Did I say flock to? I meant flee from. By one estimate, the Man Who Cannot Lose now has only 150 troops left.
I expect any time now we will be informed by the MSM that Sadr is now “exceptionally nimble” and thus “better positioned for total victory.”
“This led to the almost complete collapse of the army,” the official said. Intelligence reports suggest many Sadr fighters also fled to neighboring Iran in the wake of the recent Iraqi military operations.
Who wants to be tied down with thousands of followers anyway? This was probably his plan all along.
Meanwhile, the usual critics have smoothly transitioned from insisting we can’t win to insisting that we’re trying to “colonize” Iraq under “foreign rule” and steal their oil. Progress!
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When we’re back to it all supposedly being over the oil, the fat lady is definitely singing. The critics have nothing credible left.
It IS about oil, but not in the way the certain people mean.
Oil is at this time the most widely used (and probably the best) energy source around, and whoever controls it will wield enormous power, and will have the ability to yank the short hairs of industrialized societies on a whim.
So, "we" have been trying to prevent real nasties from monopolizing it, but if we wanted to take it over, we’ve managed to do it in such a way that our victims get super, extremely rich and thumb their noses at us when we beg them to increase output.
As far as big Western Companies cutting deals to extract oil, this is a reflection of where the skill and technology is in oil extraction, not colonization.
Are there competent Arab/Iranian oil extraction companies that are getting muscled out here?
Yes. It is "about the oil" if by that you mean oil is money and is therefore power and allowing it in the hands of dangerous people is dangerous and requires a response.
Clearly, if we wanted to simply seize most of the world’s oil fields and have the military operate them exclusively for American needs, we have had the power to do that for quite some time now. Obviously, we do not do that. (Well, it’s obvious to anybody sane who’s actually looked at it, anyway.)
It’s an open question, especially since September 11, whether the policy which developed in the Cold War of backing stable oil-producing autocracies which were not Communist was the best policy. But it was the policy. That’s what the Bush Doctrine, which I suspect will be with us for at least a generation, is the start of undoing. We’ll see where it goes.
Actually, Dean, the critics are strangely becoming right on this one. A lot of people — some war opponents, some former war opponents, some war supporters, some former war supporters — have been saying, subtly or blatantly, that Iraq "owes" us cheap oil, or even free oil.
I find it pretty disgusting, but it’s out there. It’s also economically ignorant, because Iraq is ramping up production, which will have a restraining effect on prices.
Dean,
I agree with every word of your post. Not sure if that’s a good sign for you, but there you have it.
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