Mission Creep By: shep

“The threat of mass death on a scale never before seen residing in the hands of an unstable madman is intolerable -- and must be preempted."
- Charles Krauthammer, October 2002

"With its oil, its urbanized middle class, its educated population, its essential modernity, Iraq has a future. In two decades Saddam Hussein reduced its GDP by 75 percent. Once its political and industrial infrastructures are reestablished, Iraq's potential for rebound, indeed for explosive growth, is unlimited."
- Charles Krauthammer, 2003

“There is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11. It’s not Osama bin Laden; it is the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world--oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism.”
- Charles Krauthammer, February 2004

“[M]aintaining a U.S. military presence in Iraq would provide regional stability, as well as cement a long-term allied relationship with the most important Arab country in the region.”
- Charles Krauthammer, March, 2008

“McCain, like George Bush, envisions the U.S. seizing the fruits of victory of a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally…”
- Charles Krauthammer, July, 2008

So there you have it: when push comes to shove, the reason for invading and occupying Iraq is (and always has been) about “U.S. infrastructure”, i.e. military bases in Iraq, to “project American power”, presumably for oil and Israel, our two most regionally important foreign policy objectives.

Or, as Krauthammer put it to Bill Clinton in 1998 (with assorted PNAC co-conspirators such as Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey and Robert B. Zoellick): to protect “our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil…[w]e believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf.”

You see boys and girls, the pre-meditated and long before 9-11 planned purpose of invading Iraq was to construct a pliable foreign government and large forward military bases to protect “U.S. interests”. Everything else you were told was a complete lie.

It appears that since the rest of the world, including the Iraqi government and the next President of the United States, have caught on to and rejected the neoconservative’s neocolonialist plan, they have failed spectacularly. But for all the cost in American blood, treasure and moral standing, at least now you know who and what you are dealing with.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]