Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Why we fight . . . this week

Lt. Col. Paul Finken died because we went to war because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and were going to use them against the United States and its allies

because Iraq had close ties with al Qaida and the 9/11 attack on America

to establish a liberal Western democracy where once there was tyranny

to stop the slaughter of Kurds and Shiites

to stop the slaughter of Sunnis

because we had to whack somebody?


For oil. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Lt. Col. Paul Finken died so you can fill up your effing SUV with under-$3-a-gallon gasoline. Hey, the president said it.

In Lt. Col. Paul Finken's home state, no less. From George Bush's campaign rally remarks in LeMars, Iowa:

Imagine a Middle East where the radicals and extremists were able to use oil to say to America, we're going to run your price of oil up unless you abandon your allies such as Israel, or we're going to run your price of oil up unless you just totally withdraw and let us be. And you couple all that with a country which doesn't like us having a nuclear weapon, and 30 years from now, people are going to look back and say, what happened to them in 2006? How come they couldn't see the impending danger? What clouded their vision?
But I thought we didn't go to war for oil. Either now or back in 1991.

I can't even begin to imagine what the lieutenant colonel's wife and three daughters are thinking right now. God bless them all. And God rest Lt. Col. Finken.

A memorial fund has been set up here.

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