Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil

Date:Wednesday June 04, @04:41AM
Author:admin
Topic:Iraq
from the guardian.co.uk dept.

24 hours later Guardian article totally shrubbed from Internet

George Wright

Wednesday June 4, 2003

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

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.

More...
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Q&A; Transcript

"...Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil.

In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different..."

Source: Scoop

on edit: Looks like he is saying that Saddam could last a long time with their oil revenue.

BUT that ignores...

1. our sanctions and strict control of 'their' oil
2. and this was supposed to be about WMD (clear and present danger)

Looks like the 'focus groups' were RIGHT and this war DID have SOMETHING to do with OIL... according to WOLFOWITZ anyways ;->

Related Sources:

Actually, on June, 3rd, Paul Wolfowitz tried to say the opposite, at a Pentagon News Conference:

Wolfowitz: "Well, let me start with the last part. The notion that the war was ever about oil is a complete piece of nonsense. If the United States had been interested in Iraq's oil, it would have been very simple 12 years ago or any time in the last 12 years to simply do a deal with Saddam Hussein."

12 hours, after the Guardian broke yet another "smoking gun", almost noone else picked it up. The article was however breaking news in all most important newszines, progressive newsletters or newsblogs, i.e. Information Clearing House or Scoop who saved it for their archive.

One newspaper, who mirrored the Guardian story:

Khilafah

Almost 24 hours after the release of the Guardian article, their online-only story on Wolfowitz was totally shrubbed from the Internet.

The access to Google Cache has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt, same at .

News24 still mirrored the original text, but commented the story.

Here is a copy:

Lebensaspekte.de
News 24

Guardians correction:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/0,6957,178183,00.html

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printed from Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil on 2004-06-20 16:08:54