Fw: It's Not a War for Oil (washingtonpost.com)

The following link should take you to an editorial from the Washington Post written by Thomas Lippmann of the Middle East Institute. The article is interesting in the ways that it is wrong. Its attempt to make the case that oil is not at the center of U.S. policy is based on the same errors that many others in the U.S. also believe. The core of his argument is that:

1) the U.S. doesn't "need" the oil.........evading the issue of whether or not U.S. oil companies would like to CONTROL Iraqi oil as well as use Iraq as a military base to further control in some way, the governments of the other oil producing countries in the region; and,

2) an Iraq with a government set up by the U.S. and occupied by U.S. troops would not necessarily favor the U.S. oil companies in their dealings! (That one is amazingly naive or dishonest.....)

Here are two quotes from the article followed by the link. As I wrote, I don't believe that this is a "good" article, but it is useful to understand the logic of the "It's Not About Oil" perspective.

Alan Spector

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Moreover, the record shows that even countries whose rulers are hostile to us are willing to sell us oil because they need the money. Saddam Hussein's Iraq itself sells oil to American consumers under the "oil for food" program. If the United States buys no oil from Iran or from Moammar Gaddafi's Libya, it is because we cut them off -- not because they cut us off. Libya would welcome the return of a petroleum relationship with the United States.

Finally, an American takeover of Iraq would not, in the long run, give the United States guaranteed access to Iraqi oil. A democratic Iraq might well decide that its future prosperity would be best served by a supply relationship with, say, China, now an importer of oil with rapidly growing demand. The days when industrialized countries acquired ownership of oil in producing countries are decades in the past.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35690-2003Jan23.html