Wot's...Uh the Deal?

Digby asks a very good question on his blog. One that everyone thinks they know the answer to, but no one can actually answer...

Why did we really invade Iraq?

Basically, no matter what argument you make, there are always good points about why it can't be the actual reason.

Those that adhere to the "CIA fucked up" rationale can't explain Downing Street. Those who think you had to back the government in a time of war, are visibly discomfitted by the fact that we never found any WMD.

I asked "why did we invade Iraq" and commenters had dozens of possible reasons. Everybody "knows" why Bush did it -- oil, revenge, imperial ambition, because he could etc, etc etc. There are many possible reasons and perhaps the truth is that there wasn't one reason. But we really don't know.

He's not really even picking on the right or the left specifically with this one. No one's arguments honestly make sense. I'll admit, I'm often on the side of lefty conspiracy theorists, people who see that the planning of this Iraq misadventure had been in the works for decades but who can't quite figure out what the eventual purpose of all this destruction could be.

The kid who watched All the President's Men in me wants to follow the money, so I'm always tempted to say that the opportunity for massive wartime profits to companies like, yes, Halliburton is too good for greedy sack-of-shit callous Republicans to pass up.

But is Halliburton really funding Bush well enough for him to stake his entire presidency, and the future of his party and nation, on getting them some juicy infrastructure contracts? I don't know...maybe...But it's not what I would call a really solid, believable explanation. The guy is already stupid-rich and egregiously powerful.

But the Right-leaning pro-war explanation ain't much better. I don't really think Bush & Co. really believed all that reverse Domino Theory claptrap either, about a free Iraq beginning a windfall that would render the entire Middle East open, democratic and utopian. Rumsfeld was telling us that, by early 2004, they'd be ready to open a Disneyland Tehran, but you know he couldn't really have believed it himself.

So are they just totally insane with power? It happens all the time in Shakespeare. Who knows? Maybe that shit is for real. Some guys can actually get so powerful that they totally lose their shit and just start attacking everyone, like Billy Zane at the end of Titanic.

[Actually, I had a whole post a while back ready to go about how Titanic could be a useful metaphor for our present government, but it sounded kind of shrill and then a week later Cory at Random Acts of Violence posted a much more hilarious send-up of Titanic, so I never ran it. But the point remains worthwhile].

I don't know...Maybe there really is some master plan that will be unveiled to us in the coming decade or something. It'll be like that oil-bumblebee running plot on "X-Files." You know it's going somewhere sinister, but it never seems to get there, and you just wind up wondering what the fuck the black ooze stuff was even getting at in the first place, and why the aliens even bothered with such a complex yet pointless plan.