The Bush Administration Turned the War on Terror Into a War for Oil
Respectable pundits and politicians scoffed at the antiwar demonstrators who tried to stop the invasion of Iraq. But the slogan they raised, “No blood for oil,” captured the truth about Bush’s war drive.
President George W. Bush addresses the nation aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, declaring major fighting over in Iraq, on May 1, 2003. (STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP via Getty Images)
In February 2003, millions of people around the world marched against the invasion of Iraq, raising the slogan “No war, no blood for oil.” It summed up a near-universal perception that the Bush administration, with Tony Blair in tow, was going to war because of Iraq’s massive energy reserves.
We have known for a long time that senior figures in the Bush administration were pressing for war against Iraq as soon as the 9/11 attacks happened. Although they eventually decided to march on Baghdad via Kabul, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and others worked tirelessly to convince the US public that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 — with stunning, if temporary, success.
George Bush and Tony Blair did not lean so heavily on the purported link between Iraq and Al Qaeda when addressing world opinion. In their presentations to the UN, they claimed that war was necessary because of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The WMD narrative crumbled as dramatically as the story about Saddam Hussein’s alliance with Osama bin Laden.
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