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2007-09-16 Iraq
Greenspan goes the way of Carter: Claims Iraq war was really for oil
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Posted by gorb 2007-09-16 04:24|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ]  Top
 File under: Iraqi Insurgency 

#1 remember, he's married to NBC/MSNBC tool Andrea Mitchell. Just trying to stay relevant in his circle of friends.
Posted by Frank G">Frank G  2007-09-16 07:39||   2007-09-16 07:39|| Front Page Top

#2 good point by Frank G

after several hundred cocktail parties with Andrea's leftist friends some things get internalized
Posted by mhw 2007-09-16 08:27||   2007-09-16 08:27|| Front Page Top

#3 Please shoot me when I become senile.
Posted by zazz 2007-09-16 08:45||   2007-09-16 08:45|| Front Page Top

#4 If you read what he says, it amounts to several things that are quite accurate:

1) A large part of the Iraq war was to prevent the closing of the world's oil supply, which would have plunged the world into a huge depression.

2) Congressional Republicans spent like drunks in a house of ill repute, and fiscally conservative Republicans agreed that they deserved to be punished for it. All that pork didn't buy them votes, it cost them votes.

3) Bush mysteriously adopted a 19th Century Presidential policy of letting the Congress, instead of the President, run the country (no vetoes and few policy suggestions), and he refused to discipline the drunks.

Okay, from those lights, was what he wrote *wrong*?
Posted by Anonymoose 2007-09-16 09:02||   2007-09-16 09:02|| Front Page Top

#5 The list of things wrong with Greenspan is exceedingly long, IMO. Most notably his complete sellout of the Randian principles of his youth. (Due in part, the theory goes, to Ayn's romantic rejection.)

Combining the anti-deficit and pro-Clinton posturing in his book, he seems to be flacking for a position in the next Dem presidency.

Libertarian Republican my a**.
Posted by mjh 2007-09-16 09:10||   2007-09-16 09:10|| Front Page Top

#6 Yawn. Greenie was a good caretaker @ the Fed, but what do we care about him in his dotage? Reminds me of what former TX Gov. Billy Bob Clemens once said "Just another Mexican with an opinion."
Posted by regular joe 2007-09-16 09:34||   2007-09-16 09:34|| Front Page Top

#7  The idea of a devotee of Ayn Rand becoming Chairman of the Fed is absurd on its face.
The current Jihad would have amounted to nothing, would never have gotten off the ground, without the massive wealth transfer to OPEC for oil imported by the rest of the world. The US could have trashed Saddam's regime & just left the place as a wreck if it weren't so dependent on oil imports. The US is still doing nothing to lessen its dependence on oil imports. Politically inconvenient, indeed.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-09-16 09:43||   2007-09-16 09:43|| Front Page Top

#8 What Greenspan misses is the larger context for the war. I think the Joint Chiefs have it about right in the Military Strategy for the Long War. Islamicism has become a dangerous threat due to the confluence of 3 factors: WMD proliferation, information technology and perceived grievances in the Muslim world that they exploit.

The three key elements in winning this war are:
- Protect and defend the Homeland
- Attack terrorists and their capacity to operate effectively at home and abroad
- Support mainstream Muslim efforts to reject violent extremism

In addition to the strategic elements, there are three critical cross-cutting enablers:
- Expanding foreign partnerships and partnership capacity
- Strengthening our capacity to prevent terrorist acquisition and use of WMD
- Institutionalizing domestically and internationally the strategy against violent extremists

Our presence in Iraq is primarily aimed at the last 5 of those 6 steps. But Greenspan is right that for now, the international economy and especially that of the West is oil dependent. He's suffering from tunnel vision in thinking that was the main motivation however.
Posted by lotp 2007-09-16 10:37||   2007-09-16 10:37|| Front Page Top

#9 I'm proud of you Alan, speaking Truth To Power.
Posted by Jimmy Carter 2007-09-16 11:25||   2007-09-16 11:25|| Front Page Top

#10 BTW, thanks for the stock and housing bubbles, genius.
Posted by Titus Hayes 2007-09-16 11:33||   2007-09-16 11:33|| Front Page Top

#11 Most notably his complete sellout of the Randian principles of his youth.

