Behind the Steel Curtain: The Real Face of the Occupation, page 2

Originally posted by Agent47
And here you go with the oil thing, honestly if you researched it you would find how awful the system of oil production is in Iraq. Saddam really let the oil production go to hell over the years and if we honestly wanted to invade a country for oil we could have invaded one with much more up to date production methods (see Kuwait).

Agent47, in your research you seemed to have missed the point about the oil. Not only does Iraq have the third largest oil reserves (after Saudi Arabia and Iran) estimated at 115,000 million barrels. These reserves are almost entirely unexploited, due to the under investment by Saddam's regime and the war with Iran.

The issue with Iraq is that it fit the latest paranoia model: it is in the Middle East; can therfore be classed as un-democratic; possible Weapons of mass destruction; possible links to terrorist networks and a leader who was a godsend for the propaganda wizards.

Invasion of Kuwait is not real an option as they trade oil to American under the OPEC agreement anyway. The same goes for Saudi Arabia.

The USA's current energy policy calls for a steady flow of oil, the last figures I could get were for 2000 and stood at 26 supertankers a day, the USA has 149 of the worlds 600+ crude refineries. The US economy needs oil, and is the worlds largest growing energy consumer.

So to say that the invasion of Iraq is not about oil, but about the removal of a nasty dictator - whom the west put there in the first place, and support for 20 years - is a little naive.

So this war is not about the war on terror, more about the economic survival of a country. The US does not really care how much the oil costs to get out of Iraq, as it stands to loose more if it does not.

Now the question in supporting this war becomes a lot clearer - do you want to continue for as long as possible in this current scenario of oil dependancy? If so then this may only be the first of a number of resource wars that will be fought over the next few decades. Or do we look to an alternative.

Given that choice the current scenario becomes more appealing, so a few thousand people in a country thousands of miles away get it rough. At least we can all still drive down to the mall and consume our own body weight in donuts and DVDs every week.

But what is the alternative? Wind Power - not yet, Tidal Power - this is just getting worse, cut back on energy consumption - I would rather give up my automatic assault/hunting rifle. Or maybe, just maybe we could get the Nuclear option back on the table.....But that is a whole other thread.