No, the opposite. I was thinking it was part of an attempt to keep the French and Russians from working with the Iraqis to increase Iraqi productive capacity, which would thereby threaten to saturate the market with cheap(er) oil. In other words, the war is partly to keep prices from dropping, to keep competitors away from cheap supplies, and to control productive capacity, or, failing that, destroy it. What's scarce is not oil but paying customers.
Not to say there can't be some--as Michael P. says--outdated ideology floating around. Not sure I'd be much of a fan of the updated ideology, though.
>There are a lot of political and economic forces that tend
>to stabilize oil soemwhere in the mid-$20s.
Do these include the occasional bombing of Iraq? The Iran-Iraq war? U.S. encouragement to Iraq to invade Kuwait?
>Low prices would be hell on Texas, and would
>render drilling in Alaska (a project dear to W's heart) economically
>risky.
Precisely. All I'm saying is that competitors with low production costs for oil seem to get bombed and occupied a lot. Are these attacks due to outdated, mistaken ideology in U.S. ruling circles? Current economic pressure due to a flagging market in oil? Unrelated to oil?
Shane T. and I were talking offlist about how it would be good if you could get some guest who could 'splain this stuff on the radio 'at a lower level of abstraction' than Bina, as s-t-t put it. To me, this is significant because it's popularly supposed that the Bush clan is gonna share the spoils of war with the working class here, in the form of cheaper gas, inexpensive plasticware at MallWart, or, as the tabloid quoted here earlier suggested, by deeding a square foot of Iraq to every U.S. citizen. Meanwhile, the left is saying things like "Draft SUV owners first," which presupposes the same thing.
Jenny Brown