I've seen this statement from you twice. That gasoline is still getting expensive is a sign that the war in Iraq was not about oil. I didn't reply last time because I thougtht it was so obvious how full of holes that logic is, I thought you'd just never say it again. But here it is in response to the slippery tactics LW uses in threads and how wrong I was about Iraq.

So natural gas and oil have been on the decline and still are. Iran supplies a lot of oil to China and Russia making it not an option for "regieme change." All indications are that we peaked in 2001, if not then we have or currently are at the peak. Which means that it is going to be more expensive and difficult to extract the remaining oil that is available. And if you look the majority is located in regions of the planet that Americans are not so welcomed. Hence a need for invasion. A need to secure the vital resource that allows our country to continue in it's way of life that Bush says is non-negotiable. Iraq was the perfect target because 1) it posed no threat 2) was defenseless and 3) had already been made the evil satan that he is in the majority of Americans eyes since Bush Sr. And most important it was sitting on the 2nd largest known oil reserve. While the numbers were most likely inflated articically for OPEC sales it's still got a lot.

So what is a main target in Iraq? Oil pipelines. Just look at where our bases are located in Iraq, look at what the number one priority was in the first hours of the war. It was to secure the oil. Look at Executive Order 13303. This plan had been in the works for over 12 years by Wolfowitz, Pearl, and Fieth. They needed something to give them a reason to invade and secure what was desperately needed; cheap fossil fuels. Iraqi's know why we are in Iraq. They know that if they disrupt the supply of oil it will disrupt the American way of life. I know soldiers in Iraq who understand the only reason that they are stationed in Iraq is to secure pipelines. He tells me how he just sits all day driving up and down staring at it. How ominous.

Currently high prices in oil are attributed to insecurity over the Iran situation. It's continued nuclear ambitions are worrying the oil markets. But one of the problems in Iraq is that it takes so much energy to run the American war machine. I imagine that until we see peace in Iraq that you won't see Iraq oil making your trips cheaper. The demand has now and continues to outgrow the supply. Therfor new and creatives ways must be engineered and devised to secure and procure the veryresource that will continue to give us National Security and independence in the eyes of many.

So I hope this clears up the whole just because gas is still expensive doesn't mean oil was not the key factor in the decision to invade and occupy Iraq. I'm sure I left something out.

asia's rapidly rising population is a big factor in oil prices.

Remember this though:

Even though Gas prices supposedly go up because it's so expensive to get, blah blah blah - the oil companies made RECORD PROFITS last year. That does *NOT* follow my line of logic of charging more because it's costing more.

The price of gasoline very much could be going down, and could have gone down last year. But the government (many of whom are profiting off of this as well) is allowing the oil companies to use the war as a reason to garner more profit and more profit and more profit.

One thing I never understood about the price of oil was that as demand increases, the price increases. What does it matter if there is more demand for a product - the price shouldn't be effected by it. For example, if something (say rock salt for driveways) is in high demand in the winter, the price doesn't go up because it is in high demand. If a hardware store did double the price because so many people were after it they could be fined for price gouging. I don't see the difference.

Who's indicating that? Look, let's be honest, we really don't know how much oil is out there. We may be at peak oil if all the oil that we have found now has been found. But we simply don't know that. In fact, there's no telling how much oil is actually out there. There's a lot of suspected places that should have vast amounts of oil that we just don't know about. On the other hand, there are people out there speculating that the Saudi Arabian oil fields aren't nearly as big as first thought. There's no telling what's out there.

And then you have the natural gas factor. Man, Qatar itself has so much fucking natural gas that they say they could power the world for forty years alone. Adjusting to cars that ran on natural gas wouldn't be a feat either. Then, we you look at how comparitively small Iraq's oil fields are to the world, and what tiny fraction of supply the give, and have the potential to give, I think it shoots your "no war for oil" in the foot.



Oil reserves are state secrets. America has the potential to be self-reliant on oil in and of itself, or to go after Canada, which has more oil than Iraq. But let's just say that this is indeed accurate. It doesn't matter becuase Iraq is an OPEC country, and it always will be. OPEC will always tell Iraq how much oil it can produce and at what price it should sell it at. That fact shoots your "war for oil" theory in the head. It kills it dead.



The reason it was a main priority is because it's the countries engine to recovery. Period. We could have neglected the oil infrastructure, but it would have been devastating, and no offense, but ya'll would have been crying about it if we did.

As for our bases, or bases are scattered all over Iraq. And I would say they are primarily located for transportation and logistical purposes. Camp Victory, the largest, sits by the airport. We had over 100 bases with 500 or more people in Iraq. They were all over the place. To say that some of them were along oil towns is...well...kinda duhish...especially when you take into account that oil is vital to Iraq getting back on its OWN two feet. I will tell you this though, I know they are consolidating all the bases into just four permenant bases. One in Talil in the south, which sits about 50 km's away from Al Naseriya (gosh I wonder why that base was there) where one of the major oil lines run. Al Asad, which is in Baghdad. A base in Balad, which sits on the pipeline, but also along the most major thuroughfare between Iran and Iraq, close to Iran. And lastly in Irbil, which is about a zillion miles from the major pipelines in the north.



Of course. Don't you think it should be a priority?



