Congressman Dennis Kucinich commandeered the House floor for an hour Wednesday to discuss “in detail the Congressional and White House efforts to privatize the oil of Iraq.” Before he spoke, he announced the speech in a public e-mail. The talk is excerpted here.

Kucinich.us:

Oil was the primary reason for the invasion of Iraq. There were, of course, no weapons of mass destruction, no connection between Iraq and 911, no connection between Iraq and Al Queda’s role in 911. Despite that the Bush-Cheney Administration, with the approval of a Democratic-controlled Senate and the Democratic leader of the House, supported and commenced a brutal campaign of shock and awe, of bombing, invasion and then occupation of Iraq.

Iraq may have as much as 300 billion barrels of oil untapped. With oil headed toward $70 a barrel, the oil wealth of Iraq could be worth as much as $21 trillion. Nearly 3,400 sons and daughters of America have been sacrificed. As many as 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed in the course of the US occupation. The taxpayers of the United States will pay between one and two trillion dollars for this war, which is based on lies.

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