> was a typo. It wasn't to get hold of oil. To establish a military presence, yes. I still maintain that this is what we are doing there. It hasn't been successful - yet. But that was the motivation.
The US is pretty much trying to put the Iraq adventure behind it, and there is no evidence that "it is still trying to establish a military presence there…and hasn't been successful - yet."
The purpose of the invasion was a) to install a puppet regime under Ahmed Chalabi which would provide the US with basing rights, give preferential treatment to US oil firms, and recognize Israel and b) more broadly, to "shock and awe" states resisting the Empire (chiefly Iran, but also North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba) into bowing to US dictates by demonstrating overwhelming US military power and the will of the new Bush Administration to deploy it wherever and whenever it pleased.
In all respects, the occupation of Iraq by US ground forces was a spectacular failure - the "demonstration effect" in fact demonstrating the limited power of the US to impose its will rather what was intended. Chalabi was swiftly marginalized, and the Shia-dominated regime which replaced Saddam Hussein proved more friendly to Iran and other than a puppet of the US. Neither the Iranians, Venezuelans, nor North Koreans were cowed into submission, but were emboldened by the US failure in Iraq. Apart from some unrepentant neoconservatives, Carrol is one of very few Americans who think the outcome was a victory rather than a defeat for the Bush administration and US imperialism.
Of course, the US still maintains a military presence worldwide, but having been burnt in Iraq as previously in Vietnam, it shies away from putting its own boots on the ground, and relies mainly on the use of drones and other advanced technology and the recruitment and training of pro-US forces in countries embroiled in civil wars.
>
> At 10:47 PM 5/15/2013, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> On 2013-05-15, at 2:25 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>>
>> > And of course liberals and too many radicals are continuing to whine that
>> > Bush's invasion of Iraq failed. But Bush achieved what every president from
>> > Eisenhower to Clinton had failed to achieve: the permanent presence of u.s.
>> > troops in the area.
>>
>> On 2013-05-15, at 4:53 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>>
>> > Yep. and i want a cookie for being right damn it. I said long ago that
>> > it was oil, it was to establish a military presence in the region…
>>
>> 1. There are no longer any US military bases in Iraq.
>>
>> 2. The permanent presence of US troops in the Middle East is small - about 5000 troops, mostly in the Gulf states and Turkey - and their deployment predates the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration.
>>
>> 2. Following the invasion, American oil companies were not given privileged access to Iraqi oil by the al-Maliki government, which awarded concessions on economic rather than political grounds. China is expected to soon become Iraq's biggest market and Chinese state-owned oil firms are partners or operators in several major Iraqi oil fields, dwarfing the presence of US oil majors who have shown little interest in developing the country's oil reserves..
>>
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