Lie after Lie (Mother Jones - The Bush War Timeline)

I don't recall anybody, on the left or the right, asserting that the plan for the Iraq war was to provide the American consumer with cheap oil. Where did you get the impression that those on the left take this position?Why would, hypothetically, a massive government adventure to secure American access to the second largest oilfield in the world result in cheaper gas at the pump, in your opinion? Perhaps your mistaken assumption is that the oil business is a business where cheaper supply means lower prices for consumers. Do you remember that he re-admitted the inspectors before the current conflict, and that those inspectors had concluded that they had seen no evidence of any weapons program - at which point we forced them out of Iraq in preparation for our invasion?

That the Iraq war was to make gas cheaper at the pump?No, I've never heard that from Moore or Churchhill or from any protester. Maybe you're confused about what "no blood for oil" actually means? It has nothing to do with making gas cheaper for the consumer. Just like the Iraq war had nothing to do with making gas cheaper for the consumer. It's my understanding that the civil conflicts have largely prevented the resumption of oil production.But I don't understand why you think it's impossible for the 4-5 oil companies that control gas prices in the US to inflate the price of gas, when that's exactly what they did during Katrina. The destruction of New Orleans' refining capability did have an effect, yes - but less than 1/3 of the geographic US is supplied by oil passing through those refineries, yet gas prices went up everywhere in the US, and stayed up long after refining resumed.The idea that it's just supply and demand is, of course, nonsense. There's no shortage of supply. Even with the loss of 1/3 of the refining capability during Katrina there was no shortage of gas anywhere in the country. The only gas stations that ran out of gas were the ones located in storm-affected regions where the gas trucks couldn't yet reach.NJ, the oil companies last year posted profits so high they were greater than any other corporations in the entire history of humanity. Where do you think those profits come from? Good advertising? Please.It's a true fact that the highest priority for the military in the days following the Iraq war was not the security of weapon stockpiles (hence the Al Qaaqaa debacle) but the security of Iraq's oilfields. To suggest that American energy policy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, which sits on the second largest oilfield in the world, is nonsense.And, again, absolutely none of that has anything to do with the price of gas at the pump. Which was the point of Congress's authorization for the use of force, as you'll remember. And it worked - Saddam started playing nice.So why the war? Because Saddam playing nice didn't further our energy interests.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Again - why would an American adventure to advance the concerns of Big Oil result in cheaper prices at the pump? Sure, I'm totally certain that it's just a coincidence that a former oil company owner and the former CEO of oil-exploration company Halliburton Energy Services decided, contrary to treaty obligations and international law, to invade the country on top of the second-largest oilfield in the entire world. LOL!The point is - the price at the pump has nothing to do with that. Why would it? Why would oil companies lower prices at the pump just because American foreign policy put them in an advantageous position to drill Iraqi oil? What makes you think OPEC has anything to do with what's going on at the gasoline pump? Sure, they set the price of crude coming out of the Middle East, but that's only a small portion of our oil supply. And the price they set only represents the floor of gas prices at the pump. What do you think OPEC possibly has to do with the ceiling? Misinformed in what way? I mean they're certainly not saying that the Bush Administration openly embarked on a war to secure the second-largest oilfield in the world. Obviously the American people would find such a war ridiculous, as you clearly do.What exactly do you think they're misinformed about? That doesn't seem consistent with the facts. We know that the persons involved in the greatest single act of terrorism on American soil were predominantly citizens of one country; that country was Saudi Arabia, the country in which Islamic terrorism originates. And we know that, in Asia Minor, there's largely one country who has shown the capability and willingness to supply nuclear secrets and technologies to Islamic terror groups; that country is Pakistan.But Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are our allies, instead of our targets. Surely, if national security was the goal, we would have deposed the leaders of those countries and secured those populations? Rather than attacking a country which proved to have no ties but the most tenuous to Islamic terror networks? LOL! I'm sure it's just coincidence, then, that Iraq is on top of the world's second-largest oilfield, and that securing those fields were the military's immediate top priority - over the securing of weapons depots and ammunition dumps. So? Do you think that those fires destroyed even one-hundredth of one percent of the oil in that field? The oil wasn't going to go anywhere. It wasn't like Islamic terrorists were going to drive up in trucks and load up 350 tons of crude oil - you know, like they did with the high explosives locked under IAEA seal at al Qaaqaa. There's no evidence that he moved anything, or had anything to move. Certainly that was the conclusion of the weapons inspectors. But I guess you know better sitting there in Oregon than the guys that were right there in Iraq? By complying with the invasion? How does that make any sense? I don't know what they were, but I notice that none of those figures invaded Iraq. So clearly they knew something Bush didn't know, or were motivated by other concerns. For instance, national security.

Um, hello?Man, just when it was getting good, too... I really take no pleasure out of making arguments that are just too good to refute.