Let's not get over our head here. We all know that the oil company's are price gouging simply because they can.

Again, "No War for Oil" was nothing more than a silly catch phrase. I hope Alec Baldwin comes out and tells everyone that.

i only pointed that out in your bashing of LW, you have said from the get go that this war is about securing oil. well its been what, 5 years now, and oil is at an all-time high. if thats what this war has been about, its not doing a very good job

but to be honest, i havent seen if you changed your stance or not, cause like you with LW, i tend to ignore most every post you ever make

If Exxon and all were struggling right now, Peeps, I'd agree with you. But they're not. The war for oil wasn't to make things easier on the american people. It was to make more money for the oil tycoons - which this war has excelled at.

The war has excelled at making oil tycoons money. How's that?

The lack of refining capacity in the US is as much responsible for high gasoline prices as a lot of other factors mentioned. blame that on the environmentalists, NIMBY, and good old capitalism. something for everyone.

You play Sim City don't you?

um - no? is there a joke i'm missing somewhere here?

There. That's all you need, you said it yourself.

Who said ANYTHING about it making oil CHEAP? What's so hard to understand about this? You SECURE the oil and..that's it! You have it! It doesn't mean it flows from the pumps like rain, it just means you have it.

Of course oil compaines are making a profit, THAT'S WHY THEY EXIST.

you dont think logic follows that if the US tapped such a huge source of oil that it wouldnt be cheaper? what world do you live in?

and i never said anything about companies making a profit, youd have to be a moron, or a regular poster in pj chat, not to know this.

See what the NPR interview with Kevin Phillips has to say on this topic (surprise, it's the oil) from this morning.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5345281

(choose listen live for the interview)

Very interesting interview about the influence of oil, gasoline, and automobile interests in bed with the currrent administration, and the influence of the oil reserves in the Iraq war.

And this Kevin Phillips is the guy who created the Republican Energy Consuming Coalition, go figure!

In all this arguing it might be important to keep perspective. We are going for oil, but it's all for naught if we don't decrease demand (hopefully the price increases will help with that). We've got these aged CEO fossils with a death-grip on this resource and their greed and benefit from it are all-consuming. Demand is not going down (yet), therefore our greed for it will continue to increase, but price will not fall. It's the oil.

As I have said before, I don't buy the "war for oil" theory either, because I think the true reason is much worse--using Iraq as a strategic center to move on to other "troublesome" countries in the area, like Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia if there's a regime change there.

That being said, now that we're in there, it only makes sense to assure the oil industry is functioning. It will give Iraq a resource to help fund their future.

Probably THE biggest factor.



Well, who is REALLY allowing the oil companies to make insane profits is the everyday consumer. If you're willing to spend $3 a gallon on gas frequently, you'll give them large profits. If you don't want to line their pockets, live closer to work and drive less (or drive something more fuel efficient). It may not always be easy, but life is never easy.

The problem with natural gas is that it's hard to transport from long distances such as Qatar. I'm not of the mindset that natural gas is going to solve the entire problem.



This is a very good point that gets very little mention anywhere.



You said this better than I could earlier.

Maybe yours does. Unfortuately "the US" isn't really an oil company.

Follow the $$$$ trail ... The war is about oil, but not how you think. This is about Foreign Exchange or (FOREX). Before the war Iraq tried to switch from the dollar to the Euro for its conversion. The US had to do something otherwise the strength of the dollar would plummet.

Why do you think Europe was against the war? Its because they would have benefitted from the US buying Iraqi oil. Everytime the US would have bought a barrel of oil, the US would have to convert its dollars to the euro. Hence, the Euro would be strong and the dollar would be very weak.

Just to give you an idea of how big FOREX is, for every day the FOREX trades it takes 9 days of trading on the New York Stock Exchange to equal that 1 day of trading on the FOREX.

This war was about saving the strength of the dollar.

No offense, but Iraqi currency both pre and post war was essentially valueless compared to the Euro or the dollar, and wouldn't mean shit considering that Iraq contributed so little to our oil consumption to begin with. By that logic, we should have gone after the House of Saude first. Or Kuwait...

So far as backing ones own currency, there are far more sensibly ways to go about doing it than by bombing a country with valueless currency.



It's not as easy, but it's getting easier. I've seen Qatar. Between them and Dubai...man, they are thinking business people over there. Qatar and the UAE have tons of natural gas, and they are going to sell it to the world. DP World as we speak is finishing up the infrastructure for it too. Heck, one of my last missions in Djibouti was the new DP World petroleum products terminal, and guess what the bulk of the infrastructure is targeted to store? Ethanol and Natural Gas. The only reason diesel is there is for refueling ships. It's half a world a way, but understand, these people are ahead of the game plan. They're more greedy than anyone within Exxon or BP, and they are far better business people.



I really don't know if that was really necessary to stage against the Saudes, Iran, or Syria though. We have permenant bases and good political tidings with Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, EAU, and Qatar. On top of that, we have plenty of people in Saudi Arabia as well. I would put having permenant bases in Iraq for strategic purposes on attacking Iran and such way down the list. An added benefit, but I doubt it's what the Masters of War originally had in mind or cared about. I think it's more important to establish a functioning democracy there more than anything though.