I found Miriam Leitao's article quite illuminating. For one she answered my old question of why the U.S. ever got involved in Vietnam: I had heard the theory that the U.S. wanted Vietnam to be under their sphere of influence because of the oil market they could gain in that part of the world, hoping it would be a stepping stone to other oil in that part of the world. I have never had that "rumor" confirmed til she mentioned how that is helping the economy in Vietnam today. So our good old benign democracy was reaching its claws then as it has reached out for Iraq, a much richer depository of the "black gold." No wonder Bush, Cheney, and the other blue-business-suit-type neo-cons who just won't give up Iraq, because they cannot face the "defeat" of their beautiful plans to control the oil fields of Iraq. It is an abomination and offense to the deaths of over 3,000 beautiful men and women, and the ruination of over 20,000 soldier casualties. How dare they continue with this delusion that their intent is to democratize and spread liberty to the Middle East. And after they are rid of Hussein, now they invent another lie to justify the invasion of Iraq--that he was about to join his arch enemies in Iran in plots of joint nuclear domination of the world. Do they really believe the American people are that stupid?

Oil is seeing its last decade of significance. New technologies, global warming, and the high political and economic price paid to secure oil flows is proving to be too much for western industries. The true price of gasoline to American consumers is more than $10 a gallon, once we allocate the costs of the Iraq war and general defense expenditures to protect flows of "cheap oil".

The second point is that oil revenues are not enough for Iraq. It translates to about $2 per head per day, before production costs are deducted. That is a sorry story to stake a future on.

Oil Man:

China has the cash and the know how and will rebuild IRaq with no strings attached. China has oil/gas production for 100-s of years. No doubt they learned something. If they need new technology, all they have to do is buy one of the big oil service companies. $ 1000 billion can but almost anything. Uncle sam and her citizens/corporations are all broke [or operating on borrowed funds]. In situations like this the banker's word is final.

I think it would be prudent to reserve judgement about how much American debt acts as an inhibition to our economy. I haven't heard anything yet to suggest that the day of reckoning has come on the debt front. There are also quite a few countires out there functioning with far higher debt to GDP ratios then us.

I think people are a bit too hasty when dismissing potential iraqi oil revenues as well. Yeah, $2 a head each day isn't all that great if it were the full extent of the economy. But those two dollar bills would act as a baseline for something to grow from and insure a little economic stability. Oil can act as the seed to let the economy grow to the point where it doesn't need oil anymore.

Sadly however, I have to agree with Mariam that this economic "miracle" isn't going to get a chance to get started anytime soon.

Lets hope that big oil's time is coming to an end in the next decade. America needs to think its way out of oil dependency, not fight religious wars to protect a 20th century resource. Oil won't get us into colonizing outer space, but hydrogen may. At the very least, lets begin pushing alternative fuels with some zeal. Then China can take over a leading role in the M.E. and HAVE Israel!

http://jessemtoler.blogspot.com/

Maria Davidson;
The Bush administration has good reason to believe the American people are that stupid. This administration has, from the very begining, done whatever it's had a mind to, then clams up until it can invent a way to "explain it", and half of the U.S. population has fallen for it evey time.

Here are several things to think about. #1 religion and poltics don't mix #2 any one who would cut your head off over a disliked poem is'nt ready for democry. #3 America had several civil wars why not Iraq. #4 why not mind our own business, we've got enough to worry about at home.#5 pre emtive strikes create more enemys than they kill #6 why do people around the world hate Americans ? could it be its because were always telling them how to run their lives? #7 who's going to pay for this? answer we are . #8 who gains from wars? is the almighty dollar worth human lives after we defeat them we send them our jobs.#9 our vice presidents former position with Halliburton and all the contracts they got smells fishy to me.

"But Iraq's first priority is simply to survive as an independent and united country."

THAT is the entire problem summed up in one sentence in your post. Iraq is a faux country, whose borders were created by England when it tried it's hand at imperialism, and failed as the US is. I see it turning out just like every American interference throughout the globe since World War 2. US government will get frustrated at the global negative media and withdraw, BUT only to get the media out of the picture. Then the US will do the same as it has in all other nations, interfere with CIA and covert operations arming one faction against the other, and vice versa, in order that the "nation" of Iraq never stabilizes and US corporations can rape and pillage the natural resources to make huge profits. USA capitalism all the way, ain't it grand?

dont worry about what we spend - just sit there and have a party and hope to hell we are still around to protect you when your time comes from the islamic terrorists.

Google is the best search engine Google

Iraq vs. California

This was sent to me via email - interesting, but I don't know who to credit:

War torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make of each.

As a fifth generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in California yesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about "Nearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this month!"

How about a monthly media dose of "600 women raped in February alone!" Or try, "Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!" Those do not even make up all of the state's yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.

Iraq's judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam let out 100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself sat in the dock months after his trial began. But imagine an Iraq with a penal system like California's with 170,000 criminals - an inmate population larger than those of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined. Just to house such a shadow population costs our state nearly $7 billion a year or about the same price of keeping 40,000 Army personnel per year in Iraq. What would be the image of our Golden State if we were reminded each morning, "Another $20 million spent today on housing our criminals"?

Some of California's most recent prison scandals would be easy to sensationalize: "Guards watch as inmates are raped!" Or "Correction officer accused of having sex with under-aged detainee!" And apropos of Saddam's sluggish trial, remember that our home state multiple murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in December 2005 - TWENTY SIX years after he was originally sentenced.

Much is made of the inability to patrol Iraq's borders with Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. But California has only a single border with a foreign nation, not six. Yet over 3 million foreigners who sneaked in illegally now live in our state. Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted alien felons incarcerated in our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the potential tabloid headlines: "Illegal aliens in state comprise population larger than San Francisco!" or "Drugs, criminals, and smugglers given free pass into California!"

Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes - more than the number of Americans lost so far in the years of combat operations in Iraq. In some sense, then, our badly maintained roads, and often poorly trained and sometimes intoxicated drivers, are even more lethal than IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices.) Perhaps tomorrow's headline might scream out at us: "300 Californians to perish this month on state highways! Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!"

In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying nearly the highest rates for electricity in the United States. Before complaining about the smoke in Baghdad rising from private generators, think back to the run on generators in California when they were contemplated as a future part of every household's line of defense.

We're told that Iraq's finances are a mess. Yet until recently, so were California's. Two years ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a $38 billion annual budget shortfall. That could have made for strong morning newscast teasers: "Another $100 million borrowed today - $3 billion more in red ink to pile up by month's end!"

So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be sketched by a reporter intent on doing so as a bankrupt, crime-ridden area with murderous highways, tens of thousands of inmates, with wide-open borders.

I myself recently returned home to California, without incident, from a visit to Iraq's notorious Sunni Triangle. While I was gone, a drug-addicted criminal with a long list of convictions broke into our kitchen at 4 a.m. was surprised by my wife and daughter, and fled with our credit cards, cash, keys, and cell phones. Sometimes I wonder who really was safer that week.