ABSTRACT
The United States (US) did not want Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War to result in either an independent Iraqi Kurdistan or Iranian domination of Iraq's oil-rich Shia south. US containment policy included continual aerial surveillance as well as enforcement of northern and southern no-fly zones, where Iraqi aircraft were forbidden. The almost universal response from George W. Bush administration critics was that the real reason for invading Iraq was oil. This chapter discusses that there was extensive interest in the prospect that a new Iraqi government could be convinced or pressured to permit the privatization of the country's oil assets, which American corporations could then purchase. The Bush administration announced that a total of forty-nine nations were involved in the "Coalition of the Willing". The rationale for the invasion that dominated the speech was that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction.
