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Bush Says U.S. Pullout Would Let Iraq Radicals Use Oil as a Weapon
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 5, 2006; Page A06
GREELEY, Colo., Nov. 4 -- During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.
As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday's elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq's considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hcmodule
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I'm really enjoying all the oil we have gotten!
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Bush will clutch at any hobgoblin he can find to scare people into thinking we are in Iraq for a worthwhile purpose.
Talk about flip-flopping! How many reasons have we been offered now?
I fondly recall how people said that Bush would never be influenced by polls. LOL - I guess that went out the window along with the phrase "Stay the course!"
The real reason we are there is that Richard Perle et al saw money to be made in Iraq, imo.
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 05, 2006 07:33 PM: Message edited by: Jeeperrr ]</font>
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I do think this war was about oil. (I would give credit to the poster who pointed me in this direction but his handle escapes me. It started with pmx or something of that nature.)
I do think we are reaching peak oil or will be in the next 20 years or so. This doesn't mean that the world is out of oil. It just means that we are running out of cheap easily extracted oil.
Our entire way of life it built on cheap petroleum. We heat with it. We drive with it. We raise and transport our food with it. We have built a suburban lifestlye around it. If oil is no longer cheap we will face an economic melt down.
I think we are in Iraq because of China and India. They will be our biggest competition for petroleum in the near future. If we are plopped smack dad in the middle of the biggest oil producing area in the world it gives us and advantage in controlling that supply in the future.
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Yes, this is a big follow-the-money issue. They could care less about cheap gas - they want control.
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Yep, some of the cheapest to extract oil comes out of Iraqi soil.
This situation is hardly different from events that occurred in ancient Rome where wars were fought over supplies of cheap grain in Sicily and north Africa.
