Did we invade Iraq to protect Israel?

Supposedly Cindy Sheehan wrote that (actually the e-mail most probably was forged) and the right-wingers went ballistic. Now we have Will Marshall (head of the Progressive Policy Institute which claims to be a Democratic Party organization) saying that was an important reason we invaded Iraq.

Democrats should also attend to the other side of the balance sheet. That side shows that our forces and their allies have toppled one of the world's most odious tyrants; upheld the principle of collective security; liberated a nation of 24 million; made possible Iraq's hopeful experiment in representative self-government; and changed the strategic equation in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Along with Billmon, I am not fully certain why the Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq, though it is my strong opinion that Dick Cheney was the key decision-maker.

Here is Billmon's view on the causes of Bush's Iraq War.

Personally, after all that's come out over the past 2 1/2 years, I no longer feel like I have any idea why the Cheney administration invaded Iraq -- although the presence of guys like Doug Feith and Richard Perle in the decision-making loop suggests Israel's strategic interests, or at least their own conception of those interests, had something to do with it. But so did a lot of other things -- oil, Saudi Arabia, post-9/11 hysteria, Bush's messiah complex.

It's also not clear how much the "PNAC Neo-Con agenda" reflected the official wishes of the Israeli goverment, and how much of it was just a product of the neocons' seemingly limitless gullibility. Was the original objective really to "change the strategic equation" in the region? Or were the neocons just conned by Ahmed Chalabi's sugar-plum promises of a peace treaty, an Iraqi embassy in Jerusalem and a pipeline running from Kirkuk to Haifa? I tend to think it was the latter, which was more stupidity than treason.

Gee. Isn't it nice to know that our government leaders have the needs of the government of Israel in mind all the time?

I still think it was because Cheney wanted to place our troops in position to threaten Iran and control the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. But the desire of the Israeli Defense Forces to remove Saddam and get tighter control on Iran were very likely considerations.

Political hardliners like Cheney are fools. They create more problems than they solve. They certainly have given much of the Middle East to Iran in the last two plus years. The only positive thing for Israel that has resulted in the last few years has been the death of Arrafat, and we didn't do that. Did we?