Ein ehemaliger Elitesoldat erinnert sich:
In 1973 I was with the 2nd Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry
Regiment of the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. One night
in early October of that year my unit was brought to full combat
alert (we were the early forerunners of what was later called the
"Rapid Deployment Force") and we were issued live ammo, all the war
goodies, and loaded onto planes with our parachutes in the middle of
the night and flown to combat staging area in Thessaloniki, Greece.
We were told that we were about to be inserted directly into the Yom
Kippur war (as it was later called) if it began to look like Israel
was going under. Israel triumphed against staggering odds, as usual,
and after some additional weeks of humping the Greco-Bulgarian border
to provide the plausible political cover for President Nixon that we
had only been sent there on a harmless NATO exercise in the first
place, we were sent home again.
Years later the real facts (link below) came out that my unit had not
been sent there to help the Israeli's directly at all, not really.
Our official mission would have been to take and secure all the
Saudia Arabian, Kuwaiti and Abu Dhabi oilfields, and hold them no
matter what came our way, if Israel was defeated. It was all about
the oil then, and it's still all about the oil now. The notion of
carrying out that mission was revived and contemplated again by the
Nixon administration several months later as well, after the Yom
Kippur war was already over.
It hasn't always really been necessary in the past, from the
perspective of US strategic interests, to actually control those
oilfields physically, (at least not until last year, apparently) but
it has always been in our interests to ensure that the region remains
stable so that the oil continues to flow, and that we continue to get
our share of it. It's "stability" (both political and
price/production-wise) in that entire oil-producing region that we
have always tried to maintain. That's what it is really all about.
Stability. The free flow of oil to our tankers. That has to be
maintained at all costs, political or military.
Iraq never had any WMD's and Bush knew it. I think he truly believed
he had just enough unverifiable "intelligence" to muddy the waters
just enough to make his move on that massive Iraqi oil reserve, and
he just presumed that afterward his justification would not be
questioned. The time was just right, finally, with 9-11 and
Afghanistan still fresh on our minds. He could play heavily on our
fears. And he did. But he is being questioned now, and he has no real
proof or defense, so he miscalculated very badly there, in the end,
and it's going to cost him dearly before all is said and done, rest
assured.
You were never in any danger from Saddam. And you're not in any more
danger from terrorism now than you would have been 15 years ago - nor
are you any safer, either. It's all just a "vehicle" that the
politicians use, just like the Cold War was, to enable us to make all
our strategic moves around the world, in our own long-term interests,
as per the ideology of the current President of the day.
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4
6321-2003Dec31
Sounds eerily familiar in some places, doesn't it? As you can see,
we've been at this for a very long time now, and we don't appear to
be anywhere near done yet. Maybe the third time's a charm? I've
wasted probably half my military career fighting not for freedom or
national security, but for energy; for fuckin' oil. For some
gas-guzzling SUV owners! What a bitch, hey? But that's really what
it's all about; that's what it's always been about.
In 1973 I was with the 2nd Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry
Regiment of the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. One night
in early October of that year my unit was brought to full combat
alert (we were the early forerunners of what was later called the
"Rapid Deployment Force") and we were issued live ammo, all the war
goodies, and loaded onto planes with our parachutes in the middle of
the night and flown to combat staging area in Thessaloniki, Greece.
We were told that we were about to be inserted directly into the Yom
Kippur war (as it was later called) if it began to look like Israel
was going under. Israel triumphed against staggering odds, as usual,
and after some additional weeks of humping the Greco-Bulgarian border
to provide the plausible political cover for President Nixon that we
had only been sent there on a harmless NATO exercise in the first
place, we were sent home again.
Years later the real facts (link below) came out that my unit had not
been sent there to help the Israeli's directly at all, not really.
Our official mission would have been to take and secure all the
Saudia Arabian, Kuwaiti and Abu Dhabi oilfields, and hold them no
matter what came our way, if Israel was defeated. It was all about
the oil then, and it's still all about the oil now. The notion of
carrying out that mission was revived and contemplated again by the
Nixon administration several months later as well, after the Yom
Kippur war was already over.
It hasn't always really been necessary in the past, from the
perspective of US strategic interests, to actually control those
oilfields physically, (at least not until last year, apparently) but
it has always been in our interests to ensure that the region remains
stable so that the oil continues to flow, and that we continue to get
our share of it. It's "stability" (both political and
price/production-wise) in that entire oil-producing region that we
have always tried to maintain. That's what it is really all about.
Stability. The free flow of oil to our tankers. That has to be
maintained at all costs, political or military.
Iraq never had any WMD's and Bush knew it. I think he truly believed
he had just enough unverifiable "intelligence" to muddy the waters
just enough to make his move on that massive Iraqi oil reserve, and
he just presumed that afterward his justification would not be
questioned. The time was just right, finally, with 9-11 and
Afghanistan still fresh on our minds. He could play heavily on our
fears. And he did. But he is being questioned now, and he has no real
proof or defense, so he miscalculated very badly there, in the end,
and it's going to cost him dearly before all is said and done, rest
assured.
You were never in any danger from Saddam. And you're not in any more
danger from terrorism now than you would have been 15 years ago - nor
are you any safer, either. It's all just a "vehicle" that the
politicians use, just like the Cold War was, to enable us to make all
our strategic moves around the world, in our own long-term interests,
as per the ideology of the current President of the day.
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4
6321-2003Dec31
Sounds eerily familiar in some places, doesn't it? As you can see,
we've been at this for a very long time now, and we don't appear to
be anywhere near done yet. Maybe the third time's a charm? I've
wasted probably half my military career fighting not for freedom or
national security, but for energy; for fuckin' oil. For some
gas-guzzling SUV owners! What a bitch, hey? But that's really what
it's all about; that's what it's always been about.