It has to end within 60 days - at least, so reads the law.
Nonsense. It was nothing of the kind - it was threatening and bullying to a remarkable degree.
You have consistently referred to his rhetoric as supporting your opinion of his comparatively peaceful and isolationist tendencies, his reasonable nature as a businessman, etc.
I allege no such thing. Why are you repeatedly and consistently misrepresenting my posts?
Here's a part of the "oil argument", again:
1)The prospect of increasing their own profits, or at a minimum preventing Saddam from reducing them, was easily visible and and obvious available motive for Western oil interests, and those interests were very well represented among those directly responsible for deciding to launch that war. They stood to avoid a serious threat of loss, and instead make a ton of money, by invading Iraq. And they did.
2) Saddam's danger to the petrodollar was famous, prominent, and becoming urgent - the sanctions were dissolving, and he had made good on his threat to begin trading in other currencies. Iran, initially more prudent, was warming to the idea, as Saddam made big money by the move.
You said you found the "oil argument" inexplicable, was all. I helped you to understand it.
I directly pointed to the very essay you linked, observing that its analysis omitted all mention of the currency and petrodollar issue, failed to consider the influence of sanctions or their impending demise, largely ignored the profit analysis and potential for Western vs other oil interests in the advent of that war, and so forth. In other words it omitted - failed to even consider, did not even dismiss - several major factors in play with regard to the "oil argument", including the most prominent accusations being made by those advancing the "oil argument", and specifically any of my posting here - which was supposedly why you linked it. What is your explanation for that? Do you think such a strawman from that source can possibly have been completely accidental?
To repeat: all parties involved were of course looking at the future. Checking the threats posed by Saddam's initiatives, gaining the opportunities offered by military conquest of the Iraqi oil fields, were all future possibilities and payoffs. Saddam after sanctions, with Iran looking to follow his lead, was not only projected to control significantly more than 3% of the world's crude oil within a couple years, but the more than 3% cheapest and best.
These people are not children - oil company execs routinely deal in decades, long term gambles and payoffs. The longest horizon of Iraq's threats and payoffs was merely years away - the shorter ones were immediate, predicated on the war itself, and remarkably free of the "threat" aspect. The big oil companies that participated in and supported the launch of the Iraq War made many millions of dollars in no-risk extra profits just from that, and they knew they would going in - regardless of outcome. The bright future was bonus.
