A CYNICISM TOO FAR:

Yes, Oil Plays Big Role As Motive for Iraq War (Youssef M. Ibrahim, April 4, 2003, Newsday)

This war may not be about oil in the first place, but to argue that the United States is committing more than 300,000 armed men and women to the single area of the world sitting atop two-thirds of the global oil reserves without having oil on its mind is a bit of a stretch.

Of course oil is crucial. We consume 40 percent of its world production and import half of the oil we need. Furthermore, we have always preserved in one way or another a hegemony over the Persian Gulf region that in the past few years has become threatened by the rise of rogue regimes like Iraq and Islamic fundamentalism in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Checking this threat is unquestionably part of the scenario.

If proof were needed, even as the war is under way the press reports that the Defense Department has already contracted the same companies that extinguished many of the fires in Kuwait's oil wells in the past Gulf War, 12 years ago, to stand by. More important, the department has signed up a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton Co., to subcontract that work. A spokesman for Halliburton confirmed that the value of these contracts is estimated at $900 million. While the Halliburton spokesman claims the company got the job because of its 84-year-long experience, the smell of oil, business and politics wafts in the air.

One is entitled to wonder then why N. Korea made the axis of evil rather than Venezuela, no? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 4, 2003 8:38 PM