I’ve said it before, but Scott Ritter says it again in an interview with alternet.org:
Q: What about oil companies, were they for the war or against it?
A: No oil professional in their right mind would support what is happening in Iraq. This isn’t part of a grand ‘oil’ strategy; it is simply pure unadulterated incompetence.
Q: So they are concerned about their bottom lines, and chaos doesn’t forward that goal.
A: Right. Oil company executives are businessmen and they are in a business that requires long-term stability. They love dictators because they bring with them long-term stability. They don’t like new democracies because they are messy and unstable. I have not run into a major oil company that is willing to refurbish the Iraq oil fields and in invest in oil field exploration and development. These are multi-billion dollar investments, that in order to be profitable, must be played out over decades. And in Iraq today you cannot speak out to projecting any stability in the near to mid-future.
UPDATE: Ritter’s comments about neoconservatisim — it is a parasite and the Republican Party is a host — as well as the future of the United States are also interesting:
The American experiment is much too complex to be destroyed by the neocons. In the end, the neocons will lose. It may take ten to twelve more years, and the costs will be horrific, but America will survive. There will be one hell of a mess to clean up, though, after the fall of the neocons. … [Assuming no changes, in the next five years America will be] at war, bankrupt morally and fiscally, and in great pain … and only half-way through the nightmare. Ten to twelve years is what we will have to get through, but we will get through it.
1:20 pm on March 30, 2005
