Reason for War?

To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."
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  thanks to Talking Points Memo

Keep out of town hall, Kut tells US troops
Self-appointed Shia ruler issues decrees from barricaded building

First the marines tried to get this dusty town's 200 police officers back to work, but 100 dropped out after local people warned them that only traitors collaborated with America.

Then the police station burned down. It was still smouldering yesterday as frustrated US troops began to realise that governing a people is much harder than defeating one.

"We've all just been issued with non-lethal equipment: batons, riot gas, shields, and stun grenades," Corporal Nathan Braden said.

Two hundred metres away several hundred Iraqis were guarding the gates of the governor's office, trying to ensure no that Americans entered. "No, no to America; no, no to Israel. Yes, yes to unity; yes, yes to Islam," some were chanting.
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Say It Slowly: It Was About Oil
by Ted Rall

Iraq is going to hell. Shiites are killing Sunnis, Kurds are killing Arabs and Islamists are killing secular Baathists. Baghdad, the cradle of human civilization, has been left to looters and rapists. As in Beirut during the '70s, neighborhood zones are separated by checkpoints manned by armed tribesmen. The war has, however, managed to unite Iraqis in one respect: Everyone loathes the United States.
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American to oversee Iraqi oil industry

The US is preparing to install an American chairman on a planned management team of the Iraqi oil industry, providing further ammunition to critics who have questioned the Bush administration's agenda in the Middle East.
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Pentagon Sending a Team of Exiles to Help Run Iraq

The Pentagon has begun sending a team of Iraqi exiles to Baghdad to be part of a temporary American-led government there, senior administration officials said today.
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White House Moving Toward Single Resolution on Iraq's Future

The Bush administration's foreign policy factions have begun to coalesce behind an omnibus proposal that would endorse the authority of the American-led forces to control Iraq and remove Iraq's oil revenues from the sole control of the United Nations, Security Council diplomats confirmed today.
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