Charles Curley wrote: > On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 04:27:34PM -0600, Stuart Jansen wrote: >> On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 16:19 -0600, Charles Curley wrote: >>> And if McCain gets elected, expect it to go up faster than if Obama >>> gets elected. >> Huh? How do you figure? > > The current US war has taken out the former second largest producer of > petroleum in the world.
Come again? Iraq's oil production was incredibly low during the time between the first gulf war and the present conflict, due to the embargos and such. True Saddam still enriched himself with the oil (particularly under the so-called oil-for-food program). To say that Iraq was the second-largest producer of petroleum in the world *before* we invaded Iraq is really silly. Iraq is now at #12 [1], which is much better than 8 years ago. No way was Iraq ever #2 though. Kuwait is probably around #7, which was always higher than Iraq. Remember that the first gulf war was essentially to secure the oil in Kuwait that Saddam's invasion threatened to cut us off from. People say the current war in Iraq is all about oil. That's obviously BS. For one, wars in the region always increase the price of oil (not decrease) and two, Iraq's oil production isn't affecting the supply that much comparatively. It might buy us a bit of oil security in the long run, but not much. My only conclusion is that the war in Iraq must have been launched for other, likely misguided, reasons. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chart_of_exports_and_production_of_oil_by_nation /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