I'm much less Randian than I was in my youth!
Posted by Natural Law 2007-09-16 14:06||   2007-09-16 14:06|| Front Page Top

#12 Every time I read something like this, this is what the reptile-part of my brain whispers in the dark:
There's a part of me that wants to say "what do you expect? there's a lot of money to be made in pushing the Saudi position on the War on Terror, a lot more than the truth."

There's also a part of me that thinks the conservative half of the country made a mistake in fighting this war; anything we can come up with besides having a nuclear exchange with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia eventually gets derided as "War for Oil."

If you want warfighting that's more morally defensible than just turning the enemy's kids into lampshades and soap, then you're going to wind up in a long slow slogging war of attrition where you attack their economic bases. Since in this case their entire economic base is oil, well, GUESS WHAT?

These farging bastidge elites are working their farging iceholes off to turn the United States into the sort of evil entity they have claimed it was all along.
Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2007-09-16 15:34||   2007-09-16 15:34|| Front Page Top

#13 Gee Alan, how much did the 911 attakcs cost the American economy? Was it more than the Savings and Loan fiasco? For an official in a position to preempt economic troubles, I find it extremely odd that he would admire someone who repeated ignored islamic terrorist attacks against us until the worst mass murder in our history.

Perhaps Greespan would have preferred Bush II have turned the other cheek, laugh it up at the mass funerals, then cry crocodile tears when he suddenly realized the cameras were upon him, just like Clinton.
Posted by ed 2007-09-16 16:51||   2007-09-16 16:51|| Front Page Top

#14 Hey, it is about the oil. So fucking what?!? America needs oil. We went to the Middle East and helped create incredible wealth. Are we to blame for how those who positioned themselves to intercept that wealth are amongst the most corrupt and venal individuals in history? The fact that this world needs oil in no way justifies Arab facilitation of terrorism. Neither are we responsible for psychotic terrorist Islamic fanatics being given that wealth to destroy modern civilization. Islam and its followers have rightfully earned that particular distinction and just as richly deserve the utter devastation that will soon accompany it.
Posted by Zenster">Zenster  2007-09-16 16:51||   2007-09-16 16:51|| Front Page Top

#15 Of course if the ME were irrelevant we would not have involved ourselves nearly so much. But they are relevant, and we would like them to stay that way, in a good way and not a bad. They ought to want to keep things like that too, but these guys look at everything in terms of personal power so they don't seem to care about consequences external to their own lifestyle. So we had to go in and correct things to the point that they were a boon to civilization instead of the bane they were becoming. Hopefully we can hand the whole thing back to them and they will play nice forever more.

If Greenspan is trying to say this was "about oil" in terms of this, OK. But the way he frames it sounds to me like he's given liberals a freebie by not throwing in such a disclaimer. Now they are going to run with it trying to spread the idea that we shouldn't have involved ourselves because the "it's all about the oil" idea they would like folks to believe doesn't include standing these countries back up on their own two feet. If it went according to this idea, we would have invaded, seized the oil fields, and started sending ourselves "free" oil, and not pouring resources into fixing their problem.

The liberal path is a lose-lose situation.

The conservative path is a "hopefully we gained, but at least we didn't lose as much as we could have" while they win. Sounds better to me.

Thanks, AG. Why don't you go home now and we'll spend time and energy cleaning up your mess.
Posted by gorb 2007-09-16 17:34||   2007-09-16 17:34|| Front Page Top

#16 This afternoon while driving around at $2.70 per just to get a decent AM radio signal, Bob Brinker was actually gushing, and beside himself that his previous on-air stated belief that "Bush went to war with Iraq for oil" was now justified by Alan's book-hype (He and Andrea are on 60 Miutes as I peck this out) and actual excerpts from his new book.

My Hero, Bob Brinker, was actually swept away with this stellar alignment with "the Maestro" and gloated for the last half of his radio show. If Brinker is accepting the KoolAid, All hope is lost. -at-
Posted by Asymmetrical T 2007-09-16 20:07||   2007-09-16 20:07|| Front Page Top

#17 It is indeed grim right now, at.
Posted by lotp 2007-09-16 21:21||   2007-09-16 21:21|| Front Page Top

23:53 Robjack
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