How’s your surge, Mr. Oil Crony president?
It’s not working so hot for Iraqis.
But Exxon seems to think it’s peachy. I wonder if they plan to send flowers and a thank you note to the families of the 3943 US troops who died to make Exxon richer than 2/3rds of the planet’s countries.
How many troops per gallon does your car get?
February 1st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
They were mentally retarded…like you…that were used by these animals. You are a sick puppy to write what you wrote here.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I just dropped in to see if the analysis was really as context free and juvenile as Confederate Yankee made it out to be. Sorry to see that he didn’t exaggerate.
Any attack is a tragedy and we’re certainly not at the point where the democratically elected government is home free but even with Al Queda stooping to tricking the mentally disabled into wearing their bomb vests they can only manage two explosions years into a campaign to get a caliphate going.
February 1st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Of course I oversimplified, but I stand by that generalization. You need deeper analysis? Okay….
So long as al-Sistani and al-Sadr believe it’s to the benefit of Shias to stay sidelined, the surge will proceed. A steady, slow bloodbath that will claim lives slower over more years, but will still result in the same number dead. And as long as the Iraq government leaders can enrich themselves without deadlines, they’ll enjoy their welfare dependency. One can have a strongman as a puppet or a whole slate of puppets feeding off the trough of the US public treasury. Money and perceived power trumps a whole lot of religious ideology.
Big Oil profits are more driven by speculators than by the increased demand of China and India. When speculators believe a troop withdrawal deadline is imminent, they’ll speculate the price of oil down far below what any economist is currently projecting. (And there’s no other proof for my assertion than we’ll just have to wait and see).
Of course, the use of handicapped women is vile, but that’s always how terrorism works. They can’t come close to matching our might toe-to-toe, so they’ll always adapt and innovate to achieve their objective, which is to defeat the superior power’s messaging.
After awhile, if most of the populace faces up and down violence instead of steady improvement, any occupation is doomed to fail. That’s elementary, no matter who the occupier is or how well motivated and well performing its soldiers.
But one needs only view the many examples of cronyism, such as the recent report on Parsons, to see how much war profiteering is going on. ‘Follow the money’ remains a viable adage. That and political concerns are the only remaining impetus that keeps our troops in Iraq. History’s lessons were completely ignored for nearly four years of this conflict and are still given short shrift now.
National security? Compassion for the Iraqi people? C’mon, don’t make me laugh.
February 1st, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Apparently not as many as it used to. But then again, I don’t have a particularly soldier-efficient vehicle.
Particularly one that runs on HUMAN BLOOD!
February 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
We don’t need to wait for proof, its a bogus assertion, a desperate attempt to justify your ludicrous assumption that Exxon is profitable only as a result of the Iraq war
Oil profits are NOT driven by speculators. Full stop.
Exxon made more money than any company in U.S. history in 2000. long BEFORE the invasion of Iraq . The foundation for its profits were laid decades ago.
Monies used to invest in finding new oil wells and build the pipelines to produce oil have already been made decades ago.
Their profit margins are extremely modest and lower than that of drug manufacturers and banks. Is the windfall banks and drugs companies experiencing the result of the Oil Crony President?
As oil prices rise, oil industry costs rise, they spend alot more money today to keep oil flowing from older fields. Oil that Americans insist on using endlessly.Royalties paid to lease rights from gov’ts and 40% tax that oil companies pay factors into rising costs. The cost to maintain rigs, drill in existing oil fields has risen over 50%.
Finding promising areas to develop new reserves has become increasingly difficult since the bulk of the world’s oil reserves sit in the ground controlled by authoritarian regimes. The higher the price of oil , the easier it is for those regimes, of which Iraq is NOT a part of, to maintain power.
OPEC nations alleged they were pumping at full capacity, but in truth, knowing the Arabs, as I do, they were lying..they were holding off to force the market demand to exceed availablilty and force oil prices higher. That has NOTHING to do with Iraq or the War, or the President.
So far all efforts to increase the worlds supply of oil have FAILED.
ou’re “deeper analysis” is nothing more than a sad joke at best. The Troops deaths have NOTHING to do with Exxon’s profits. It takes a sick twisted being to use the noble sacrifices of our troops to make a senseless assertion that amounts to nothing more than bald faced lie about the relationship betweenExxon’s profits, the President and this war.
