Marie Cocco (CommonDreams): Bush's Oilmen Got it all Wrong in Iraq

[Jack Rabbit]

From Newsday (Long Island) via Common Dreams
Dated Tuesday August 9

Bush's Oilmen Got it all Wrong in Iraq
By Marie Cocco

No oil for blood.

The bumper sticker popular among left-leaning opponents of the conflict - no war for oil - has been inverted. There is no oil to be had for the shedding of American blood. Not for years anyway.

Remember the bold promises?

"Iraq has oil," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Fortune magazine in 2002, discussing the potential cost of an Iraq invasion and how it would be met. "They have financial resources."

Paul Wolfowitz, formerly Rumsfeld's deputy, was bolder: "The oil revenues of that country could bring in between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years," he told Congress as the war began. "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction."

Iraq exported 1.6 million barrels per day in July, according to the oil ministry, at least half a million barrels a day less than in the waning months of Saddam Hussein's regime. Hours-long lines at gas stations are a constant of daily life, and the country must import gasoline.

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