Just watched "No end in sight", a documentary about post war Iraq

[choirsoftheeye]

@grey... erm...

I wouldn't say it was about 'getting' oil, though that may have been one of the original motivating factors - I don't think the Bush administration in their hubris understood what a hostile environment they were walking into. But there are a few things you should consider:

1. The people making money off of this war are weapons contractors and mercenaries - which are big, evil corporations.
2. Oil prices spiked as a direct result of the war - there wasn't some magical dry up. Higher oil prices can = greater profit. I'm not making any claims about that, because frankly I don't know enough about oil distribution methods to make a real argument about it, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of ways to make money in a situation like this without directly seizing oil supplies - cutting down the world's supply makes the oil you already produce more valuable, for example.
3. You almost got the bellowing point right, but you missed the mark. We're using a traditional army to fight a guerrilla war in a country that is mostly hostile to us, which has the tendency to create a drawn out, nasty affair with lots of civilian deaths - it's just that the guerrilla army isn't the escaped terrorists, its the Iraqis hostile to an invasion. You'd think we'd have learned the lesson after Vietnam... Or even learned the lesson of the general futility of that policy from our own god damn Revolutionary War. Anyways, the fact remains that the information indicating the WMDs and terrorists has shown to be incredibly shoddy on its own, regardless of the fact that they weren't found. Basically the pretext of the invasion was idiotic, even before the method was idiotic. Also, I'm not sure how you're pegging that on the media - Bush pretty clearly announced "We're gonna go in and get them WMDs!" TO the media, so if that's an issue, well, it's his fault.
4. This goes to kaza as well - though I'm not 100% sure you weren't being sarcastic. While Saddam may have been an evil shithead, an external removal of him by force has only made the on-ground situation worse. Much like in Afghanistan, what was formerly a situation where people were under a fucked-up imposed set of rules by a very powerful government (clearly not a good situation) has now become a situation where there essentially is no order, and no assurances - while before if you followed the fucked up sets of rules, you were fairly safe, now anyone can be killed or kidnapped for basically nothing at all. Regardless of a semi-foothold in Baghdad, the current regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people, precisely because it was more or less created by the United States. It's difficult to trust a democracy that wasn't created by the people it governs - and if you take a look at historical precedent, it's been a repeatedly hugely unsuccessful endeavor. So basically, while Saddam may have been an evil fuckhead, the invasion replaced him with something worse.