Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

So much for the Neo con energy policy!

http://zfacts.com/p/35.html

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

I guess that disproves the "war for oil" theory once and for all. If this was about the oil, we could all be driving around for 75 cents a gallon gas right now.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

We went into Iraq because they have the second largest crude oil reserves, and securing our economic interests in those reserves is the best way to keep our corporations fat and happy. We don't necessarily want to provide cheap oil to US drivers, we just want to be able to make a mad profit off of the oil they consume.

Consider the following:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/irqindx.htm

The four giant firms located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. During the final years of the Saddam era, they envied companies from France, Russia, China, and elsewhere, who had obtained major contracts. But UN sanctions (kept in place by the US and the UK) kept those contracts inoperable. Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, everything has changed. In the new setting, with Washington running the show, "friendly" companies expect to gain most of the lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the coming decades.

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Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

I don't deny Iraq was mishandled, but I content gas prices would be high even without miltary action on Saddam. Lack of a serious US energy policy is the real culprit.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

So much for the Democrats' control of Congress!

Harry

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

I'm not blaming the Iraq War as the only reason for the prices, obviously China's growing demand and the finite supply of retrievable oil is the main reason.

However, making the Middle East full of 'stable, easy to work with regimes' was a big part of the rational for going to war

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Well, let's face the facts fellas and gals: Until we replace it with something that works just as well, we in the USA are an OIL ECONOMY. If we have to go to war to help protect our way of life (by preserving the oil flow) then that's just a fact of the 2007 world we live in.

If we kill some terrorists along the way, then all the better.

I certainly feel sorry that along the way innocent soldiers have to die. I lost an uncle in Vietnam and my grandmother and her daughters have never stopped missing him and have never stopped feeling cheated by losing him; so I do know firsthand how the families feel.

But until we are all ready to stop using imported petroleum products, then we have no rational basis for complaining.

Facts are sometimes hurtful.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Our government lied to us over and over, and that's a rational basis for complaining. We can argue about whether or not the half a trillion dollars we've spent on the war could have been better spent researching alternative fuels, but nobody can tell me the loss of life is worth it.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

OK, complain about government lies. (did not start with GWB though.)

Complain about loss of life (anything worth having is worth dying for).

Throw the bums out (Democratic congress in place now, Democratic president not far behind.)

But until we are all ready to stop using imported petroleum products, don't complain about the government and the military trying it's darndest to secure the world's #1 oil region.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

what an incredibly naiive & simplistic view of things.

before you subscribe to the 'with us or against us' train of thought, why not cut out waste, raise CAFE standards, subsidize alternative energy instead of fossile fuel corporations, build green homes / buildings, more efficient mass transit, changes in foreign policy, elimination of corporate lobbyists - those are the ways to protect our way of life WITHOUT going to war. we are fast approaching $500 billion spent on the quagmire that is iraq without any visible improvement to our way of life. on the contrary, it has done WAY more harm than good and looks like that won't change for a very, very long time. you've got to think out of the box my friend. 4.8% of the worlds population need not suck 25% of the worlds fossile fuel energy, and war is not to be taken lightly. who know how many thousands of families know that all too well.

if that's what you consider a 'way of life' then maybe that way of life is long overdue for a reevaluation. imho.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

It's simplistic alright, broken down to the simplest terms. It's not naive at all; it's just the FACTS.

And if you know anything about me, you know I am an ultra-conserver, a maximum recycler, and completely for all the things you mentioned. And I am FAR from Naive. And I'm not for the war, but we cannot now leave with the job undone or it was all just a waste.

But those things do not change in one generation. They will take time. We are on the right track now - do it slowly without disrupting society.

