Ocean of desire, Sea of love...Wolfowitz in the press
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has had two quotes echoing through press and the presses' general admission seating the other week. He's had a lot of press recently, largely due to becoming the administrations latest lighting rod. A bad thing to be, given how rainy its been here in the mid-atlantic region recently. The first quote got the British newspaper Co. Guardian in a peck of trouble. This is because they inexplicably translated American from German into English to put on their web site. This piece was repeated extensively under the headline/banner: Wolfowitz admits [' war was about oil' ]. The Guardian pulled that story off their site within the day - before I got a chance to read it - eventually replacing with a somewhat murky column by their ombudsman. By the time I read this I was already familiar with context estranged words he did speak which I know as the Iraq Swims on a Sea of Oil statement. The slightly fuller version of that statement indicates that he was trying to say that iraq's vast real wealth meant that attempting to discipline or shape the iraqi regime through sanctions was doomed to failure. Implicitly even the portion of oil and return revenue that gets through would have kept the regime afloat. There would always be a buyer for smuggled oil. I guess: though, that would be our jones there [beats me why this same crowd thinks the war on drugs is going to work]. Wolfowitz was contrasting Iraq with North Korea at the time, who's desperate straits and thin cash flow he seems to believe will bring them right around. These are people you have to argue with for half a year before they will allow a ship of free grain to dock during a famine. The Neoconservatives are a little inconsistant with their application of the Rational Operator theory in foreign policy, they will assume it in the face of all contrary evidence, but abandon negotiations for bombs at other times, after declaring their opponents insane. The guardian says Wolfowitz's quote is on the DOD's Website from the context and timing I figured it was from his trip to Japan at the begining of the month. I looked through all the press statements an media opportunity moments they had up for that and didn't see this quote. I did come across this exchange though:
Baker (amb. to Japan): I think they want us here, Paul, in these two chairs.
Wolfowitz: Is that where MacArthur used to sit? (Laughter.)
There is something about a phrase like "sea of oil" - which he did utter which is reducible
beyond a statement of frustration or comparison of sanction efficacy to a pointer towards the primacy of oil in international relations. The poetry of the phrase, a freudian glance towards the neoconservatives obsession with oil. and strategies for bringing it entirely within the fold of the global economy, the first world, American extraction companies, and dollar-based trade.
Wolfowitz's other mis-spake was to suggest in a interview with Vanity Fair that the play weapons of mass destruction, the administration other obscure object of desire, received before the war was just a bureaucratic necessity. One thing that everybody could get behind so that a solid front could be shown.
Only the natively uncharitable would suggest that speaks more to the desire of some to have a war, than the actual critical need to invade another nation by force of arms at exhaustion of all other avenues. Similarly only a cad would suggest that all those that remember the impassioned statements about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and a vast network of Terrorist Ties, are guilty of revisionist history for their remembering (& lexus/nexus-ing).
Next: Wolfowitz tells Newsweek he's not really a neoconservative.
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