SNAFU

Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.
 - a confused or chaotic state; a mess. -

This is the way I perceived it .....

You see. The US was okay with Iraq reclaiming Kuwait. The Iraq Kuwait borders went way back to what the British wanted and defined in 1922.
Saddam Hussein even told the US Ambassador what he wanted to do, as he considered Kuwait to still be a province of Iraq, and now he thought His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was stealing his oil by side drilling from Kuwait into Iraq's vast Rumaila oil field. The US response was that America had no interest or comment on Iraq's internal affairs.
So Saddam went ahead and attacked Kuwait with his Republican Guard. The The Emir asked the US for help and America ignored their own Ambassador's response to Saddam and this resulted in the first Gulf War where US forces drove out the Iraqi Army and returned control of Kuwait to the Emir. The fact that the US unleashed all that stealth technology on Baghdad when Kuwait was 658 km away had little relevance to the military testing their new toys.
One supposes oil agreements with the Kuwaiti Emir were behind the military action. He also promised democracy at the time.

But George HW Bush, was not re-elected in America. And Saddam Hussein survived the first Gulf War defeat and continued to run his country. A few short years later the young George W. Bush was elected president, and saw Iraq and Saddam Hussein as a score to settle for his Dad. Who he thought was mocked by  Hussein. With Dick Cheney as the evil Basil Rathbone character whispering over his shoulder, George W. Bush fell into the surreptitious plan of opportunity.
 
Two reasons: Iraq had the world's fifth largest proven oil reserves. Saddam had survived the first H.W. Bush war and remained in control of his country while HW Bush was a one term chagrined president! George Jr. saw a need to avenge his Daddy.
And Cheney wanted to provide Haliburton a chance to make billions in reconstruction and oil management. (Haliburton got a billion dollar no-bid contract)

What is real and what is fake?

And so after what many people now believe was an inside job, the 9/11 attacks and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York city, Bush and Cheney had their overt reasons to start their phoney war to get rid of Saddam. Including suddenly feeling sorry for the Kurds, and worrying about weapons of mass destruction that Colin Powell, betrayed by his own demeanor, professed to be aimed at America.
Even though the chief suspects of 9/11 were Saudis, or financed by their government, hidden in a 28 page document classified by Dubya. And there is plenty of evidence to show how close the Bush family is to the Royal family in Saudi Arabia.
But the covert reason for war was all that wonderful oil beneath the desert sands.

The second Gulf War devastated the infrastructure of Iraq, turned Baghdad into a US armed camp, and would funnel away Iraq's national oil riches into private companies.

Iraq oil - source - Al Jazeera

And as we know now, the war was premeditated and implemented from the start for the purposes of the US Government, with Britain tagging along so as not to be left out of the rich spoils. And we all know what happened to the dreaded WMDs. Nothing.

Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim who controlled his country, albeit mercilessly,  and was in fact a buffer between Shi'a Iran and Syria. (Iraq was about 10% Kurds, 25% Sunni and 65% Shi'a previous to American occupation.) Saddam kept his borders strong and secure between his two enemies.
But with Iraq basically destroyed by the American invasion, occupation and realignment of the country, including it's oil reserves, there were no strong controls over the population or no viable plan for the country's future direction. The democratization of Iraq was doomed to failure. Not the least contributed to by the use of Blackwater mercenaries and private contractors who were there to protect Americans but would shoot to kill at anything, And did. Innocent civilians not exempted.
Violence, bombings and killings continued to be the normal life in Iraq, even in the strengthened American 'Green Zone' sections of Baghdad.

With America finally pulling out their ground combat forces, the void began to fill with other dissenters,  al Qaeda, who Saddam hated, the strengthening of the Kurds who want their own autonomous region, and other Sunnis who were now excluded from Iraqi affairs by Shi'a president al-Maliki. All this confusion and distrust soon became ISIS. Or ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Meanwhile nothing came of the promise of democracy in Kuwait that al-Sabah said he would implement. He is now nothing more than an American satellite oil resource. Kuwait has 8% of the world's oil reserves and is the third largest producer.  One can assume His Highness Al-Sabah is properly appreciative of the American military efforts on his behalf.

A vicious circle resulting from personal greed that cost the lives of many brave young men of Britain and America's military for no apparent gain except to those corporations close to the US government.
President Obama has not kept his promise to declassify that potentially revealing 28 page document for the American people.

So here we are on the brink of a third Gulf War, changing alliances yet again to combat the growing world threat of ISIL. Meanwhile, the Republican party continues to covertly denigrate their own potential candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination, while carefully keeping Jeb Bush safely tucked away in a quiet back room.Would a third Bush in the White House complete the circle to the New World Order?

One wonders what the situation would be had Saddam Hussein remained in power? Some believe he would have been the USA's greatest ally in the Middle East.
And even a troubled peace is better than the senseless slaughter now going on.

SNAFU has become FUBAR.

 

Desert Storm deja vu?