But a world in which WHACK! the Middle East oil is unattainable or prohibitively expensive is not a world any of us are ready for right NOW, TODAY, in 2007.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

i'm sure you're not, but you realize a 3 or 4% increase in CAFE coupled with elimination of subsidies can come close to eliminating the need for middle east oil. from there we push alternative energy.
the war is already a waste i'm very sorry to say. during vietnam we heard the same exact things - so many americans have died so we must push on in their honor... we can't let them die in vain... so we continued the war for another year or two - heard the hawks tell us that we are 'turning a corner' etc. but it only got worse until 58K americans were gone over bullshit. these days you'll hear cheney tell us the insurgents are 'in their last throes' blah blah. riiiigght. today we hear the same as 30 years ago - the more americans that die, the more we hear that we can't let them die in vain. its an unending deadly cycle, and it IS a waste. that's the horrible cold truth. by ending this war - a war that CANNOT be won militarily - we can allow the inevitable sunni-shiite civil war to play it's course without losing more americans at the least. the rise of iraqi nationalism is the only thing that can save the country - and that can only happen after we are gone, and they can show the world they are no longer occupied. that's the sad reality as i see it, and history has shown no occupier has ever succeeded in 'democratizing' the a country by force, or without the support of the people. btw - how's that surge going? you understand that was all about extending the inevitable and saving face. time to face reality people - this one is lost. i'm sorry.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Well, everyone can have an opinion, and you are welcome to yours.

Maybe the Iraqi people are too backward to understand that we are not "occupying" them but trying to give them their own freedom back after 30 years of tyranny, murder, robbery, rape, and genocide.

We are needed only long enough for the Iraqi Army and police to be able to take over their own security issues. Once that is done (and that will be done) we can gracefully exit. We don't have to "win it militarily" to accomplish the mission.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

well, we've directly or indirectly been responsible for as many iraqi deaths in 4 years as saddam hussein (our man back in the 80s) was responsible for in 30 years. think about that for a bit. they don't want american style democracy at these prices. they want us out. sometimes in life mistakes are made. some are larger than others and they have terrible consequences. some are gargantuan. i think this falls into the latter category. i hope you are right and i am wrong. while the years grind on i guess we just continue to count the dead and run up the deficit. what an absolute mess.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

If the objective of the continuation of the Persian Gulf war was to obtain oil, our troops would not be being killed by insurgent attacks in Iraq, as all of the Iraqi people would have been placed into concentration camps with any resisting civilians being killed. If you honestly believe that the United States resumed a war with Saddam Hussein's regime for Iraq's oil, why are the Iraqi people not in concentration camps and why does an elected government now exist in Iraq?

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Are you serious? Do you really think that's the way they would play it if they wanted access to the oil?

I'll make my point again: They didn't go there to steal the oil... they toppled a government and "installed" their own so that they can influence Iraqi policy and allow U.S. oil companies to secure contracts.

If they rounded everyone up and stuck them in concentration camps the global outrage would expose them for what they are... a bunch of crooks.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

yeah, the suggestion of concentration camps is ludicrous for so many reasons - one of which is that, unlike european jews in the late 30's, the iraqi's are armed to the teeth. it cannot be denied that securing oil is ONE of the reasons for our incursions into the middle east, and in all likelyhood the one that weighs the most.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Think about this for a second:

"We" are responsible only for the Iraqi Army soldier deaths which occurred during the combat invasion portion of the war in the first weeks.

Any and All deaths after that are on the heads of "The Insurgents" who like complete moronic idiots continue to blow things and people Up for no apparently logical reason.

If the insurgents stopped "Insurging Against Freedom" today, there would be not another round fired.

"We" are not instigating anything, nor are we acting aggressively. The soldiers are doing what they are told to do, which is to train Iraqi Army and Police units and try to establish safe zones away from the mad bombers.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

i said 'directly or indirectly'. please take your emotions out of it for a second although i agree that's hard to do. however, if the shoe was on the other foot, i wonder if you would still state that 'we are not acting aggressively'. most native people would consider a foreign massbombing, invasion, occupation, and it's ancillary affects of hundreds of thousands of violent deaths, as 'instigation' or 'acting aggressively'.

this is the hard truth - any deaths that have occurred as a result of the invasion and occupation, regardless of who perpetrated them, are an indirect result of that invasion & occupation. if we hadn't invaded would there be 'al qaida in iraq'? a sunni insurgency? shiite death squads & militias? none of these things existed prior to our invasion, so any deaths by these groups are in fact an 'indirect' result. it's very sad & ugly, but that's the reality of what amounts to a collosul failure of planning and excecution.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

I understand that you used the word "indirectly" and I saw that in the first post.

