Wow! Some guy actually took the time and effort to explain the sticky history and politics of the place where we keep sending our soldiers to die. The war in Iraq didn't start with Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, or even the production of oil. It started with an old British guy, David Lloyd George, and an old French guy, Georges Clemenceau, drawing a new map of the Middle East way back during World War One!
Little did I realize that our country's foreign policy is based on what France and Great Britain did about 90 years ago. They fought a war against Germany and the Ottoman Empire (the remnant of which is Turkey). When the Western Powers won, they had the gall to carve up these huge chunks of land in the Middle East and call it theirs. They didn't pay attention to how Kurds, Shi'as and Sunnis would live together in a brand-new country called Iraq...sound familiar?
Too bad that Bush and company didn't have "Blood and Oil" available before they decided to invade Iraq. Could have saved us -- and the Iraqis -- a lot of tragedy. Let's face it, the US is only in Iraq for the oil. Before us, the British and French sent soldiers to the Middle East for the same reason....it's the oil. And they were so surprised when all the Muslims in these newfangled "nations" started to rise up against them. Insurrection, violence, civil war, anti-Western sentiment...hey, that also sounds familiar!
If you want to know how all the BS in the Middle East got started, and check out the facts/lessons that the White House should have heeded...then get this very cool program...with lots of great photos and movie footage. Now, it does have quite a bit of military history. So if that's something you don't dig, then maybe you should pass. But the writer does relate the fighting to the weird political intrigue that happened after the war...and relates that to all the decades of chaos in that region of the world...right up to the current mess in Iraq.