It's so hard to keep up with the Iraqi War and Occupation justifications. For those of us who opposed the Iraqi War and Occupation from the beginning, one reason was that our fellow citizens should not die to keep oil prices low. While it appears that the low oil prices never materialized, Bush and other Republicans are now arguing that we need to stay in Iraq to stabilize oil prices. It seems the GIs who unofficially named Iraqi base camps "Exxon" and "Mobil" knew what they were talking about. To paraphrase John Kerry from long ago--back when he was eloquent, what do you say to the last man to die for cheap oil prices?
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it's always been my contention that one of the reasons to invade iraq was to stop the blackmarket oil of saddam. guess we won't know until the procedings of the energy task force are released or something.
Well, there is a certain truth there. After all, if Saddam had still been in power and sanctions had been lifted, Iraqi oil production would almost certainly be significantly higher now, and prices lower, depressing profits for the higher cost producers such as Texas... but as long as the Iraq war continues, the chances of increased production are pretty much zip.
Well our invasion has stabilized the price of oil, i.e. keeping the
Iraqi oil off the market, and maintaining the risk-premium, has kept the price higher than it otherwise would have been. We all know who that benefits.