Article on the “plans” of the Bush administration pre-Iraq,  that may show us just why we never had an “exit strategy”.  Because we never planned on exiting,  but “divvying up” the oil.  

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world’s second largest oil reserves.

Eager to Tap Iraq’s Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion

found in this post by Juan Cole on Dick Cheney’s “concern” about how leaving too early will “waste the sacrifices” our country made. 

Such greed and callous has the effect on me to bring back into focus the ire I feel toward the absolute worship of riches and “profit”;  and I extend this to the “free market fundamentalists” who are willing to turn a blind eye (or to help circulate “debunking” stories that the oil industry’s favorite think tanks provide for us) to anything that “results” in profits.  Because ,  ya know,  what helps profit helps everybody (you know,  the “trickle down” that never trickles in any direction but up). 

No book in the past 20 years that I have read outlines the worship of the free market and the lengths to which its proponents will go than Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.  I read that a bit over a year ago,  and am always highly recommending it.  GREAT book.  It also made me a fan of John Cusack,  who interviewed Klein for an article on the Huffington Post.