Bush Rejects Truce with Iraqi Rebels
by James Buchanan
In what seemed like a golden opportunity for an exit strategy, eleven Iraqi rebel organizations offered a truce if the US got out of their country by 2008. Did the Bush regime jump on this chance to get out of a hopeless quagmire? Of course not. Bush’s solution to every problem is to use a stick with no carrot. When using a stick fails, Bush tries to use a bigger stick. This is the same exact strategy Israel has been using which has produced an endless war against the Palestinians (which the US has funded for the last 58 years).
Despite all the propaganda from the nearly-indicted Karl Rove about “cutting and running,” the support for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq has steadily increased. Anyone listening to Fox News or even mainstream TV would think that only a few hippies in tie-dyed T-shirts favor an immediate withdrawal, but “according to a poll by the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute. 47.8 per cent of respondents think the U.S. should pull out of Iraq now, while 44.1 per cent disagree.” A different poll by Zogby found that 72 percent of our troops in Iraq think the US should withdraw within one year. These troops are witnessing first hand what our occupation is “accomplishing.” If they think it’s a waste of time, they’re probably right.
Eleven Sunni rebel groups are willing to stop attacks against US forces if Bush simply agrees to a two-year withdrawal plan. These rebel groups are exposing the fact that Bush (and the neocons) plan to occupy Iraq forever …or at least until the oil runs out. The current occupation of Iraq is not ensuring the free flow of oil; instead, we are constricting it. Texas oil men are making a fortune pumping the last drops of oil out of their US oilfields at a highly profitable 70 dollars per barrel while Iraqi oil stays in the ground. By withholding Iraqi oil, we are stuck with three dollar a gallon gas prices.
If we withdrew from Iraq, the new government would want money to rebuild things so they would increase oil production as much as possible to get money fast. And they would not give any construction contracts to Halliburton. Both of these are “mortal sins” in the world of Bush and Cheney so it’s no surprise we continue to squander the lives of our soldiers in an otherwise pointless and needless occupation. Once the last drops of oil are pumped out of Texas and Alaska, then Halliburton will begin to sell the Iraqi oil at $200 per barrel. Of course this could mean we’ll be stuck in Iraq for ten or twenty years losing thousands of additional soldiers so that Bush and his cronies can grow even richer.
The other reason for the eternity deployment in Iraq is the Israeli factor. Most of the neocons surrounding Bush are also fanatic Zionists who put the interests of Israel before America. It’s abundantly clear that a new Iraqi government will be run by an assortment of religious mullahs. These people will see the hand of Israel behind the war and occupation of their country. They will want revenge and they won’t be under the oil-constricting sanctions that Hussein suffered. The new government will be just as anti-Israeli as the previous one, which is another huge reason why we’ll stay in Iraq. The Democrats have been hopelessly divided on the occupation even though a withdrawal plan could have won them the 2004 election and could win them the 2006 election. Many Democrats are letting the Israeli Lobby tell them what to do even if it means losing elections.