And the surge is working quite well. Petreaus had implemented the COIN strategy in his Mosel when he commanded the 101st, and did so without the support or blessing of his commanding officer. It was a contentious issue.
Apparently you know as little about that as you do about what fuels the oil industry prices and profits.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
[…] Bob points us to some of the leftist rhetoric after the bombing: How’s your surge, Mr. Oil Crony president? […]
February 1st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Defending Exxon profiteers is not the job of the US taxpayer or United States Armed Services.
Full Stop.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Now that we have the specific allegations of war profiteering, perhaps Mark and Kevin could outline exact what Exxon has done and how much they made.
Please be specific, with links.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:22 am
Jeez come on guys, at least he didn’t blame the zionists for the war . . . though it wouldn’t surprise me to find that he believes the JOOS are behind it but just doesn’t have the courage to say it in public.
It is always some conspiracy, some plot, some nefarious Machiavellian machination that drives history according to lesser minds such as this guy possesses.
3942 American dead, and instead of blaming, you know, al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army or ex-Ba’athists, he blames Exxon.
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:52 am
Ken McK sez:
Jeez come on guys, at least he didn’t blame the zionists for the war . . . though it wouldn’t surprise me to find that he believes the JOOS are behind it but just doesn’t have the courage to say it in public.
Ah, the unsubstantiated allegation… what was that about ‘lesser minds,’ again?
3942 American dead, and instead of blaming, you know, al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army or ex-Ba’athists, he blames Exxon.
Well, the blame should go squarely on the current administration and warmongering idiots like yourself. I mean,putting the soliders in harm’s way and all that…
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:27 am
smarterthanyou sez:
We don’t need to wait for proof, its a bogus assertion, a desperate attempt to justify your ludicrous assumption that Exxon is profitable only as a result of the Iraq war
Heh, heh… interesting discussion underneath, STY, but all you did was lay a smackdown on a strawman. Kevin did not say that.
February 2nd, 2008 at 6:43 am
Tom sez:
Now that we have the specific allegations of war profiteering, perhaps Mark and Kevin could outline exact what Exxon has done and how much they made. Please be specific, with links.
You seem like a bright guy, Tom, so have at it:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2005/crudedesigns.htm
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.asp?strID=C00121368&cycle=2006
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/future-of-iraq-the-spioilis-of-war-431114.html
Mind you, you may need to do some dot-connecting as well as keep track of the timeline of certain events, but I’m sure you’re up to the task.
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:41 am
I did not say Exxon began the war, I said they profited from it. The war is principally the fault of neocons like Cheney, and George Bush. Butnumerous companies in the oil business - cronies tied to Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc, have profited from the war and historically, Americans do not approve of such profiteering.
If you look at the oil and oil services index (OIX and $OSX) on longtime charts, you can see where the stock prices of these companies began rising fast: around February/March 2003. That also coincides with gasoline’s rise from about $1.30/gal to $3.30/gal. I suppose the market speculation and actual pump prices is merely a coincidence.
Sure, demand has an impact, but the rate of rise from that demand could be seen through the 1990s, as a much slower incline. And like occurred after Gulf War 1, the war spike up came back down, though demand was steadily rising then, too.
As Paul noted, I didn’t assert the war was the only source of Exxon’s profits. I made no comparisons about profit margins. Bottlenecks exist particularly in refinery capacity. That, too, fuels speculation. But nothing fuels as much speculation as a war in a major oil country. Even sabre rattling against Iran makes the prices jump.
Of course authoritarian regimes maintain power in nations where oil is its chief source of income. The economies of US oil producer states also do much better when oil prices are spiking, often helping governors stay in power, and they’re not necessarily authoritarian.
Suggesting market speculation doesn’t correlate to price increases is naive. When NASDAQ was peaking in 1999-2000, computer component prices also were peaking. I could cite other examples.
Sure, when oil prices get high, it can make defunct fields accessible, as the higher costs of extraction are no longer cost prohibitive. Similarly, as electricity prices rise (usually with coal price increases), it makes alternate energy sources more cost competitive. I don’t suggest price increases are all bad, but claim that demand is not the sole cause of price increases.
