In recognition my becoming old and lazy, I think I will double up on another article - so, with apologies, here is another one from the "other" blog:

Scott McClelland’s reportedly accurate, certainly courageous, and unfortunately late book makes clear that the reason for the Iraq (so called) War was not WMD (surprise!) but because Bush wanted to follow a policy of “coercive Democracy” – he wanted to bring democracy to all the Middle East. While most of us suspect that WMD was a red herring, Middle East Democracy also is as phony as Scott's neat toupee. Unless it is just code for the idea that if they had Democracy, they would not hate us and then we would be in better position to at least make favorable deals for the contents of their huge oil reserves. As we now see, the looming shortage of oil is beginning to make itself evident in ways that affect our everyday lives. Much more ominous than higher gas prices, from the standpoint of the Defense Department, is the fact that our armed forces would be severely handicapped if the plentiful fuel on which it depends were to disappear. The fact that this impending catastrophe is already looming in the Defense budgets is shown by the recent call by the Air Force for future use of coal (which is plentiful in the US) to make jet fuel (Hitler used coal for fuel in WWII). I am not saying that Bush understood the real reason himself at the time McClelland refers to (probably not). But others in the Bush cabal arm of the MIC (military industrial complex) certainly must have. OK if you do not like the liberal term “Blood for Oil" you can call it “Coercive Democracy for Defense”, but lets take the bull s-t by the horns, and stop beating around the Bush