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It’s not about oil –uh-huh

Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy defence secretary says
differently:

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons
of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important
difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a
sea of oil.”

Emphasis is mine.

I hate to say I told you so, but: I told you so. Don’t feel angry about it, because I always knew Bush’s war was
about oil, always knew none of the reasons given by the warmongers made sense and I never trusted either Bush or
Blair anyway. But if you’re somebody who sincerily believed that war with Iraq was a good thing, who believed the
lies the loony twins were spreading, you must feel pretty fucked by now.

UPDATE: Too good to be true? Check Calpundit for more on this.
It seems the original English to German translation lost a lot of context. Nevertheless, I still think Wolfowitz did tacitly acknowledge that
Bush’s War is about oil…

Story found via Charlie Stross. Also posted at Wis[s]e Words.

Wednesday is cartoon day!

By Ampersand

New to the left

Every now and then I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the form, Luke. Entry does not guarantee winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit or be in the vanguard of the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply. The decision of the judges is final.

Whiskey Bar

Free thinking in a dirty glass. By Daily Kos alumni Billmon.

Democratic Veteran
writes about the arrest of Eric “Christian Terrorist” Rudolph:

So how do we treat the folks in the communities surrounding the area where Rudolph was caught? It’s not fair to tar them all as some have done, as stupid fundies who dogmatically empathized with Rudolph, and because of their perception of the “rightousness” of his acts afforded him the needed protection to hide out all this time. It’s not easy to look the other way either, especially when there are comments sympathetic to both the man and his cause. It’s almost akin to another situation here in this country, the way we treat Americans who are Muslim. If we give these folks in Western North Carolina a break because they are of the same faith, then we should perhaps give our fellow citizens who are Muslim a break, they are not terrorists nor, I suspect would they go to the extremes of perhaps a select few in the Mountains of NC to support one of their own.

Body and Soul has more on the area in which Rudolph was caught, noting the long history of bad government decisions on its inhabitants.

Nathan Newman points out yet
another example of Republican hypocrisy:

It should come as no shock at this point that the Bush administration are complete hypocrits on federalism,
since when it serves rightwing ideology, they stomp on local and state iniatives with abandon.

The most recent example is a California law that prohibits companies receiving state funds from diverting
that money to fund anti-union campaigns; they can use their private funds to do so, but they can’t use
public money. Seems eminently reasonable for the state to prevent misue of such funds, but a federal court
has declared that the law is preempted by federal labor law.

Now, the National Labor Relations Board has jumped in, with its three Republican appointees voting to file
a legal brief on the appeal opposing the California law — the Democrats took the pro-states rights and
pro-labor position of not doing so.