Krauthammer Owns Up

Charles Krauthammer, in his Washington Post Op-Ed piece, owns up to the real reason that the neocons want to concentrate on Iraq and forget Afghanistan.

Forget that the Al Qaeda attack was planned and launched from Afghanistan, that Al Qaeda trained its recruits there, that Osama bin Laden, remember him, based himself there.

One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth (my emphasis), an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e., wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states.

This doesn't sound like the point they were making in 2002 does it?