What if a bunch of conservative billionaires started to worry about the growing power of China and India, and the future demand for and supplies of oil? And what if they figured out there might not be enough to go around? And what if they figured out that they had better grab some while they still could, before China and India got strong enough to stop them? Because otherwise they all might lose shitloads of money and the American economy might go down the tubes and the people might want to look for new ways of governing themselves and distributing the wealth, kind of like in the 1930s. And this wouldn't be good. For anybody.
So for the good of everybody (everybody in America, anyway) they might want to occupy Iraq and then Iran. And of course they couldn't tell the people of the U.S.A. "Hey let's go to war and secure us a long-term supply of oil," so of course they would have thought of other reasons to put to the American people as to why they were going to Iraq and Iran. For the sake of argument, say they came up with "WMD" and then later with "democracy."
Well, I'd say that in that case, Phase I of the plan was a success. A big success. They're in Iraq and they've got the oil fields. The cost in human life is (in their frame of reference) negligible - - 40,000 Iraqis (who are only technically human) and a couple thousand Americans, the lowest of the low, the unemployables, the drop-outs, the un-connected, 30% of them not even citizens, just desperate Hispanics from some Latin American shit-hole or other, risking their poor pathetic lives in the hope of surviving and being rewarded with citizenship and finally, escape from the shit-hole. (No, it isn't Cuba the Communist hell-hole that we're talking about, but the free-enterprise paradises of El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, etc. that these folks are literally "dying" to escape from.)
2600 American soldiers are NOTHING to these billionaires. They blew off twenty times that number in Nam before finally pulling the plug on that one. But maybe you think the price in dollars (half a trillion) is too high? NOTHING could be further from the truth. You see the half-trillion comes out of the public purse. It's EVERYBODY'S money so in a sense it's nobody's money. The PROFITS that will come out of this little escapade - - that is definitely NOT "everybody's money." What's Halliburton's is Halliburton's and what's KBR's is KBR's, and so on - - less a small cut (and I MEAN a small cut) for Uncle Sam and another slice to grease a few choice Republocrat palms. Big Oil (I just LOVE using that phrase!!!) is not one to share gladly. But - - but what if the "terrorists" prevent them from getting as much oil out of the ground there as they used to? Oy. You just don't get it, do you? Who gives a shit if THEY can't get it out of the ground? At least their Chinese and Indian competitors won't be getting any more of that stuff than they will, and if or when it finally DOES start to flow, just exactly where do you think it'll be flowing to?
The hell of it is, the Republicans can't TELL anyone that Iraq is a success. Not in terms that don't excite ridicule and disbelief. The Republicans, unfortunately, are now the prisoners of their own bullshit. Since they lied to the American people TWICE - - once, that they were going in for WMD, then that they were there to establish democracy and justice - - they can only evaluate the project in terms of its stated goals - - yet to do so only invites ridicule and disbelief for obvious reasons.
What's a self-respecting crypto-fascist to do? Fortunately, they don't give a shit. They don't have to. They don't need to WIN elections any more. Stealing them is good enough, and they have THAT down to a science.
