Reconsidering Iraq: What If We Had Been Greeted as Liberators?

"Shock and Awe"

The U.S. then invaded Iraq, expecting a reaction of "shock and awe." The Administration believed that resistance groups would capitulate at once in the face of certain death.

The plan could have been to destroy virtually the entire oil-related infrastructure of Iraq as U.S. forces ostensibly searched for non-existent weapons of mass destruction as well as the suddenly missing Saddam Hussein.

Famously, we were not greeted as liberators. Some Iraqis actually took offense at having their country invaded and their resources plundered by Western Christians. They did not see the invasion as a "liberating" experience at all, and fought back fiercely. The insurgency that followed proved irresistible to legions of the world's terrorists-in-training, which flocked to Iraq for some hands-on practical experience.

At that point, the plan ran off the rails. The U.S. became bogged down in a struggle that offered no easy exit and no certain victory. Winning, however defined, could have come at great cost: it could have invited a wider war with the entire Muslim world. Losing would surely have led to vilification of the U.S. throughout the world and to Bush and Cheney's impeachment, removal, and prosecution as war criminals.

But what if Cheney had been right? What if we had been greeted as liberators? What if there had been dancing in the streets? What was the plan if things had gone as I think Bush and Cheney had hoped?

Iraq: Broken " and Broke

According to this theory, the hope was that after a brief and highly destructive war, Saddam Hussein would be dead, Iraqis would rejoice, and the U.S. would install its own puppet government to serve the needs of a people hungry for democracy and freedom.

Then the U.S. would take the lead in rebuilding the country, especially the devastated infrastructure of its oil industry. The most lucrative contracts would go to U.S. oil drilling, oilfield service, and refining companies, firms like Halliburton, Bechtel, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, etc. Companies from non-coalition countries would be excluded from consideration.

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