- Did McCain Really Say the Iraq War Is About Oil?

Did McCain Really Say the Iraq War Is About Oil?

Written by Gary Benoit

Wednesday, 07 May 2008 12:41

Has the United States gone to war in the Middle East for oil? That allegation has generally emanated from opponents of our military interventions in the Middle East, and it has been dismissed as far-leftist propaganda by the neoconservatives who have supported those interventions. But all that changed on May 2, when Iraq War supporter John McCain, speaking at a Town Hall meeting in Denver, indicated that we had gone to war in the Middle East for oil.

Senator McCain at a Town Hall meeting in Denver.

Unbelievable? Here are Senator McCain’s exact words:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

Asked about this statement later in the day, after he had flown from Denver to Phoenix, McCain told reporters: “I was talking about that we had fought the first Gulf War for several reasons. One of them was Saddam Hussein’s invasion [of Kuwait] and that’s just not something that’s acceptable…. But also we didn’t want them to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil.”

That’s quite an admission on McCain’s part. If we went to war against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War partly because of oil, then we still went to war in the Middle East partly because of oil, even if oil wasn’t a reason for the current Iraq War.

However, in the same exchange with reporters, after saying that he was referring to the earlier Persian Gulf War, McCain reversed himself, saying he was not referring to the Persian Gulf War. Asked specifically if he “were thinking about the first Gulf War,” McCain answered: “No, I was thinking about, it’s not hard to, we will not, by eliminating our dependency on foreign oil, we will not have to have our national security threatened by a cut off of that oil.”

Asked if he’s “saying that we don’t want to have to be dependent on protecting our oil in the Middle East again,” McCain said “No, I don’t believe we got into Iraq, as I’ve stated, and I made the debates, and the debates and the discussions a thousand times since then. We went to Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he was going to use them…. The Congressional Record is replete with that and for me to change my view, how many years later, I mean would, just wouldn’t be logical.” He later added: “I hope that there’s no confusion about my support for the war in Iraq, and it wasn’t to do with oil, it had to do with Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.”

(Click here for a transcript of McCain’s full exchange with reporters is available at NBC News’ “First Read.”)

Really? If we went to war against Iraq because of “Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction,” then why are we still there? Saddam Hussein is no longer there — in fact, he’s dead. And the weapons of mass destruction were not there either. But the oil is still there, and so are we.

In pointing this out, I do not intend to suggest that oil is the only factor for our involvement in the Middle East. But it would be very naïve indeed to pretend that oil had absolutely nothing to do with our military invasion of Iraq, just as it would be naïve to assume that the real reason for the invasion was Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. After all, we now know that the allegations about the WMDs were based on false and exaggerated intelligence .

We know too that Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11, though the Bush administration certainly created that impression among many Americans by repeatedly juxtaposing references to 9/11 with those to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, without actually saying that Saddam was involved in the attack. The administration did claim a Saddam-al-Qaeda connection, but that turned out to be as inaccurate as the false information about WMDs.

The administration has no credibility when it comes to the Iraq War, and neither does John McCain.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email This

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0) add comment

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Welcome to JBS.org

Show Other Articles Of This Author