President Bush boards the carrier Abraham Lincoln, wearing a smug smile and a flight suit. He admires the "mission accomplished" banner and tells an audience of servicemen and servicewomen that the war is over. And we won. Americans on both sides of the debate about the Iraq war have seen that news tape repeatedly, and it still evokes the same strong emotions, presumably on both sides. Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy use it early in their fervently political documentary. The film's title and early scenes promise a focus on the United States' oil-related motives for attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, but it soon branches into a maelstrom of other subjects.
In this new documentary that is filled with solid facts and figures, clear, illustrative maps, original footage shot in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as interviews with such personalities as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Noam Chomsky, The Project For The New American Century Director Gary Schmitt, author Ahmed Rashid, and the Pentagon's Karen Kwiatkowski.
After assessing today's dwindling oil reserves and skyrocketing use of oil for fuels, plastics and chemicals, "The Oil Factor" questions the motives for the U.S. wars in the Middle-East and Central Asia where 3/4 of the world's oil and natural gas is located.
So maybe this is why almost half a million US military personnel are deployed overseas near oil fields and oil routes? Or that the US military deployment in Afghanistan and Central Asia blocks China and Russia from accessing oil and natural gas they desperately need for their economies?
The oil factor: Behind the war on terror.
