Here Today... Gone To Hell!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403677.html

"We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress just after the invasion,"

Says the architect of Neo-Con philosophy. It would be a joke if it weren't tragic.

Version two: As laid out in an April 2003 article in Le Monde Diplomatique, "The war against Saddam is about guaranteeing American hegemony rather than about increasing the profits of Exxon." Yahya Sadowski, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, argues that "the neo-conservative cabal" had a "grand plan" to ramp up Iraqi production, "flood the world market with Iraqi oil" and drive the price down to $15 a barrel. That would stimulate the U.S. economy, "finally destroy" OPEC, wreck the economies of "rogue states" such as Iran and Venezuela, and "create more opportunities for 'regime change.' "

Probably closer to the truth, but I would think that both options figured into the planning.

I think it was a little of both. Cheney's energy task force maps, forced out of his hands by the conservative watch dog group "Judicial Watch", was the most damning I think. The maps clearly showed that a post sanction Iraq held little for the USA. Just as important was that it showed the Neo Cons wanted in well before 9-11.

That limp wristed, liberal think tank, aka the Pentagon, also finally came around last week and admitted no connection between Saddam and OBL. The FBI field agent assigned to Saddam for months, before returning him to Iraqi government, reported the same thing. Old news by now, but still a final nail in the coffin.