This then means that any discussion of the real motives for the Iraq war is stuck with the problem that Bush certainly seems like a nice enough guy.

-- dharmamarx

**********

You had me nodding until this last sentence. Bush most certainly does NOT seem like a nice guy, and he never has seemed like a nice guy, and anyone who cared to look into that question could have found the answer easily enough. That famous Vanity Fair profile of 1999 made things perfectly clear. Bush is a deeply disturbed human being who was badly bent by utterly inadequate parenting, and further bent by being brought up in the ranks of privilege, and now he's taking out his numerous and serious neuroses on the entire planet.

Not the first time that's happened, but given the times we live in (nuclear weapons, population-overshoot, peak-oil) Bush was likely the most dangerous choice Americans could have made in 2000 and 2004. It's always amazed me that we put the guy in office. Yes, the GOP cheated him into office in 2000, and they cheated again in Ohio in 2004, but, nonetheless, over 50 million voters voted for the guy in 2004. You can't gainsay that.

As for how this relates to the question at hand..why we went into Iraq...unless someone who was in on the meetings spills the beans, we'll probably never know just what the hell happened. We'll never know why we went into Iraq. I myself don't believe in conspiracies. However, that said, I'm sure Bush and Cheney were well aware that the war would benefit the oil industry, and, of course, their buds in the defense industry, but that was merely a collateral benefit.

And we didn't go in there for the oil. People who say that have no idea how the oil industry works. Transnational corporations all, oil companies buy oil all over the world, and sell it to whoever makes the best deal with them. For instance, quite a lot of North Slope oil went to Japan. Not the US.

Had we left Saddam in power, he'd have been happy to sell us his oil. Happier than the Iranian-backed Shi'ites who will--eventually--take over Iraq, will be.

I agree with other posters that the war was fought primarily for domestic political reasons, that planning was utterly inadequate and unrealistic (in short, a clusterfuck of monumental proportions), and once the shape and size of the mess became clear, Bush and Cheney and Rove went into high gear to either hide their disasterous mistakes from the American voter, or to justify those mistakes as good decisions..like any corporate CEO does in front of a compliant Board.

I have to say, I'd also like to know just how much influence the right-wing zealots from AIPAC, and their lackies in government, had on the decision to go to war. It had to be significant. I doubt we'll ever know about that, either.

In any event, now Bush, Cheney, and Rove, have a real problem, partly due to Bush's own neurotic disturbances, and partly because political reality says that if they pull out of Iraq now, their Base is going to be very, very confused..and might well start to figure out just how hard they've been buttfucked with a broom-handle. The Base hasn't figured that out yet, but if they're presented with too much cognitive dissonance, who the hell knows what'll happen? I'm sure Bush, Cheney, and Rove, don't care to find out. So they're doing the smart thing: delay, delay, delay, lie, lie, lie, until they're safely out of office.

Then, who cares? They've always had nothing but contempt for the people who put them in office. Once they're out, they won't give any more of a shit than they do now...and if there are any rumblings in among the idiot 28%, Bush/Cheney/Rove/Kristol will just blame everything on the Democrats.

As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out endlessly, and correctly, NONE of this could have happened without the collusion of our MSM...had the NY Times, Washington Post, and the three major TV networks not deliberately propped up these tin-horn fascisti, we would not be having these conversations. I think the more interesting problem is: how in HELL do we fix our mass media? Because if we don't, this is going to happen all over again, and it'll be far worse the next time.

It's not like we haven't expected something like this. I mean, what the hell else are Bush/Cheney going to do? They have to keep up the Big Lie long enough to get out of town, and that's exactly what they're doing, co-opting unscrupulous military men in the process.

We've been predicting for years, here at Salon, and elsewhere, that Bush/Cheney's tactic will be to lie and lie and lie until someone calls them out..then they'll slide away and come up with a new lie, and they'll just keep on lying until they're safely out of office, and that's how it would be.

So, here it is. 18 months and counting (with, surely, nothing done in the last half of 2008, so it's really more like a year)...all they have to do is maintain an even strain, helped by compliant mass-media, and they're home free, to their mansions, their servants, their fat pensions, and lucrative speaking and consulting gigs with wealthy right-wing think-tanks and Chambers of Commerce all across this great nation.

The only way anything will be different, is if people like Glenn keep putting the pressure on. All it would take from there is a few key people in MSM having a change of heart--and start acting like real journalists--and the plan might not succeed.

But I ain't holding my breath