The US invaded Iraq primarily for their oil

Many thanks to my opponent for beginning what I hope will be an interesting and thought-provoking debate. To begin, I'd like to shed some light on the official reasons that the United States government (namely the Bush Administration) gave for invading Iraq in 2003. Supposedly the threat posed to the U.S. and its allies by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and the possibility that he would pass along those arms to the terrorist organization al Qaeda were the primary reasons for our attack. However, those reasons have long since been discarded by the overwhelming lack of evidence that such a threat ever existed. No remotely sufficient evidence of this supposed threat was able to be provided by the Bush Administration. As such, I expect that my opponent will have a hard time defending the notion that something as serious, expensive, life threatening and politically polarizing as war -- especially when the United Nations and many of our allies were completely opposed to it -- should have been sought as a response to a complete lack of evidence. In order to save face and distract the public from this reality, the Bush Administration then changed its tune and claimed to be liberating Iraq from the tyranny of Hussein's bloodthirsty regime. We have no reason to accept this phoney defense. If the Bush Administration was so concerned with humanitarian ideals, then surely they would have shifted their attention to atrocities such as the war in Darfur or the innumerable other crimes against humanity that were occurring at the same time. They did not. As for reasons to why we should assume that oil was a major factor in the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq... 1. President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 (6 months before 9/11 even happened) that "Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention is necessary..." [a]. The report Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century concludes, "The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programmers to manipulate oil markets. Therefore, the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments" [b]. 2. The neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) wrote a document in September 2000 called Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century. It said, 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein" [c]. 3. Apparently this document was heeded, as CBS reported on 09/04/02 that, "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq -- even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks..." [d]. This is particularly interesting considering it has been confirmed that the U.S. actually SUPPLIED Hussein with WMDs, only to use him (maybe) having WMDs as a reason to proceed with the war. I look forward to reading Con's arguments that the U.S. operates with "good intentions." The reality is that we support terrorist regimes. America profits from selling them weapons, and then profits again by charging interest on the loans which allowed the weapons to be purchased. Our own American weapons are sometimes sold to dangerous regimes - even to both sides in some conflicts! It's clear that our policy makers consider monetary rewards above the value of human life in MANY instances.4. The U.S. speifically appealed to other countries interest in oil as a way to get them to support the war. If oil is seen as a huge perk for them, then surely we must realize that oil is a big advantage for us. It gives us a lot of bargaining, economic and other power. “It’s pretty straightforward,” said former CIA director R. James Woolsey. “France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we’ll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them" [b]. 5. We know that Washington dismissed Iraq's peace feelers (which included an election and weapons pledge) in an attempt to avoid war. This indicates that the Bush Administration didn't really have serious intentions of avoiding war [e].6. The oil service company Halliburton (based in Bush's home-state of Texas) formerly run by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was not surprisingly awarded contracts by the US government to operate in post-war Iraq. This has proven to be extremely lucrative, with the contracts being reported to amount to more than ten billion dollars [f]! Cheney and others went on to receive huge financial rewards through substantial investments in the corporation he once headed.7. Again, it's been well documented that controlling oil gives you an exorbitant amount of both political and economic power. Michel Collon confirms the importance of oil as a commodity in the world market in his book Monopoly. He writes, “If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil, anywhere.” By taking control of Iraqi oil supply, the U.S. would allow U.S. oil corporations to fully develop the oil industry's potential, and allow Iraq to exceed Saudi Arabia in terms of oil output to become the largest single supply of oil on Earth [g]. CONCLUSION... I could post source after source and fact after fact indicating that there was indeed a huge motive for the U.S. to invaid Iraq for its oil. Not only did policy makers reap huge monetary rewards from our military invasion through oil, but it also put the U.S. itself in a position of power through both economic and political bargaining leverage. It's come out that the Bush Administration had every intention of infilitrating Iraq long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks ever took place. Furthermore, Iraq itself had nothing to do with al Qaeda. Nonetheless, attempts were made by the Iraqis and other governments to prevent the U.S. declaring war on them. The U.S. ignored these attempts to maintain peace, and proceeded to head into Iraq despite little to no evidence indicating Iraq had done anything wrong. Where did this faulty intelligence come from and why? Regardless, the evidence should have been incredibly substantial to warrant a declaration of war. Obviously it wasn't. We don't invade a country every time we have mere suspicions.- I've proven that there was indeed motive to invade Iraq for its oil.- I've proven that it was the US's intention to do so even before 9/11.- I've proven that the govt. had that in mind as soon as 9/11 occurred, even without a known relation to the incident.- I've proven that U.S. politicians have personally capitalized from the invasion.- I've proven that it benefits the U.S. politically and otherwise to exploit Iraqi oil.- I've proven that the U.S. ignored attempts to maintain peace.Back to Con for now...[a] http://911review.org...[b] http://www.plim.org...[c] http://culturechange.org...[d] http://www.cbsnews.com...[e] http://www.guardian.co.uk...[f] http://web.archive.org...[g] http://www.thedebate.org...