Oil Interests Quotes
Steward, then a retired Army PR man, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, was concerned that Kuwait a wealthy oil country controlled by a small royal family, grossly undemocratic, where women could not even vote, would not be a cause that Americans would be willing to suffer causalities over. He was unaware at the time but a huge campaign, much of it fraudulent, was being orchestrated by the giant PR firm of Hill & Knowlton. That together with the low casualties and the real atrocities that the Iraqis committed, carried the day.
Paul Douglas of Illinois was a world famous economist before he was elected to the Senate. He was a constant opponent of a tax loophole known as the "oil depletion allowance." Lyndon Johnson was a proponent of the allowance:. the home county of Chicago
He was one of the last generation of military officers who did not have the education, training, and political sophistication to avoid picking one of the several factors for going to war, and making it seem that that was the most important or only one. Oil is always a factor in the Middle East, but there were other major causes for our going to war.
Immediately after the invasion, there was no census, and the coalition forces and the United Nations election supervisors were concerned that there was not yet a basis of creating regional and district representation so that the 3 major ethnic groups would all have reasonable representation. Nor were there any organized political institutions other than the religious ones. The subtlety that stable democracy is not a “winner take all” tyranny of the majority is lost on many people who see elections and democracy as synonymous. So elections were scheduled for the following year. Many in the Shiite majority wanted immediate elections so that they could control the country in which they had been dominated for years by the Sunni Bath Party minority.
The Defense Secretary opposed U. S. support for the founding of the state of Israel. See Clemenceau for an earlier expression of oil being a critical factor in foreign policy.
