. . . and says the obvious, I should add.  Last week, it was retired General Sanchez, who blasted the Bush Administration, calling it “incompetent” in the way it has run the Iraq occupation.

This week, it’s Retired General John Abizaid, former CENTCOM Commander, who spoke about Iraq:

During a round table discussion on “the Fight for Oil, Water and a Healthy Planet” at Stanford University on Saturday, Gen. John Abizaid (Ret.), the former CENTCOM Commander, said that “of course” the Iraq war is “about oil“: “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” Abizaid said of the Iraq campaign early on in the talk.

“We’ve treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations,” the retired general said. “Our message to them is: Guys, keep your pumps open, prices low, be nice to the Israelis and you can do whatever you want out back. Osama and 9/11 is the distilled essence that represents everything going on out back.”