In yet another violation of my promise I just finished this ramble, and now realized mbkennel already made many of these points in a much more pithy deployment directly below. Alas...

Never wrote they should pay the bill for Iraq, I just said they were a strong element in the march to go invade Iraq, that's all. I was "against" that effort, siding with the older (I mean younger) and wiser Dick Cheney of the reign of Bush One, who saw it as a disaster waiting to happen. Regardless of the price of oil, it was a decision made to secure control of oil production. Do you think higher prices is XOM's business model? I think it could very well be their business model seeing as how it has been pretty extensively documented for those interested that PO is happening soon, perhaps very soon, like, now. The rest is econ101 debate school or Doomer/Cornucopian speculation. In either case, whatever the outlook for prices I think we all agree that they are capable of going much higher, depending on the rocks below and the human mind above.

The alternative to Iraq that Bush One and Clinton embraced was pretty horrendous too, but go ask an Iraqi if they'd rather have the brutally tortuous dictator Saddam (who we loved to deal with in the 80s) or the present American occupation and "Albert Maliki Government" and I'm absolutely sure the vast majority of non-Kurds would tell you Saddam in a heartbeat. Yeah, it sucked, and was awful--but now it's that except with the additional misery of suicide bombers day in day out, our soldiers dying in Humvees blown up by IEDs as they attempt to patrol around with essentially no "mission"--the mission is to not get shot or blown-up, from what I gather.

Saddam was a monster and perhaps the neocons were right that eventually he would screw stuff up in the region and he "had" to be removed. Their tack seems to be start trouble before trouble finds you. The problem, as the-VP-that-reads-everything noticed back then was that the intelligence community had already shuffled the deck and run the scenarios. HAL told them Iraq would have major problems if Saddam was deposed. It seems that Dick & Company have changed their mind since then, willfully and deceptively deciding to pursue the course of events that have transpired--all the way from the launch of the invasion, to viceroy Bremer's illustrious duration up until whatever the hell happens in that country tomorrow... Things are not looking rosy.

The idea that agents of the hawkish elements within the oil industry heavily influenced the march to go to war "falls apart" I grant you only so long as you admit that the political ideologues who launched the war at least had the interests of their corporate bedfellows in mind--and that those bedfellows were indeed hawkish. The interests and wishes of the oil industry don't "fall apart" anymore than the idea that global oil production "falls down"--other than the fact that it will, eventually. At some point down the road we won't be able to maintain hundreds of thousands of troops in a foreign country ravaged by insane warring factions, simply in order to secure oil production to stave off the inevitable. We clearly are not wanted in the region, yet we stay because that is the realpolitik situation because security is so bad. Security is so bad because we invaded, and now we won't leave because... The tautology is astounding. This is a pattern that has been running since Operation Ajax in the 50s. Foreign powers attempt to meddle in the interests of domestic policies in countries and eventually run into ugly trouble. In the 50s it was the "Cold War", with BP, England, the US and her major oil companies all concerned that they're not losing control over vital energy resources, and more importantly not letting it slip into the hands of the communist enemy. Our military presence in the "holy land" of Saudi Arabia, and our enthusiastic support since FDR of the sinister power structure within that country is one of the main ingredients in the kool-aid that jihadist plots are hatched in. Security in Iraq is not going to get better no matter how much we "surge", no matter how much blood is spilt, or people maimed. The administration is biding time, so the next round of nincompoops can take the hit. The "strategery" seems to be that it is better to strong-arm your opponent (OPEC) when you have them in a headlock. Our continual presence in the region is clearly highlighted by the activities of the fundamentalist religious state Iran and her perhaps even equally corrupt counterpart Saudi. Aside from Israel (corruption soaks the middle east, Abraham was no fool!), oil and geopolitical power politics wrap up the business and government of the entire region. What's left in the cultural wake is religion, and sometimes in the form of a very ugly, reactionary fundamentalism against modernity, ie 9/11, or the maniacal religious Israelis who build illegal settlements (I'm going by what the government of Israel itself declares as illegal), or the demented suicide bombers of Hamas. My point is that our foreign policy is a piecemeal reflection of how we respond to crises. By my standards, the fact that the political power structure decided (I'm assuming with the approving nod of the executive O&G industry) to go into Iraq after 9/11 instead of reassess other options in my mind only emboldens my point that no such action would be undertaken lightly--especially by people who at one point took up the opposite position on the matter, Dick Cheney circa Bush One. It is interesting that oilmanbob actually edified this for me by pointing out how Dick had his stint in the "industry" after his extensive public service. It seems like this is what took him from the Powell Doctrine to the wild fantasies of Wolfowitz in around a decade. Much of our foreign policy in the Middle East is obviously about oil, so why would would the major US transnational oil corporations be excluded from influencing policy? After all free speech is money, so says the supreme court, I forget the case, but it's an important one.

I'll reiterate that oil companies don't have to pay for Iraq since I'm sure we're already giving ourselves a swell deal anyway. This is a disaster for the military, but is a wonderful opportunity to write a good oil law. Last time I checked the country had the fourth largest oil reserves in the world. So, it's a good thing we are there to help "them" manage it.