One morning (June 30th, it turns out) while getting ready for work I was listening to NPR. You'll find that is the way many of my news-related stories begin.
Anyway, they aired a story on the auction of oil production rights to foreign companies, and I thought to myself "This is what it's all been about" - the war in Iraq.
And it's happening just as we're beginning the pullout of troops, though I don't think the timing was intended that way.
Though this justification has never really sat all that well with me; from a cold-bloded financial perspective I always thought the oil could be gotten much more cheaply just by doing business with Hussein, but I guess the neocons could never stomach paying him. So instead they engineered the destruction of a recognized independent sovereign government.
Let's take a moment to remember the shifting justifications for the war. First it was the existential threat posed by the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This idea was never really credible, and when none were found after the invastion we started talking about... Spreading freedom, I think? Was that it? It's a curious kind of freedom, imposed at the end of a gun. And I think there was something in there about the abuses of human rights, a revolting irony given the Bush administration's use of torture. The other goal was to end the Iraq support of terrorism; to be fair, I don't know how much terrorism Iraq supported. Might have been a lot. But we know without doubt that there have never been ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.
I'm not sure what I find most contemptible about the neocons: Their callous disregard for human life, their hubris, or their cowardice. They're nearly anxious to use US military might, but I don't see any of them taking any risks themselves.