Invasion of Iraq

This portion of the text was all about the invasion of Iraq and the reasons for invading. On the night of the invasion Special Ops teams were assigned to capture a 9 Iraqi crude oil export facilities. 5 of these facilities were oil terminals that were responsible for $25 billion in oil revenue per year for each facility.(138) The theory is that these high revenue oil terminals would be essential for the post war recovery and needed to be overtaken intact. "The future revenues and the cost of replacement aside, the military planners were well aware of the immense environmental disaster the sabotage of these installations could bring to the area."(144) Yes there is a big possibility that the military planners did actually believe that by saving the oil terminals they could more easily rebuild the government. However, there is always the motivation to control the export of oil in Iraq because it would benefit the US. There have been rumors that the United States only went into Iraq to control the large portion of oil coming from the middle east. The facts of the mission also point to this possibility. The SEALs, the most dynamic and elite squad in the military, were assigned not to take over terrorist hideouts or even possible WMD sights, but they were assigned to protect what America wants to protect and that was the oil. The idea that America invaded Iraq in order to stop possible production of WMD's was proven insignificant from the fact that SEAL teams were already searching Iraq thoroughly for WMD's and have yet to find them. "Long before the SEALs attacked the oil targets, Special Forces were out in the vast Iraqi western desert to ensure that no Scud missile launchers were there to threaten Israel."(146) As a nation, America had the power and ability to sneak into Iraq and search for weapons of mass destruction before the actual invasion. So why was it necessary to invade Iraq if they could just have easily searched for these weapons of mass destruction without a full scale invasion? Along with this fact that their morals for going into Iraq proved to be insufficient, the invasion was also only supported by Americans. In Afghanistan there were dozens of countries supporting each other in trying to take down al-Qaeda, but now when America wants to also invade Iraq no other nations want to join in. That seems extremely fishy to me. Why were all these countries not wanting to invade Iraq? They probably knew that there was no weapons of mass destruction. There were no other supporting countries in this political choice to invade, "this was an American plan with American Command and control, and the major forces in play would be American."(145) The fact that only America is willing to invade Iraq creates a spark to wonder why we are actually invading Iraq. There is a very big possibility that all the other countries know that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction, even America probably knew. However, from the invasion plans of securing the high revenue oil targets, it is clear that the main focus was not on weapons of mass destruction but was on the control of the oil export. This makes total sense considering America is one of the highest importers of oil in the world. Weapons of mass destruction my ass.