The Oil Drum

Well, that was the point of question six and raising the 'true cost' of a gallon. There are many studies on this, ranging from $10 up.

There is an element missing from the question posed here. That is, it addresses the question only from perspective of the effects of toppling Saddam.

Let's ask this question: Where would we stand if Saddam were still in power. (1) Would we still be trying to keep him in his box and, what would the cost of that be? (2) If we tired of the cost of keeping him contained, would he give up his designs to control Arab oil? Would he stop making war on his neighbors. Would he stop exterminating anyone who disagrees with him? (3) With Iran building nuclear weapons, would dear ole Saddam sit quietly by and do nothing, or would he engage in an arms race with the ayatollahs?

I would submit that Saddam would likely be an even bigger problem today than he was 7 years ago. The military cost of keeping him down probably would have been less, but it takes little imagination as to what the political cost would now be on the price of oil with both Iraq and Iran going at each other yet again.

your miss is that the 440,000,000 gallons is per day, and the 650 billion is per year.

That gives us 160 billion gallons per year, which would in theory be $2/gallon. That's a big number, except that it's a total lie. Taking the military cost and laying it off against the gasoline fraction of only us oil imports is bogus. The US imports are primarily from mexico and canada, so stabilizing the ME is not really about protecting "our" oil, it's about protecting world oil. Without which, I would point out, the world economy would have collapsed decades ago. Not only that, but far less than half of the US military budget is spent on middle eastern adventures. Roughly half the military budget is spent on benefits for RETIRED soldiers, the ME represents maybe 1/4.