On May 15, 2013, at 10:47 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. There are no longer any US military bases in Iraq.
>
> 2. The permanent presence of US troops in the Middle East is small - about 5000 troops, mostly in the Gulf states and Turkey - and their deployment predates the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration.
>
> 2. Following the invasion, American oil companies were not given privileged access to Iraqi oil by the al-Maliki government, which awarded concessions on economic rather than political grounds. China is expected to soon become Iraq's biggest market and Chinese state-owned oil firms are partners or operators in several major Iraqi oil fields, dwarfing the presence of US oil majors who have shown little interest in developing the country's oil reserves.
Fact-checking ruins many a good story.