For years I was baffled as to exactly what the Bush Administration's real goal in Iraq was.  During the run up to invasion, I posted my fervent belief that it was all about the oil, stupid.  (I can't find the original entry, which would have been posted sometime around 2003, but the link takes you to a more recent blog page where I re-posted it.)

Since then, I've realized that I was right, and I was wrong -- it is all about the oil, but it's not about giving the American people access to cheap gas.   An American President who secured such access would see his approval ratings shoot through the roof, of course, and might well go down in history as one of our greatest American Presidents ever. 

On the other hand, keep the Iraqi oil off the market, as Greg Palast so ably documents has been the intention of Big Oil since 1925, and your buddies in Big Oil will doubtless reward you with billions.  Hmmmm... posterity, patriotism, national prosperity, a shining spot in the American history texts... or filthy lucre?  Lots and lots and LOTS of it?

It's obvious which choice our current Commander in Chief has made -- we ain't likely to see the Iraqi war stopped any time soon, and every minute it drags on, oil company profits continue to spiral.  Bush and Cheney may be Americans, but their true patriotic loyalty lies indisputably with Big Petroleum.   Why else do you think Cheney worked so hard to keep all his early energy policy meeting minutes privileged?

But how do you keep the Iraqi oil off the market?  Well, here's the aforementioned Greg Palast's invaluable chart detailing the answer to that query:

A History of Oil in Iraq

Suppressing It, Not Pumping It

• 1925-28
  "Mr. 5%" sells his monopoly on Iraq's oil to British Petroleum and
  Exxon, who sign a "Red-Line Agreement" vowing not to compete by
  drilling independently in Iraq.
• 1948 Red-Line Agreement
  ended, replaced by oil combines' "dog in the manger" strategy -- taking
  control of fields, then capping production--drilling shallow holes
  where "there was no danger of striking oil."
• 1961 OPEC, founded the year before, places quotas on Iraq's exports equal to Iran's, locking in suppression policy.
• 1980-88
  Iran-Iraq War. Iran destroys Basra fields. Iraq cannot meet OPEC quota.
  1991 Desert Storm. Anglo-American bombings cut production.
• 1991-2003
  United Nations Oil embargo (zero legal exports) followed by
  Oil-for-Food Program limiting Iraqi sales to 2 million barrels a day.
• 2003-? "Insurgents" sabotage Iraq's pipelines and infrastructure.
• 2004
  Options for Iraqi Oil -- The secret plan adopted by U.S. State Department
  overturns Pentagon proposal to massively in crease oil production.
  State Department plan, adopted by government of occupied Iraq, limits
  state oil company to OPEC quotas.

See, the fervent liberal belief that the Bush Administration is, above all else, incompetent, is just another smoke screen by some of the most cannily able, and morally depraved, political and economic operators in the history of our country.  We haven't 'won' this war because Bush and Cheney have never wanted us to 'win' this war.  Don Rumsfield famously claimed that you 'go to war with the army you have, not the army you want', but in that case, why were brigades of highly trained military policemen who fully expected to be sent to Iraq to deal with post invasion reconstruction never actually deployed?  Weren't they part of the 'army we have'?  But a successful post-invasion stage resulting in a relatively peaceful Iraq with a fully restored industrial infrastructure was never in the cards Bush and Cheney were playing.  Why?  It's simple -- once we 'win' the war and have Iraq under control, the American people are going to expect gas prices to drop. And we can't have that.

So, we never win the war, Iraq remains in chaos, oil prices continue to ratchet upward, and greasy oil barons like Bush and Cheney continue to pocket enormously inflated windfall profits from a largely artificial global petroleum shortage.

That those currently lining their pockets are war profiteers, and that the cash they're happily stuffing their pillows with is all blood money, should go without saying, but let's say it anyway.  Every cent of extra oil profit that an Exxon stockholder has socked away has been bought with the blood, toil, sweat, and tears of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.  Every death, every disfigurement, every act of destruction, every displacement, every maiming, every rape, every act of terrorism or torture that has resulted from this war has been entirely unnecessary -- and insanely profitable, to Bush, Cheney, and the people really pulling their strings.

We The People are not without our share of the blame, either.  Very few of us would ever have protested the War in Iraq had it gone swiftly and smoothly, and resulted in U.S. gas prices plummeting back to mid-90s prices. 

It's important to understand, however, that oil was cheap in the 1990s largely due to British Petroleum's discovery and quick exploitation of the North Sea oilfields.  That discovery brought gas prices to a historic low, when adjusted for inevitable inflation, and they stayed low throughout the 90s, allowing many of us to relax and believe that the 'oil shortage' had been entirely spurious, and we could start driving monster cars, trucks, and SUVs again and keep doing so for the rest of our lives.

But insatiable oil consumption on a global scale depleted the vast mineral wealth of the North Sea oilfields in less than a decade, and it's important to understand that the even vaster resources waiting under the Iraqi sands (should anybody ever actually get to drill and pump them) are just as finite.  Even if the neo-con dream of cheap oil for everyone had been allowed to come true, the result would simply be another 90s cheap energy bubble.  We might see gas drop back to $2 or so per gallon and stay there until maybe 2015 or so... but once we sucked the Iraqi oil fields dry (as we inevitably would) we'd be right back where we are now.

In a way, Bush and Cheney have done the American people a favor, although it's an unintentional one.  By creating an ongoing field of chaos and horror in Iraq, they have guaranteed that we can never establish the kind of pro-American regime there we would need to gain access to the seductive but ultimately treacherous wealth of the Iraq oilfields.  As such, our next President will have only one of two choices -- withdraw, and commit American resources to the development and exploitation of  alternate energy sources... or continue to pour American blood and treasure directly into the pocketbooks of Big Oil.

Hillary Clinton was almost undoubtedly in the pockets of Big Energy, which is most likely why she never could bring herself to recant or apologize for her pro-invasion vote, or fully commit herself to a real, full withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.  John McCain has been frantically signaling throughout his Presidential campaign that he's for sale to not just the highest bidder, but most likely to everyone else involved in the auction who can meet his minimum asking price.  Only Senator Obama doesn't seem to have anything murky in his past that would make me believe he intends to further line the pockets of Big Petroleum with American and Iraqi blood. 

It's way past time Americans started demanding serious commitment of our tax dollars to the development of viable alternative fuels and energy technologies.  It may even be too late.  But for more of the same -- complete dependence on foreign oil that continues to become more and more expensive every day -- certainly, pull that lever for John McCain.