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2 Responses to “McCain Implies Iraq War Is For Oil: Watch Video?”

1. JohnKonop says:

   May 3, 2008 at 1:12 pm

   McCain clarifies remark about oil, Iraq war

   TH-Republican John McCain was forced to clarify his comments Friday suggesting the Iraq war involved U.S. reliance on foreign oil. He said he was talking about the first Gulf War and not the current conflict.

   At issue was a comment he made at a town hall-style meeting Friday morning in Denver.

   “My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East,” McCain said.

   The expected GOP nominee sought to clarify his comments later, after his campaign plane landed in Phoenix. He said he didn’t mean the U.S. went to war in Iraq five years ago over oil.

   “No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons,” McCain told reporters.

   One reason was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, he said. “But also we didn’t want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it’s more important than any other part of the world,” he said.

   “If the word `again’ was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that’s all I mean,” McCain said.

   “The Congressional Record is very clear: I said we went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

   It was the second time in as many days that McCain had to clarify his comments. On Thursday, he backed off his assertion that pork-barrel spending led to last year’s deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

   McCain is a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, although he criticizes the early handling of it by the Bush administration.

   His support for the war has drawn attacks from the Democratic Party, and on Friday, McCain defended himself against television ads that accuse him of advocating a 100-year war in Iraq.

   The ads, run by the Democratic National Committee and the liberal group MoveOn.org., tie McCain to President Bush and cite McCain’s comments that there could be an American military presence in Iraq for 100 years.

   continued…
2. Iraq » McCain Implies Iraq War Is For Oil: Watch Video? says:

   May 3, 2008 at 6:49 pm

   [...] JohnKonop wrote an interesting post today on McCain Implies Iraq War Is For Oil: Watch Video?Here’s a quick excerptWar for oil? HP-During a town hall event in Colorado today, John McCain “decried the dangers of Americans reliance on foreign oil,” but “also seemed to suggest that this reliance caused the current struggle in Iraq.” … [...]

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