Saddam’s Exile Deal Could Have Saved $6 Trillion

How did we get from a “profitable” war against Iraq to a $6 trillion swirling black hole that threatens to flush the United States and the world down the drain? Follow the dollars. Follow the lies:

One month before the invasion of Iraq, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar met with President Bush in Crawford, Tex., Feb. 22, 2003, to beg him, on behalf of European leaders, not to start a war.

The Egyptians made a deal with Saddam Hussein to go into exile to avoid a devastating war against Iraq. Saddam wanted a payment of $1 billion and, for insurance, to keep all the information about how the neocons had supplied him with his weapons of mass destruction. Bush quipped that sending Saddam into exile would save the American people $50 billion for the costs of the war.

That “$50 billion” was a lie. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired in 2002 for daring to predict the war might cost $200 billion.

Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, testified to Congress on March 27, 2003 that oil revenue from Iraq would pay for the Iraq war. “The oil revenues of [Iraq] could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years,” he said. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” More