Of course Bush's stated purposes for the war were not his actual reasons. Beyond the obvious purpose of seizing Iraq's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein became an embarrassment for the US, which had supplied him with arms and technology through his twenty year reign. It's important to remember that during the Iran-Iraq conflict, the US played both ends against the middle, selling arms openly to Hussein while surreptitiously supplying arms to Iran in order to secure the release of American hostages and fund the illegal Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Hussein also wanted OPEC to raise the price of oil by cutting production, a move that was opposed by Kuwait, which continued to produce oil at high levels keeping the price low. Another reason was to gain a military foothold in the Middle East to try to quell the influence of Iran and Syria, cutting off aid and weapons supplied to the Palestinian group Hamas, and the Syrian group Hezbollah while insuring transport routes for oil imported from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan to the Strait of Hormuz. And of course, war is always a great way to provide government contracts to corporations that feed our military, build the bases, and supposedly reconstruct the countries we destroy.
The American people want to know why their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters in combat are being forced into the meat-grinder known as Iraq. The first candidates who confirm the electorate's well earned suspicions about the US presence in Iraq will be the new leadership our country so desperately needs.
The only way any of it is going to come out to the point of Bush&Co being held accountable is to elect Dems this November. The magic words are "Subpoena Power".
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