re: RP: Cheney used 9/11 as excuse to invade Iraq for the benefit of Halliburton

RP is toast

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Wolfowitz used 9/11 as excuse to invade Iraq for the benefit of Israel

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And he doesn't even appear in the HBO doc about Cheney and Iraq. Unfrickingbelievable.

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True, but it's not like any of the other motivations would be mitigating factors at all - Love of war - Hatered of Saddam - Revenge on Saddam for assasination plot - Wanting to control another country because the current leader used chemical warfare on his own citizens and we hate the current leader

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All of those may have been factors as well as a sincere belief Saddam was harboring WMD's and the known fact that he was discarding UN resolutions.

Thinking it was to benefit Halliburton only is misguided IMO.

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Thinking it was to benefit Halliburton only is misguided IMO.

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You're right. It was just one objective in their Project For The New American Century.

Cheney was a pussy, I love Rand.

While I don't support and have never supported the "nation building", I do think that we should be proactive in all things that can benefit or harm the US, short of war.

The old adage, "I like you but I love me" is very applicable.

For instance, the US was involved in giving money and assisting in security in Azerbaijan while the US was in Iraq. The underlying reason was for oil and development of a pipeline that would benefit the US and harm Russia.

They also attempted to influence the culture in Azerbaijan away from a ME or Russian culture to a more Western culture.

I think that is smart.

We live in a world in which everyone looks out for themselves. We should use our resources to do the same.

As to Cheney and Halliburton, Clinton had no problems with reducing military function and using the Halliburton's of the world to fill voids with the vast resources. When war broke out, because Clinton had reduced the resources so vastly, it necessitated contracting Halliburton, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, etc., to fill voids.

That is not to say that money was not funneled to organizations that were GOP friendly...because that was certainly the case.

This is complicated stuff and you have men at the top, no matter the party, that look out for themselves first, then their buddies, then their country.

It just so happens that many times, what is best for the country (like cornering global minerals rights and movement) is best for themselves, their buddies and their collective pockets.

Good for Rand

If Rand or Scott Walker, should he run, fail to secure the nomination I may have to concede the GOP is doomed and the people of this country are doomed to the status quo.

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While I don't support and have never supported the "nation building", I do think that we should be proactive in all things that can benefit or harm the US, short of war.

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I agree. But I believe there are better ways to achieve this goal other than stirring up hatred in foreign countries and padding the pockets of government contractors in the process. It doesn't curb inflation. And it doesn't help the average American citizen. It's about big corporate control on the global level.

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We live in a world in which everyone looks out for themselves. We should use our resources to do the same.

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We can achieve this by cleaning our own house in the metaphorical sense. We could then work on alternative energy sources other than ME oil. We need to stop trying to control the world. Our own economy and infrastructure would benefit.

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It’s Dick Cheney in 1995 being interviewed on why they didn’t go into Baghdad the first time under the first [President] George Bush. And his arguments are exactly mirroring my dad’s arguments for why we shouldn’t have gone in this time. It would be chaos. There’d be a civil war. There’d be no exit strategy. And cost a blue bloody fortune in both lives and treasure. And this is Dick Cheney saying this. But, you know, a couple hundred million dollars later Dick Cheney earns from Halliburton, he comes back into government. Now Halliburton’s got a billion-dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. You know, you hate to be so cynical that you think some of these corporations are able to influence policy, but I think sometimes they are. Most of the people on these [congressional] committees have a million dollars in their bank account all from different military industrial contractors. We don’t want our defense to be defined by people who make money off of the weapons.


As Corn points out, there have long been suspicions that Dick Cheney used the post-9/11 war on Iraq as a way to thank Halliburton for making him a very wealthy man after stepping down as Secretary of Defense under former President George H.W. Bush.

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I don't care for Cheney's foreign policy views or his efforts to strengthen the Presidency, but I think looking at his career and life it's clear that:

A. He's a patriot in the negative and positive sense - first and foremost. He has always believed in a muscular and engaged US.

B. I'm sure he had vastly different views during Gulf War I than he did 5 years later and post-the most significant terrorist attack in American history that saw the WTC demolished in the middle of NYC and over 2000 people killed.

People who believe Cheney engineered the Iraq invasion for $$$ and not foreign policy reasons are the same people who believe the WTC attacks were staged or in the petrodollar. And confuse coincidence for connection.