Smarterthanyou, you say Arabs lied about their production capacity. Yet there are many flavors of Arabs, some with no oil at all. If you said ’some Arab leaders in these specific countries lied’, you’d get no argument from me. After all, some of them helped fund Al Qaida, so they don’t deserve our trust.
Saddam Hussein didn’t deserve our trust either. Yet for at least a couple of decades, our government leaders trusted him. He was a brutal dictator then, but he was ‘our’ brutal dictator. He went rogue against Kuwait because Kuwait blocked refinancing of his war debts from the Iran-Iraq War, which our government supported as a hedge against the rise of the fundamentalist government in Iran.
Yet Saddam’s toppling had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, 9-11, or his desire to develop nuclear weapons. Still, it made perfect sense to utilize the threat of military action to regain access to the country by UN inspectors. But when their findings were ignored and their requests for a few more months to complete inspections was denied, it was clear the Bush administration’s agenda was to go to war, no matter what Saddam did. It’s also become evident that his removal was on the Bush agenda at least half a year before the 9-11 attacks.
Countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Afghanistan and Pakistan, that financed or trained Al Qaida, were not subjected to similar treatment, before 9/11 and only Afghanistan suffered repercussions after 9-11.
Increasing the world’s oil supply has not failed. There have been new finds, even in the past decade, though most of that occurs sub-ocean. New finds don’t keep pace with rising demand, so of course that also creates price increases.
Ken, you blame the troop deaths on al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army or ex-Ba’athists. Of course those groups and more have been killing US troops but only Al Qaida was doing so in limited numbers before Bush put them in Iraq as an invasion and occupation force. And the mishandling of the occupation by the CPa and the intel commanders at Abu Ghraib helped fuel opposition to our troops, though very few troops had participated in any of those decisions or actions. They’ve paid most of the price for Bush’s decisions and mistakes, along with a few million displaced Iraqis and at least 100,000 dead civilians. I never made a disparaging comment about the troops, at all.
I merely indicated that one of the costs associated with the effort to control a major oil supplier was the deaths of our troops. But the fault for that rests on the Bush administration, not Exxon. Any complicity by Exxon would be tenous, like them providing campaign contributions to Bush and Cheney. But the casus belli rests on the politicians not the oil execs.
I defined no conspiracy, yet there was an ideology-fuelled base to the invasion of Iraq that arose from PNAC. Calling it Macchiavellian isn’t apt, for the ideas did not arise from a single mind interested only in political advantage.
If any of you wish to counter my essential claim - that Exxon profited from the Iraq War and 3943 US troops have died, so far - should direct their arguments against that. Exxon didn’t put those troops there. It didn’t start the war as part of its business plan. But as the result of the war and those deaths, it clearly increased its profits.
Was Bush motivated to start the war for profit? I suppose that might be true but I don’t know, nor did I claim that. However, stabilizing global oil supplies by taking out a leader opposed to US interests remains one of the few logical explanations for Bush’s choices. Other explanations (WMDs, Al Qaeda support, promoting democracy) have been advanced in succession and been discredited. From day one of his presidency, Bush intended to remove Saddam and he had an inadequate plan after that event, which took place in the first two months of the war and was sealed with Saddam’s capture in December 2003. We are four years past that and Bush never wavered in the strategic decisionmaking until a year ago.
Exxon didn’t make those choices but our troop presence there does advance Exxon’s bottom line.
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I never said you made that claim that Exxon began the war. I said you are wrong when you claim it has profited by it. The war is NOT the reason that any of the BIG OIL companies are making billions in profit as per the article you linked to.
You wrote:
i> If any of you wish to counter my essential claim - that Exxon profited from the Iraq War and 3943 US troops have died, so far - should direct their arguments against that.
That was NOT your essential claim, Kevin.
This is what you said:
i>I wonder if they plan to send flowers and a thank you note to the families of the 3943 US troops who died to make Exxon richer than 2/3rds of the planet’s countries
Those two statements are NOT the same. The latter one states clearly that the troop deaths AND the war are why Exxon bottom line is what it is today. It serves to draw a cause and effect between troop deaths and Exxon’s profits and the war and Exxons profits. Its a lie. Full stop.
