kill every mosquito that's born or do you make sure there's no standing
water around for them to breed in?

For every terrorist and insurgent we kill, we create 2 to take their place.
These people, at heart, believe they're protecting their way of life and
families from us. That's what they're told they're doing.



This country operates on a system of justice that does require proof. That
statement is total speculation. Funny how the same people who offer this
logic fight the exact same thinking regarding global warming.



Cheney, energy and Iraq invasion
Supreme Court to rule on secrecy
Larry Everest San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, March 21, 2004

The case Cheney vs. U.S. District Court is scheduled to be heard before the
Supreme Court next month and could end up revealing more about the Bush
administration's motives for the 2003 Iraq war than any conceivable
investigation of U.S. intelligence concerning Iraq's purported weapons of
mass destruction.

The plaintiffs, the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, the conservative legal
group based in Washington, argue that Vice President Cheney and his staff
violated the open-government Federal Advisory Committee Act by meeting
behind closed doors with energy industry executives, analysts and lobbyists.

The plaintiffs allege these discussions occurred during the formulation of
the Bush administration's May 2001 "National Energy Policy."

For close to three years, Cheney and the administration have resisted
demands that they reveal with whom they met and what they discussed.

Last year, a lower court ruled against Cheney and instructed him to turn
over documents providing these details.

On Dec. 15, the Supreme Court announced it would hear Cheney's appeal.
Three weeks later, Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent
a weekend together duck hunting at a private resort in southern Louisiana,
giving rise to calls for Scalia to recuse himself. So far, he has refused.

Why has the administration gone to such lengths to avoid disclosing how it
developed its new energy policy?

Significant evidence points to the possibility that much more could be
revealed than mere corporate cronyism: The national energy policy
proceedings could open a window onto the Bush administration's decision-
making process and motives for going to war on Iraq.

In July 2003, after two years of legal action through the Freedom of
Information Act (and after the end of the war), Judicial Watch was finally
able to obtain some documents from the Cheney-led National Energy Policy
Development Group.

They included maps of Middle East and Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries
and terminals, two charts detailing various Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a
March 2001 list of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," detailing the
status of their efforts. The documents are available at Judicial Watch.

These documents are significant because during the 1990s, U.S. policy-
makers were alarmed about oil deals potentially worth billions of dollars
being signed between the Iraqi government and foreign competitors of the
United States including France's Total and Russia's LukOil.

The New York Times reported the LukOil contracts alone could amount to
more than 70 billion barrels of oil, more than half of Iraq's reserves. One
oil executive said the volume of these deals was huge -- a "colossal amount."

As early as April 17, 1995, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S.
petroleum giants realized that "Iraq is the biggie" in terms of future oil
production, that the U.S. oil companies were "worried about being left out"
of Iraq's oil dealings due to the antagonism between Washington and
Baghdad, and that they feared that "the companies that win the rights to
develop Iraqi fields could be on the road to becoming the most powerful
multinationals of the next century."

U.N. sanctions against Iraq, maintained at the insistence of the United
States and Britain, prevented these deals from being consummated.

Saddam Hussein's removal in 2003 has left the deals in a state of limbo,
but the Bush administration's insistence that only countries supporting
Operation Iraqi Freedom are eligible for postwar reconstruction does not
bode well for French and Russian concerns.

An April 2001 report by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the Baker
Institute for Public Policy -- commissioned by Cheney to help shape the new
energy policy -- also devoted serious attention to Iraq.

The report, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,"
complained about Hussein's oil leverage:

"Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability to disruption
and provided adversaries undue potential influence over the price of oil.
Iraq has become a key 'swing' producer, posing a difficult situation for the
U.S. government. ... Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to ... the flow of
oil to international markets from the Middle East.

"Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use
the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil
markets."

Significantly, the report concluded that the United States should
immediately review its Iraq policy, including its military options.

There are many other indications that, despite the Bush administration's
repeated and insistent denials, petroleum politics may have played a crucial
role in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For instance, both the State Department and the Pentagon had pre-war
planning groups that included a focus on Iraq's oil industry; protecting the
industry was an early U.S. objective in the war.

In October 2002, Oil and Gas International reported that U.S. planning was
already under way to reorganize Iraq's oil and business relationships.

In January 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from
Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton,
among others, were meeting with Vice President Cheney's staff to plan the
post- war revival of Iraq's oil industry.

Cheney is said to have once remarked that the country that controls Middle
East oil can exercise a "stranglehold" over the global economy.

One-time Bush speech writer David Frum wrote in "The Right Man," his
2003 biography of his boss, that the United States' "war on terror" was
designed to "bring new freedom and new stability to the most vicious and
violent quadrant of the Earth -- and new prosperity to us all, by securing
the world's largest pool of oil."

Further records from Cheney's Energy Task Force could shed more light on
the inner workings of the Bush administration's march to war in Iraq. The
first question, though, is whether the Supreme Court will lift the Bush-
Cheney veil of secrecy.



We can't expect Hussein, Iran and Kim Jong Il to abide by the world's
wishes if we don't.



See earlier reply. We'll never "kill them all," at some point it spreads across
the various national and sectarian borders and becomes the U.S. against
all Arabs, Persians and Muslims... and involves the people supplying us with
energy and lending us money to keep going despite 8 trillion dollars worth
of debt.

I didn't ask if it was a scientific example.


So all is lost, damn! What are you gonna do when they come for you?

Not allowing inspectors was reason enough.
I'd like to know when Carbon Dioxide became a big no no? This earth has heated and cooled for millions of years yet the blame for this cycle gets pegged on human's. Some sure think alot of our influence. Some do not.


Key words "could end up" not "will end up."
Congress has closed door meetings, are they violating an open government?

Because they can. I would imagine just about every president and vice have had closed door meetings. As i said, oil was one of the reasons not the only one.

We can expect then to abide by the contracts they have signed. The World is not our big brother. We are theres.

And humankind will probably cease to exist. In any case we won't owe any one ****.

The meeting between Baker & the Iranian PM.

YouTube - ZUCKER TAKES ON THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP AND JAMES BAKER

... and you can live with that, because it will fulfill the prophesy or whatever.

There are specific rules about how the energy policy is formed, to stop
lobbying and having it influence other policies, like waging war on oil
producing countries to get control of their supplies.

Will you ever admit when the adminstration does something wrong? Defend
them to the end, the ends justify the means...

"Now, look, I -- part of the reason we went into Iraq was -- the main reason we went into Iraq at the time was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction..." - George W. Bush

Rumsfeld memo admits Iraq strategy failing

President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

I don't see myself having much choice in the matter.
Yes, but i haven't seen that yet.

Sounds like a bunch of 'bureau-noise'. Since when does the U.S. fight wars by committee?:FU1:

The dems have been trying to do that for years.