But one cannot, as a Patriot and a human, take "emotion" out of the picture when it comes to war and the politics thereof.

I'm not saying the war was the best idea ever. But I was raised as a Texan, and one of the things I learned early was "don't start something you're not gonna finish" and if we leave before the job is done, it will be just exactly that.

And there was no "failure of planning and execution" at all. The best war plan ever devised loses steam Day One of the war. It's impossible to foresee everything that happens in a wartime situation.

What you do in war is adjust your plan on the fly, which we have done, and to the best ability of the US Military.

Stay the course, execute the plan, and reap the reward of a safe, secure Iraq, which will be a great future political ally in a tough region.

Don't cut and run. The Bad Guys see that as weakness.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Concentration camps have existed for centuries. They are standard military protocol for containing individuals who cannot be allowed to roam freely. If they were created, next to no one would care.

When was the last time you heard someone complain about the concentration camps that existed in the Second Boer War? It is only when concentration camps are intentionally made death camps do people complain about them and even then, that occurs long after the fact. If the US both did institute concentration camps in Iraq and made them death camps, no one would have said anything about them until long after the US had withdrawn its troops from Iraq.

Unless the Iraqi people are being held in concentration camps until the Iraqi oil reserves are drained, the United States is not and cannot be in Iraq for oil.

If all of the Iraqis were being put into camps, any that are outside of the camps would be quite easy to find, especially if they fired a weapon and upon finding them, the troops would kill them. Within thirty days, all of Iraq's population could be contained within a small area with only what the US gives them and there would be no insurgents to attack US troops. If the US truly is in Iraq for oil, US troops would not be tip-toeing around Iraq while the Iraqis run free.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Holy cow, let's put this guy in charge! All wrapped up in thirty days... then he can pose in front of one of his concentration camps with a Mission Accomplished banner hanging off the barbed wire.

When Cheney says "We'll be greeted as liberators," or "We're turning the corner" it tells me that we have failed at exactly those two things. This administration has a Plan A for the war, and Plan B is to make Plan A work. Do we even know what victory is any more? What is the definition of victory? Crush the military opposition- done. Change the regime- done. So what else? Train the Iraqi army? Excuse me but boot camp takes six weeks, not years and years.

We are building a $600 million embassy in Iraq. It will be the size of the Vatican, and will have blast resistant walls and volleyball courts. That should tell you right there that we plan to stay for a long time and we plan for it to continue to be dangerous for a long time.

If anyone thinks we went to war to liberate the people, topple a bad evil dictator, or to protect us in some way:
1. Were there peoples of the world more oppressed than in Iraq? I say throw a dart at the African continent and you'll find more starvation, disease, and violence than in Iraq.

2. Were there dictators more ruthless or unstable than Saddam? I'm not incredibly familiar with world leaders but I believe at the very least Kim Jong Il is off his rocker.

3. Were there nations that posed more of a direct threat to the U.S.A. than Iraq? Certainly. North Korea and Iran come to mind.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Sure it does. But have you read the kind of problems they are having? The Insurgents are killing and blowing up the police and Army troops and disrupting the training in various and successful ways.

I survived Marine Corps boot camp, and no one was there trying to blow me up or kill me when I graduated. No one tried to kidnap and behead me. Dealing with those things might have made boot camp a little bit longer. No one paid me to become an informant or threatened to kill my family if I did not help them attack the Marine Corps.

It's not easy, it's not fun, it's not cheap, but you don't CUT AND RUN. Ever. Stay the course, get the job done.

And no place else in the world with a "bad dictator with oppressed people" has as much strategic importance to the USA as the Middle East does.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Good point.

What is "the job?" A safe and secure Iraq? Wouldn't that be accomplished by us leaving?

...because of the oil. I fully understand that most of the world's supply is controlled by countries which are lukewarm to us or worse. Strategically it is vitally important to make sure we have access to it- but there are other ways.

