>"It's all about oil!" Like hyperactive brats who get hold of one phrase and
>repeat it endlessly, this naive and prissy mantra is enough to drive to the
>point of madness any person who actually attempts to think beyond the clichés.
>Like "Whatever!" it is one of the few ways in which the dull-minded think they
>can have the last word in any argument. So what if it is about oil, in part?
>Are you prepared to give up your car and central heating and go back to the
>Dark Ages? If not, don't be such a hypocrite. The fact is that this war is
>about freedom, justice - and oil.
Uh, it's not like Iraq doesn't want to sell us its oil. We're the ones blocking their exports, and our sanctions have caused the oilfields to run down. It's about oil as a lever of political control and about who's going to capture the rents (it costs something like $2 to extract a barrel of oil in Iraq, yielding something like $28/barrel of profit at current prices). From a pure price and availability perspective, it hardly matters who controls the stuff.
Doug