[Peace-discuss] Wolfowitz correction

[patton paul]

Hey all --
  I was looking around online and found this story and found it rather
interesting.
  "The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already
undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by
describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further
by
claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,970335,00.html

  Looks like the impeachment movement and the anti-war movement were right
with this ficticious war about "Iraqi freedom" and "WMD's".  Too bad it
was
thousands of lives too late.

Solidarity,
Neil


I tried to find the story that Neil suggested, and here's what I found:


Corrections and clarifications

Thursday June 5, 2003

A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading
"Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US
deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had
said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say
that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, "The ...
difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no
economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In
the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic
collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the
military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq."
The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of
which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil
motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now
been removed.

this was at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,3604,971436,00.html

The full transcript of the interview in which Wolfowitz made the remark is
at:

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030531-depsecdef0246.html

I didn't have time to read the whole interview, but my impression is that
the correction appropriately states the context of Wolfowitz's remark.
Maybe somebody with more time to read the whole thing could comment
further.

__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-328-4064
homepage: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ppatton/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
__________________________________________________________________