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Wednesday, Jun 04, 2003
Dr. Paul, did you say something about oil?
Or is this another "misquote"?
June 4, 2003
Let's look at it simply. The
most important difference
between North Korea and
Iraq is that economically,
we just had no choice in
Iraq. The country swims on
a sea of oil.
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From other excerpts I've seen from this conference, I think the gist of what Wolfowitz was saying is that we have the option to starve the N. Korean economy to bring them in line, but that this option was not viable in Iraq.
The Taipei Times reported the following quote from Wolfowitz at the Shangri La Dialog. "Countries of the region that are helping keep North Korea afloat need to send a message to North Korea that they're not going to continue doing that if North Korea continues down the road its on."
More when the DoD or Dept. of State post transcripts.
via Tom Tomorrow
sourced from The Guardian
and the IISS website
wolfowitz's prepared text
Update:
DefenseLINK posts their transcript of the Q&A session from which the quotation comes:
Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil.
The first denial:
Q: I'm Satoru Suzuki with TV-Asahi of Japan. Mr. Secretary, eleven weeks have passed since the coalition forces moved into Iraq. Yet you've found no weapons of mass destruction in that country -- no convincing evidence yet. Given that, are you still convinced that you'll be able to find such weapons eventually and, in the absence of such weapons, how can you still justify the war, and what would you say to those critics in Japan and the rest of the world who've been saying that the war was mainly about oil?
Wolfowitz: Well, let me start with the last part. The notion that the war was ever about oil is a complete piece of nonsense. If the United States had been interested in Iraq's oil, it would have been very simple 12 years ago or any time in the last 12 years to simply do a deal with Saddam Hussein. We probably could have had any kind of preferred customer status we wanted if we'd been simply willing to drop our real concerns. Our real concerns focused on the threat posed by that country -- not only its weapons of mass destruction, but also its support for terrorism and, most importantly, the link between those two things.
DefenseLINK transcript Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Media Availability at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, June 3, 2003
Second Update:
George Bush disagrees with Wolfowitz's emphatic assertion that the war was not about oil, by pointing out the economic importance of the Persian Gulf reserves.
Vital economic interests are at risk as well. Iraq itself controls some 10 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. Iraq plus Kuwait controls twice that. An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance, to intimidate and coerce its neighbors - neighbors who control the lion's share of the world's remaining oil reserves. We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless. And we won't.
Address to congress by G.H.W. Bush on September 11, 1990, known as the "Toward a New World Order" speech.
3rd Update
The Guardian has pulled the story from their website. Click through to the comments page for a screen shot, the text, and the Die Welt quotation that they used as a basis for the story.
If only the Guardian had read this AP story, they could have avoided the embarrassment of the double-translated quotation.
The Guardian's retraction statement is also posted in the comments.
linked at Bartcop E!
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