for Haliburton

You are right...some people who didnt vote for Bush probably still felt the same way. So the total is more than 51%.

And we get a tiny amount of our oil from Iraq. That is a fact. If Iraq vanished in a giant crater tomorrow, the US would still exist just fine. It would drive prices up a little...thats it.

Which Neocons are arguing that? None that I have ever heard.

Most Neocons I know favor development of alternative fuels for the same reason I do: so we are no dependant on our enemies for energy.

The benefit of having a democracy in place of a dictatorship is defence, not energy or economics. As a rule, democracies do not attack one another.

If the US played these games, we would not be installing democracies, now would we? A pliant dictator would serve those ends much better.

We cant make those people do what we want...they are answerable to various congresses/parlarments/whatever. Not to mention the masses, as they must be re-elected.

Dictators are not bound by any of that. Thats why the US supported dictators in the past. We could make them do what we wanted in the long term.

Even Britain's Blair is taking heat from his own population for being percieved as a US lapdog.

What did he lie about?

Those experts are not elected.

Dan Rather was worse because he was pretending to be unbiased. Bush is not unbiased.

If those 1000 deaths prevented 100,000, then they were not a mistake.

Please cite your Neocon source for this.

Who claimed that?

Oil still might...I dont disagree that the Iraqi People need to shoulder some of teh financial burden. After all, they will reap plenty of benefits from it in the future.

If we took a poll and a majority of the parents of those killed said it was still worth it, would that legitimize it in your eyes?

But not impossible. Over the long term it is not that big a deal.

How much of our oil do we get from Iraq?

At our highest peak, it was under 6.7%. Found this via a casual google search (current as of 2003):

Please note that from 91 to 96, Iraq provided NO OIL IMPORTS to the US at all...yet somehow we managed to survive just fine. Is it magic?

Wow... the post seemed to bring this argument to a screeching halt. I will have to remember to use it again next time someone says Iraq must have been about oil...

Oil is perfectly plentiful right now, so we have no need for Iraq's massive oil reserves. But when production across the globe starts decreasing, it becomes an entirely different story.

And as for you saying, on a whim with absolutely no authority or evidence, that the transition to alternative fuels will be easy, read this:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/...ivesToOil.html

In fact, I advise you to read the entire site.

I used to be naive like you and think the oil crisis wasn't real or that bad. I even wrote the website’s author about an alternative energy source I read about: bacteria that can produce a petroleum-like substance. Yes, they’d thrive in the desert, which seemed perfect because the desert isn’t used for anything. But on top of it all, the bacteria “pools” would be fed from manure run off from the cattle farms in the region. It seemed like a perfect solution.

Then Mr. Savinar gave me a lesson in thermodynamics. It never occurred to me that this bacteria only have an energy profit ratio of 3:1, which pales in comparison to oil’s 10:1 EPR. And there lies the problem: on a global level, no combination of alternative sources can be as efficient as oil.

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"

By that time it wont matter, because alternative fuels will be far more plentiful. Either way, oil reserves will not dry up overnight.

Which does not necessarily matter when you account for Oil's other variables; dependance on enemies, the difficulty in obtaining it and the fact that it is finite. What is nuclear's EPR btw? Has it occurred to you that the EPR efficiency of those bacteria might increase as the technology matures?

I never said it would be easy...I said it would not be as difficult as you make it out to be.

Who is your Neocon source for all of the assumptions you made in the previous post about Neocons and oil?

I recently researched about Saddam Hussein and what he did on the people of his own country. He was practicing genocide with chemical weapons. Now he could do that to his own people, he could very well do it to everyone else he hated.

"I recently researched about Saddam Hussein and what he did on the people of his own country. He was practicing genocide with chemical weapons. Now he could do that to his own people, he could very well do it to everyone else he hated. "

that WAS a good reason to go to war but the conservatives in congress NEVER would have went for a humanitarian war.

Saddam was a cruel bastard, no doubt, but that wasn't why we went to war. The "saving the Iraqi people" bit only started coming out once the WMD story fell through,

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Proudly a "South Park Republican"

"Saddam was a cruel bastard, no doubt, but that wasn't why we went to war. "

I could have sworn I heard Bush tell the American public that we were going to war for humanitarian reasons....

We went to war because we thought Saddam either had WMDs already or was trying to get them. Saddam would not let us look to make sure, so we had no other option but to invade.

The alternative was to cross our fingers and hope he was telling the truth. That was unacceptable to most of us. That is why we invaded.

It is traditional conservatives that oppose humanitarian wars...not Neo-cons. Most neo-cons support Clinton's intervention in Kosovo for example.

Please provide the quote that led you to believe the war was started for humanitarian reasons rather than reasons of defense.