Juan Cole provides a detailed analysis of the run-up to the Iraqi war and the ties between the neo-conservatives and Israeli hawks which provided the “ideological” fuel for justifying the war. Nothing new in this analysis, except it ties all the pieces together. Plus, Cole’s ultimate analysis of Bush & Co’s motivations are totally in sync with my own views:
“The Bush administration is a coalition of disparate forces — country club Republicans, realists, representatives of oil and other corporate interests, evangelicals, hardball political strategists, right-wing Catholics, and neoconservative Jews allied with Israel’s right-wing Likud party. Each group had its own rationale for going to war with Iraq.”
“Bush himself appears to have had an obsession with restoring family honor by avenging the slight to his father produced by Saddam’s remaining in office after the Gulf War. Cheney was interested in the benefits of a war to the oil industry, and to the military-industrial complex in general. It seems likely that the Iraq war, which produced billions in no-bid contracts for the company he headed in the late 1990s, saved Halliburton from bankruptcy. The evangelicals wanted to missionize Iraqis. Karl Rove wanted to turn Bush into a war president to ensure his reelection. The neoconservatives viewed Saddam’s Iraq as a short-term danger to Israel, and in the long term, they hoped that overthrowing the Iraqi Baath would transform the entire Middle East…This transformation would be beneficial to the long-term security of both the United States and Israel.”
