The notion that the Iraq war was about oil "is a complete piece of nonsense," stated US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. "If the United States had been interested in Iraq's oil, it would have been very simple 12 years ago or any time in the last 12 years to simply do a deal with Saddam Hussein.”
“We probably could have had any kind of preferred customer status we wanted if we'd been simply willing to drop our real concerns," Wolfowitz said in remarks to the press in Tokyo on June 3, 2003, quoted by the official Washington File.
But the real concerns of the United States, he said, remained Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and its support for terrorism. As for finding those weapons of mass destruction, Wolfowitz said: "(W)e're still in an early stage of that process and there is no question we will get to the bottom of what's there." — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
