The Southern Avenger has produced There's Nothing to Win in Iraq which is one of the best vidoes on the war on Iraq -- and, yes, he was nice enough to mention some of my comments.
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Anonymous said…
U.S. Oil majors have recently secured Production Sharing Agreements giving them 75% of the profits on the sale of Iraqi crude. Before the war, these same companies were facing the prospect of being cut out entirely.
125 billion (proven) barrels x $60 per barrel = 7.5 trillion dollars. Iraq crude is of the very highest quality, and so cheap to refine, but let's be generous and say a trillion in costs*. That still leaves 6.5 trillion, 75% of which is a cool 4.9 trillion. Moreover, Iraq is one of the few oil-rich regions of the world not yet fully explored, so there could be much as the same amount again waiting to be found, and the long-term trend for crude prices is nowhere but up.
Admittedly, these are paper winnings, not yet actual profits, but it is obviously false to assert that there is 'Nothing to win in Iraq'.
*The cost of physically holding the country doesn't count, as this is borne by the public.
Anonymous said…
I wish, I wish, I wish in vain, That we could sit simply in that room again...
Like it or not, Westernization (cell phones, computers, thongs,razz ma tazz)is here to stay in the Middle East. It's a waiting game now, probably till the roaring 20's to see all this make sense...Saudi fields-huge and well maintained are fading. Iran and Iraq have huge fields which are trashed to the point that they are squandering the energy that they contain. Better to let them sit un-f**d with while things settle down into some Soprano like State in both places.My childish peers (class of 71),
there are no good guys. Beautifully spoken Iranian diplomats have been flat out liars (lyres)since"Nightline"1979. Dreaming that policy changed because Cheney was out of town...wow wanna buy a hot nano-tech stock?The future is China; nice-nice on the outside and hard-hard on the inside. That's what my kids want, a dreamland 90% of the time having nothing to do with reality and 10% s*** work that they just want to get over with as soon as possible. WHB
Francis Fukuyama: When we was necons Arthur Koestler: When we was commies Robert Kagan the Leninist Lazar Kaganovich the Stalinist By now you all know that Francis ("The End of History") Fukuyama has filed for divroce from the Kristol/Podhoretz clans. In quite a number of speeches, articles (for example) and newsbites he has made it clear to all the interested parties (including potential employers like Presidents Hillary Clinton and John McCain) that he ain't a neocon, well, not a neocon like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and that he now considers himself now to be what? A "reformed neocon?" A "neo-neocon?" A "neocon-Lite?" In his latest "I'm-not-a-neocon" manifesto in the New York Times, "After Neoconservatism" FF describes himself as a proponent of "realistic Wilsonianism." And in the essay (thankfully not as long as "The End of History) he does quite a lot of brilliant dialectial thinking in expla
Matt Barganier desconstructs Andrew Sullivan's mea sorta culpa on Iraq in Time magazine (Sullivan seen above in a thoughtful pose on Bill Maher's "Real Time"). There have been many of those in recent weeks (including by WFB and Fukuyama ). In an commentary published last year, Oops! I helped start a War which was about one of the earlier apologizing-war-aplogists, I pointed out to the contrast between the way the losers who operate in the market (including financial analysts) are punished and the reality in which the losers in the political game (including foreign policy analysts) rarely get punished: Imagine: for a few years you were investing the money you had saved for your daughter's college education in one of those moderately conservative plans that provided some increase in the value of the investment without exposing it to major risks. But then your financial planner – let's call him Ken P. – got in touch with you and came up with a really great ide
Comments
125 billion (proven) barrels x $60 per barrel = 7.5 trillion dollars. Iraq crude is of the very highest quality, and so cheap to refine, but let's be generous and say a trillion in costs*. That still leaves 6.5 trillion, 75% of which is a cool 4.9 trillion. Moreover, Iraq is one of the few oil-rich regions of the world not yet fully explored, so there could be much as the same amount again waiting to be found, and the long-term trend for crude prices is nowhere but up.
Admittedly, these are paper winnings, not yet actual profits, but it is obviously false to assert that there is 'Nothing to win in Iraq'.
*The cost of physically holding the country doesn't count, as this is borne by the public.
That we could sit simply in that room again...
Like it or not, Westernization (cell phones, computers, thongs,razz ma tazz)is here to stay in the Middle East. It's a waiting game now, probably till the roaring 20's to see all this make sense...Saudi fields-huge and well maintained are fading. Iran and Iraq have huge fields which are trashed to the point that they are squandering the energy that they contain. Better to let them sit un-f**d with while things settle down into some Soprano like State in both places.My childish peers (class of 71),
there are no good guys. Beautifully spoken Iranian diplomats have been flat out liars (lyres)since"Nightline"1979. Dreaming that policy changed because Cheney was out of town...wow wanna buy a hot nano-tech stock?The future is China; nice-nice on the outside and hard-hard on the inside. That's what my kids want, a dreamland 90% of the time having nothing to do with reality and 10% s*** work that they just want to get over with as soon as possible.
WHB