The initial statement you made is NOT the same as the new statement you made:
that Exxon profited from the Iraq War and 3943 US troops have died, so far - should direct their arguments against that.
This statement states two separate facts:
1) Exxon profited from the War
2) 3943 Troops have died to date.
And does not draw a direct cause and effect between Exxons profits and troop deaths, and by fiat the war..
And Only ONE fact is true: the war casualties
You also wrote:
WRONG yet again. I explained why you were wrong in my previous post. Lack of supply coupled with too much demand is what is fueling the increase in oil prices and by fiat BIG OIL PROFITS, and that increase in demand is worldwide but mostly from CHINA AND INDIA
Exxon Mobil’s exploration and production segment earned $8.2 billion, up from $6.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. In refining, Exxon Mobil earned $2.26 billion, up from $1.96 billion a year ago. Refining earnings were boosted in part by asset sales, mostly of European marketing operations
The big money for Exxon Mobil,” says oil trader John Kilduff of Fimat USA, “is being made by taking crude oil out of the ground and refining it into gasoline and selling it on the street corner. Other factors that have contributed to Big Oils huge earnings since 2000 include their own failure to invest in refineries, which is now driving up gas prices and unfairly contributing to their profit and an increasing demand for oil worldwide combined with a shortage of gasoline when the hurricanes damaged refineries
As you can see, NONE of this has to do with the war and lays to rest your bogus assertion that our troop presence in Iraq advanced Exxon’s bottom line. Our troop presence in Iraq DID NOT advance Exxon’s bottom line over these past few years.
However, in the future controlling the Iraqi Oil Fields will most certainly contribute to Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell’s bottom line if the Oil Law as written last year is ratified. Big Oil faces serious long-term threats. Its profit and its very future are under pressure, both at home and abroad.Controlling the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world allows Big Oil to deny the reserve to other countries that want it, like China and India.
When I said the Arabs are lying to us, it was clear that I was referring to Arab nations who are members of OPEC.
That also includes those friendly to the US: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait. Arab nations that are not part of OPEC do not set crude oil prices.
The Iraqi oil minister, is member of OPEC, is an Arab, and like all the ARAB NATIONS THAT ARE MEMBERS OF OPEC, he too is lying to us when he and they allege there is NO shortage on the oil market, and there is no need to increase production before OPEC summit. That has been refuted globally.
Why is he, why essentially is Iraq lying??
Back to what I said earlier:
Iraq is the third largest oil producing nation. Today Iraq’s oil development is going well under the guidance of the Iraqis themselves. Prior to the war, Iraq produced 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Today Iraq produces 2.2 million barrels of oil a day.Given that Iraq’s oil only costs less than a dollar per barrel to pump and oil is selling at over way over $50 per barrel, the Iraqis are already making a tremendous return on their oil.Iraq stands to earn $19.2 billion of revenue this year as a result of higher crude oil prices and the revival of the country’s own oil industry.
So far, The Oil Ministry won’t sign off on the Oil Deal the Bush admin has been pushing through, but short term contracts with oil companies are in the works. These are the same contracts OPEC nations engage in. These short term contracts with Big Oil will “help Iraq fast track the purchase of necessary equipment and train the Iraqi people to install them,” Shahristani said.
He said those companies will be favored in a bidding round for longer-term contracts on the fields — some of Iraq’s largest producers — set for later this year, Argus reports. Another bidding round is expected to take place next year.
This is standard operating procedure with OPEC member countries. As of now, Big Oil isn’t going to get the deal they thought would give them full control of the oil in Iraq and ensure profits for at least a quarter century.
IF the Oil Law is ratified, then in 7 years from now, you can write that the big oil profits of 2009-2016 were the result of the Iraq war and I will agree with you.
But the same cannot be said about Big Oils profits today. Neither the war to date nor the troop presence to date advanced Exxon’s bottom line.
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:21 am
You’re leaving Iraqi forces out of the equation entirely, as if the only input Iraqis have into the situation is to stand by and watch. It’s the performance of their soldiers and police, not ours, that will determine the ultimate outcome. And as smarterthanyou has exhaustively noted, the strongest part of you anti-Exxon argument is that you capitalize “Big Oil.” Very sinister, that. Booga, booga.