I'm immediately skeptical of anything the corporate media throws at us, especially FOX, news is chosen entirely based on the interests of big business. And one thing that our big business, our military-industrial complex, wants most is to continually fan the flames of war in the middle east, so we have some excuse to have control over the most important strategic areas in the world, not to mention the oil incentive.
It's no doubt a terrible regime, but the media only want to accentuate that fact in order to get the populace comfortable with the idea that going to war with Iran would be a good thing. Their biggest effort is to create an imaginary nuclear threat (which would become an actual threat if we attacked), and if that fails as it did with Iraq, they want to fall back on us 'liberating' the country.
Why would big business have anything to do with this? Thats asinine, Cody. Big business is hurt by conflict, not helped. The military complex you refer to died 30 years ago, I don't know why people think that war helps the economy anymore, thats insanely antiquated. You don't see Bert Bernanke clamoring for the US to attack Tehran. Also, this 'strategic control' you speak of is post-hoc bullshit that im betting someone fed you at some point. USA gets about 10-15% of our oil from the persian gulf, of that probably about 2% from a broken system in Iraq, if that, im being generous. But we're not talking about your propaganda here, im not even sure why you are steering it in that direction.
I am kind of off-topic here, but I feel the need to put everything said about the middle east under a microscope, especially when it comes from Fox (which by the way, is a major source of propaganda). Business does have a huge hand in war, there's about 1 private contractor for every 10 military soldiers. This is vastly more than it used to be, it's really incorrect to say the military-industrial complex isn't going strong. The defense industry has spent around 100 million or more per year on lobbying for the past 7 years, they have significant influence on our military policy. If a defense company can spend tens or hundreds of thousands on things like campaign donations, and through their influence on policy prevent say, hundreds of millions in slashes to the military budget, then it's money well spent for them.
Fox News is owned by Fox Entertainment Group, which is owned by Murdoch's News Corporation. There's virtually no accountability on what is actually selected as news, and news is decided by the people at the top, according almost entirely to profit motives. Their primary goal is to sell consumers to advertisers, i.e. big businesses, I mean this is explicit, that's how a big news company is run. They don't just get money from showing a company's ads, they get money (and repeated business so to speak) from reporting news in a way that benefits those benefactors.
Oil is a huge motive for us, this is almost transparently true, we've sought a presence in the middle east since the 40s for precisely this reason. I mean if you want relatively recent evidence, in 2001 Dick Cheney commissioned a report on energy security from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, it's kind of disgusting to read:
http://www.bakerinstitute.org/publications/study_15.pdfAmong other things, it says : "The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de- stabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments." This report majorly influenced Bush's cabinet, which essentially agreed in April 2001 that military intervention was necessary.
Dick Cheney was the CEO of huge oil company Halliburton. George W. Bush was the CEO of the oil company Spectrum 7 in 1984. The Bush administration definitely had deep ties to oil. It might not be as deep in the current administration, but it's still a huge influence. Just look at the amount of money oil companies spend on lobbying:
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01, do you really think that they'd spend tens of millions without some assurance that they can shape government policy in their favor?
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