Notice they say 'misconstrued' when what they mean is 'deliberately twisted'.

I applaud the Guardian's decision to own up to and apologise for the lie.

The number of IMC posters who greedily swallowed this bullshit, screaming 'Wolfowitz admitted it! Wolfowitz admitted it!' is hilarious but very typical and unfortunately underlines the critical flaw of independent media. If you don't care whether a story is true, if you don't bother to check sources (the original speech was on the internet almost a full week before the Guardian story), it's not news, it's propaganda. Piss poor propaganda. Like the majority of 'news' on indymedia.org, sadly.

Still worth reading indymedia for the occasional gem from a contributor with standards and a brain though.

We know it was false now, but it doesn't change the fact that the war was about control of oil. Project for a New American Century, PNAC, which Wolfowitz etc are all apart of, has EXPLICITLY stated that invasion of Iraq is neccessary because of the oil, to expand America's dominance in the middle east, and it will be neccessary even if Saddam's regime falls. I suppose we're all idiots if we believed the Guardian article before we found out the truth (immeditately after), unlike all the pro-war people who believe fiction about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam being a threat to us or even the region.

UND HE VILL KEEP GETTING IT REICHT, YA. IT VAS THE OIL AND D
ZE FACT THAT THIS WAS THE SECOND POOREST COUNTRY IN ZE VORLD SO VE CAN KILL THEM ALL WIF DU AND MAKE LOT$ OF MONEY FROM OUR VEPON$ AFTER VE HAVE DONE THIS TO THE POOREST AFGAHISTAN AND GUESS WHOIS NEXT ! AND NOT WORRY ABOUT OUR SMALL BRAINS AND ALL THOSE WHO MOCK US WILL BE SORRY ON THEIR KNEES AND THE EVIL ONES WILL BE LAID LOW FOREVER. SO IT IS WRITTEN IN OUR UNCLEAR POSTURE REFIEW.

Just 'cos we financed the Bush company and George Junior let my family fly out just after 9/11 does not mean that they were all involved, just me.. I knew it was another P2OG job , but so what.. someone has to do it.. How would the neocon attempt at hegenomy get started.. after Iraq they will try to destabalize Iran and my homeland and it will be Bin Laden - Won, US - 0.

well it's nice to have the honour of a visit from your
highness i guess your from a more "serious" part of the media
and your obviously very (self) imoprtant.
I can remember the days before indymedia when the only thing availbale was the "corporate press" and when something wos going on that they didn't want "us" to know about, we knew sweet F.A . But now it's possible to see whats occuring at say a G8 summit and the like ..
I also spent a lot of time squatting in south London
I wotched (sometimes on TV) the smack dealers getting busted and then let out the next day to be back in business by the evening. Having grassed up the dope dealers, who didn't incidently get out for sometime.
As I recall only Private Eye ever mentioned the official line on smack, they also, for a long time, referred to the freemasons head office in Duke SQ as coke house .
For the council housing estates it's a drug problem , for the government it's a solution, keep 'em busy looking for their bag of scag.
I met a few "journalists" in those days, wot a bunch of wankers. later on I travelled to many "hot spots" and witnessed the "International press" at work, total fucking arseholes. With the brits and Americans , Italians standing out. Most mainstream journalists are hired because they are pretty stupid they have to be to write what their masters order, the brighter ones work for M15 and the like.

SO wots your comparison worth ?
there has been no war for fifty years and their is an excess of cannon fodder some like to drive around in SUVs /BMW's
and think that they are having it large some get into Indie media. Whatever the working classes get together it will be
ripped off by the middle classes, just like all those nice little council houses in Brixton sold off in the seventies to radical chic lefties(yuppies) moving in trendy lefties is
still gentrification in my book and having to listen to some Nigel or jeremy telling me all about "the people" is rather like reading your comment ..

makes the Grauniad look quite coherent really.

While oil was part of the war, it was a weak reason for it. Th reason as I have said before is the independence of the iraq as a country, the anti-imperilist position which all of the iraqi governments have taken since the true independence in 1958 until now. The same position of the Iraqi people and as the most ancient civilisation on earth your politicians knows that we do not give a toss about any of them or their ideas of how the world should be ruled. These combined together means you jews have no place in palestine and multi nationals if we live on bread you will not have our oil. Therefore both sides of evil; imperlists and jews have combined forces to attack Iraq and they will attack more countries. So it us or them.

Oil was undoubtedly a factor, but not as much of a factor as oil CURRENCY. The vast majority of oil transactions are made in, surprise surprise, US dollars. The value of all dollar oil transactions summed greatly exceeds the actual value of the oil traded itself.

This creates a huge demand for US dollars which helps support the US's enormous budget deficit, and it is America's financial might which allows their military and political strength. It is my understanding iraq had already or wanted to begin trading oil in Euro, and OPEC were considering doing the same. Their motive was partly economic, the OPEC countries do more trade with the EU than the US etc..., and partly a economic middle finger raised to the US.

If there were to be a major shift in oil currency from dollars to euros the resulting fall in demand for dollars could seriously harm the US' already floundering economy, therefore undermining the source of their strength.

Anyone who thinks wars are not fought for economic reasons needs to read some history books.

Realist and Sceptic can peddle their ‘beyond question’ support for the USA/UK illegal invasion of Iraq all they want. The Iraqi people know what this is all about. Any Iraqi’s who have not been told about the project for a new American century and its racist, fascist and imperialist ideas that Wolfowitz and his scum bag, war criminal friends devised - will do so in the near future. The Iraq people will rise and remove the occupiers from our land. Sadam was forced upon the Iraqi people and supported by the very people who killed thousands of innocent Iraqis to remove him. Now this scum wants to control Iraq directly – it will never happen. FREE IRAQ! FREE IRAQ! FREE IRAQ!