Every day that we have troops over there we are cultivating future enemy combatants. If you had enemy soldiers driving up and down your street, kicking in doors and taking away fathers and husbands, you would learn to resent and hate them. For the security of Americans home and abroad I would suggest we put down the stick and back away from the hornet's nest.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Well, the media and all the experts I have read quotes from say that if we leave before Iraq is secure (meaning the Iraqi Army and police are in place and armed and supported enough to keep the Insurgents and civil warriors at bay) then the country will decay into Civil War between the Shiites and the Sunnis and possibly the Kurds.

We need to try to prevent that from happening, and just leaving and saying, "OK , you boys just settle your differences. Last man standing, just give GW a call." will not be getting the job done.

We could end up with another nuclear-bomb-seeking fool ( like Saddam was and like the wacko in Iran is) being in charge of Iraq. Don't you see the point of not allowing that to happen?

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

That is true; the insurgents are killing and blowing up the Iraqi police and army, but the problems that are being encountered in Iraq are not in training Iraqi troops, but in having an underequipped, underfed, unpaid Iraqi army.

The entire reason the Iraqi army's casualties have been so high and possibly part of the reason for US casualties is that the US military until recently has been unwilling to supply the Iraqi troops with any sort of weapons or supplies. After the 2006 elections in the US, the US military has sold humvees to the Iraqis, but not much else.

That is why we need to have so many troops in Iraq and that is why things are occurring so slowly. That is also why the insurgents have been able to kill so many people (i.e. Iraqi civilians, Iraqi police, Iraqi troops and coalition forces, in order of most to least casualties) in Iraq as they have, as the Iraqi troops in their present condition are simply unable to saturate their own country and that is why the US military has tried to saturate Iraq with US troops.

There is actually a reason for this. In the past, when US arms were supplied to middle eastern countries, they were used against the US a decade or two later. My personal opinion is that the US should supply the Iraqis with equipment used in the beginning of the Vietnam war, which is up to par with the equipment of most modern armies, but not good enough that it would inflict as many casualties on US troops as modern military equipment would inflict if it is used against the United States, with the exception of things like humvees, which would pose a little more risk to US troops than their Vietnam era equivalents if enemy combatants used them. However, my personal opinion is not what the US military is executing in Iraq and it instead opted to have the Iraqi army use what was left of Hussein's military equipment and what other coalition members donate.

Every defense analyst in the country says that if we leave Iraq before we are done (i.e. now), problems will escalate there such that we will forced to return within a few years and the problems (e.g. casualties) will be substantially greater (i.e. the difference will not be in percentages but in order(s) of magnitude).

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

No, I don't. We are not World Police. How about another approach... let nations have weapons up to their armpits. You've got nothing to worry about if they're your friends. Trying to keep other countries from having power is a pretty paranoid worldview.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

I seriously doubt that. I don't have time to search now but I bet I can find a great deal of defense analysts that say that Iraq is already like the wild west. People are already dying at a tremendous rate and if we leave at least we stop dying.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Many of these countries will NEVER be our friends. This is a complicated matter. Whether or not we should have stuck our nose in this business is one thing. But leaving now should not be an option. I agree that we must set a time-table and clear directives to the Iraqi government to self-secure (and soon!), so that we CAN get the heck out ASAP, but leaving now will send the country into chaos.
The insurgent approach is to try and make it SO unbearable for us to be there that we will lose our will, and then we'll leave. That's exactly what they want, becasue they KNOW that right now (if the US were gone), that they could topple the fledgling Iraqi gov't - probably pretty quickly. Civil War and genocide are likely. Not to mention Iran's glee (if we left now). Don't think for a second that they wouldn't jump into the fight for control of Iraq. Then, most likely, wholesale terrorist activities would not only be tolerated, but welcomed - and funded. This is a sticky wicket. Painful as it is, now is not the time to cut bait.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Steve (gumby) thanks for that very succinct summary. I agree wholeheartedly.

There WILL be a correct time to leave, and that will be based on what is happening politically and socially in Iraq.

NOT based on what is happening politically and socially in the USA.

Re: Gas prices have DOUBLED since Iraq War started
 

Iraqis are blowing each other up, unlike the Japanese who were stacking the bricks to rebuild Hiroshima as occupation began.

But that doesn't excuse the US part in this.