John Mace --pathetically, it was merely a figure of speech. I wish I had the extraneous cash with which to wager! How about if I can say I told you so (if my premises pan out) and you can call me a silly if they don’t?
I think Israel is an important factor in the equation. I sometimes feel the ME situation is such a many headed Hydra, that there is no good solution or even a set of solutions.
and with that platitude, I bow out of the discussion.
Ah, Fundies, neocons and Zionists, elucidator. You’ve cornered the market.
Will you be calling Mr. LaRouche next, or casting your lot with Cynthia McKinney?
When you blame stuff on the Jews, you’re in such fun company.
Tom Dewey, indeed. I was but a child at the time. LBJ I remember very well, Truman, not so much.
As you certainly know, your insinuations are insulting in the extreme. I consider it beneath my dignity to rebut, as it should have been beneath yours to assert.
Shame, sir. Shame.
Whatever. You spout off about crackpot end-time theology, you deserve what you get.
Mr. Moto, do you contend that Israel has no influence on the current administration’s Middle East policy with regard to Iraq? Remove from elucidator’s post this one sentence:
Do you dismiss the realpolitik questions raised in the remainder of the post as mere Jew-bashing?
Well, if I were to rearrange the letters of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I might get the Betty Crocker cookbook.
I don’t know what that proves in either case.
I’m sorry, Mr. Moto, but you’re ducking my questions. Do you believe that the administration gave no thought to the effects on Israel in the decision-making leading to the Iraq war? If yes, why?
If you believe the administration did in fact factor Israel into its decision-making process, on what grounds did they do so? And how do those grounds differ from elucidator’s questions concerning the establishment of American forces within easy striking distance of Israel’s enemies, or the effects of their presence upon Syria and Iran? Just as two examples of issues raised by luci and not answered by you.
And while I’m asking questions like a MF, do you agree that part of the administration’s political base consists of Fundamentalist Christians, and that a segment of that movement considers Israel to play a vital role in its end-times theology? If you disagree, what is your basis?
Originally posted by QuickSilver
No worries.
The EU nips the EU in the bud all by itself. 
So you’re buying into elucidators theories as well?
Of course, American policy in the Mideast centers at all times around an alliance with Israel. This isn’t a secret. It is also consistent American policy for close to sixty years across administrations of both parties.
Whatever small part end-time theology has to play in the Republican power base (and I would wager that is is quite small, as this theology isn’t common even among the religious Right), it would have little to no effect on such a longstanding alliance.
I thus considered elucidators views on the subject to be either crackpot or a deliberate provocation. Not nice stuff in any case, and something he should be called on.
So where is it? We’ve heard the invasion of Iraq was for oil; we’ve heard the invasion of Afghanistan was for oil, and yet imports of crude oil from Iraq is down.
Crude Oil Imports from Iraq - avg bbls/day (in thousands)
1998 - 336
1999 - 725
2000 - 620
2001 - 795
2002 - 459
2003 - 481
2004 - 652
2005 - 516* Jan thru Mar only
You’ll note that in the year before the “war” with Iraq, oil imports from that country were at an all-time high. Seems kinda stupid to disrupt a record supply if your goal is to get more.
And there ain’t any oil coming in from Afghanistan.
That’s not for want of trying, Oh Uncle of Beers, the Bad Guys keep blowng up pipelines.
Oops. Forgot a link to the DOE .pdf from which those numbers came:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec3_8.pdf
Who gets the revenue for the oil now bought, after the war?
Who got the rebuilding contracts?
IOW who pays and who gets payed?
Yeah, that’s true - and that’s what everyone wants out of a stable Afghanistan - a pipeline. There isn’t anybody who believes Afghanistan has all that much in the way of oil reserves. So the claim of invading Afghanistan for her oil is kinda dubious. There is, however, quite a bit of natural gas there.
My first post said specifically leave out the line about end-times theology. Or did you overlook that?
Looked to me like you were trying to excuse that, and I was unwilling to do so.
That ripped it. Pit time, Moto.
While I’m neither buying nor selling the blood for oil theory, that table is a bit misleading in its choice of dates (I am assuming the data is as presented in the DOE site) and IMHO suggests more monumental incompetence on the administration’s part rather than the absence of desire for (more of) Iraq’s oil to be on the market. The idea that a free, democratic Iraq the administration envisioned would be less productive than a heavily sanctioned Iraq under the bitter dictator who would cut off the oil to spite the world regardless of the impact on his on people sounds ridiculous to me.
Given that the administration considered that Iraq’s oil would be sufficient to pay for Iraqi reconstruction I think it is safe to say that the administration expected oil production to climb substantially rather than ebb slowly. To assume that the administration would consider the shoddy state of the Iraqi oil industry given that they seemed to disregard pretty much all other. I also doubt that the administration would have anticipated repeated attacks on pipelines and the rest of Iraq’s oil infrastructure over such a protracted period of time
From the site below (also DOE), Oil production in 2001 was not at the level of pre-Gulf War I (and possibly below pre Iran-Iraq - the table only goes back to ~1980. (Side note - while the US may be importing more Iraqi oil than ever before I think the overall export level (or production level) is a far better measure of the impact of Iraq’s oil given that oil is a commodity and more production anywhere will impact prices/supply.
Cite?