08 Aug 2008 Jonathan Kay: The next time someone says Iraq was a “war for oil,” slap him (with this GAO report)

August 07, 2008, 5:36 PM by Jonathan Kay – National Post Online

There were a lot of coherent reasons to oppose the Iraq war — it would kill a lot of people, it would empower Iran, it would create a haven for terrorists. But none of these anti-war rationales got much ink compared to that single bumper-sticker slogan: No war for oil. On Google, the phrase “war for oil” gets hundreds of thousands of hits. Most are attached to articles that make the claim — still widely believed in anti-war circles — that the 2003 invasion was part of some sort of grand Cheney-abetted corporatist conspiracy to pad the balance sheets of American oil companies.

What a joke that’s turned out to be — as this front-page report from yesterday’s New York Times makes especially clear: [continue reading here]