And you can’t pump oil by simply praying to Allah. Who in ISIS is going to run the facility?
The folks in ISIS might seize the oil fields, but they may find that Atlas is going to shrug on them. 
I’m tempted to reply that the fighting can’t go on forever . . . but Syria appears to offer a counterexample.
Not if it is an al Qaeda type terrorist organization. They sell nothing on the legal market. They may smuggle it to someone willing to pay but I don’t know who that might be. It won’t go into international pipelined or go far if the terrorists wish to fly their black flag on an oil tanker on the high seas.
My statement (“Today the threat to Iraq’s possession of oil is threatened by al Qaeda terrorists invading the soverign territory of Iraq and challenging the Shia dominated government there.”) is in response to XT in order to point out that there was absolutely no such threat to Iraq’s oil in March 2003 that drove us to invade Iraq.
To be fair to XT, he never said there was such a threat in 2003.
No he said upthread (“The trouble with the US doing nothing is that the same issues that actually drove us to invade in the first place are still viable. No, not WMD. Oil.”)
He says the oil issues today are the same that drove us to invade Iraq in 2003.
I know of no reports that Sunni terrorists were marauding and killing their way to Baghdad in 2003.
The only invasion of Iraq before March 20 was peaceful UN inspectors.
There were no terrorists running amok.
But ISIS can’t afford not to sell it on the legal market. ISIS wants to be a government.
There are still oil issues, but they are not the same as in 2003; see link in post #35.
The “issue” being referenced is plainly oil, not this specific threat to oil production. Read the sentence you quoted, it’s pretty simple.
This shouldn’t be a mystery to you, you asked XT if he meant the invasion was over oil, and he confirmed that that was his meaning.
Well Obama decided to send in 300 military advisers.
“This of course brings to mind JFK and his plan to send some military advisers to Vietnam:
On January 28, 1961 JFK approves the plan. In April of 1961 the first of 16,000 Green Beret advisors was sent to Vietnam. Kennedy sends 500 military advisors, a total of 1,400.”
How long will it take for Obama and the next President to catch up with Kennedy and Johnson?
This is a major mistake and will alienate millions of Sunnis from the U.S.
Why is it that when the best course of action is to do nothing that it is politically impossible to do just that?
This reminds me. This article mentions, in passing, that “the question of when and how to declare a new caliphate is highly controversial in jihadi circles.”
I’m guessing that it might, perhaps, be roughly analogous to a (nominally) communist country declaring “we have achieved communism,” in the original Marxist meaning of the term - in short, the movement’s ultimate goal.
Bringing it back to ISIS, though: Do we know anything about when the group might declare that “yep, we did it - what we have right here is a caliphate”? When / if they take Baghdad? Damascus? Jerusalem? Or is it more of a maximalist “all-lands-that-have-ever-been-under-Muslim-rule” type of thing?
Of course their name seems to indicate that they’d be happy with “just” Iraq and the Levant, but maybe that’s more of a “… for now” sort of thing?
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It’s debatable that the best option is to do nothing. I think it is, but I could be wrong.
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Why is it politically impossible to “do nothing”? Obama is doing next to nothing, but I don’t think whatever he’s doing is politically motivated.
Here is what XT wrote; (“The trouble with the US doing nothing is that the same issues that actually drove us to invade in the first place are still viable. No, not WMD. Oil.”)
He says the ‘same issues’ are ‘still viable’ and its ‘Oil.’ And whatever ‘issues’ that are supposedly the ‘same’ are what ‘drove us to invade’ in 2003 instead of ‘doing nothing’. And now according to XT ‘trouble with the US doing nothing’ today is because what ‘drove’ us to invade in 2003 is a ‘viable’ issue today.
In trying to defend XT, are you saying there are issues involving Iraq’s oil that ‘drove us to invasion’ on the one hand but had nothing to do with a threat to our economic or national security on the other.
I have stated that there was nothing that ‘drove us to invasion’ - it was a deliberate choice in no response to a threat of any kind. Are you saying the threat from ISIS today to Iraq’s oil is not part of XT’s special analysis?
What ‘same’ ‘issues’ about Iraq’s oil could ‘drive’ our nation to starting a war? Do tell.
Here is what XT wrote; (“The trouble with the US doing nothing is that the same issues that actually drove us to invade in the first place are still viable. No, not WMD. Oil.”)
Yes I agree. They are not the same. But XT says the same issues that drove us to invade are still viable. Here is what XT wrote; (“The trouble with the US doing nothing is that the same issues that actually drove us to invade in the first place are still viable. No, not WMD. Oil.”)
Cheney, who controlled Bush, stood to make money from oil and Halliburton.
Obama, for all his faults, does not.
But where is the oil issue today that matches the oil issue of 2003, that drove us to invade Iraq back then?
I took him to mean that the “issue” was lack of U.S. control of Iraqi oil. Obviously, my ability to give you his true meaning is limited. But that’s what I understood him to be saying: the U.S. invaded to control Iraq’s oil, so losing control of it now (in the form of a semi-friendly government losing control of it) might provoke a similar response.
I also submit that you’re being overly literal with the “drove” thing.
Can you elaborate on this? Specifics, please.
Iraq Violence: Government Forces Prepare To Strike Back At Sunni Islamists After Obama Offers Military Advisers
Isra’ al-Rubei’iReuters06/20/14 04:24 AM ET
Will US public lose interest and then press as Iraqi government troops and Shiite Milita’s launch a counter-offense and begin to drive the terrorists back to Syria?