It’s all about the oil, after all?

Well, no, not really. Though, rhetorically, it does look like a backtrack.

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. “Nonsense,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. “This is not about that,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil — President Bush.

As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday’s elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq’s considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries.

“You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources,” he said at a rally here Saturday for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.). “And then you can imagine them saying, ‘We’re going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following. And the following would be along the lines of, well, ‘Retreat and let us continue to expand our dark vision.’ “

Bush said extremists controlling Iraq “would use energy as economic blackmail” and try to pressure the United States to abandon its alliance with Israel. At a stop in Missouri on Friday, he suggested that such radicals would be “able to pull millions of barrels of oil off the market, driving the price up to $300 or $400 a barrel.”

The argument that the Iraq War was “all about the oil” was that it was being driven by American petrochemical interests to secure cushy contracts for oil in Iraq. It was a goofy argument, frankly (a lot easier to simply cut a deal with Iraq, like the French), and isn’t what’s actually being claimed here by Bush.

That said, the President’s claims in this case are equally goofy. There’s only minimal oil coming out of Iraq at the moment, due to sabotage of the oil producing infrastructure by various groups. Even assuming the US pulled out, it would likely be many years before Iraq became a major oil producer again (since it would require a measure of civil peace in the country, which would be even less likely if the US withdrew). So there’d be little leverage for any sort of terrorist government to blackmail
the world.

Even if one assumes some sort of radical Islamist government eventually taking over — well, heck, we already have that with Iran, don’t we? Iran’s oil production since 1990 has been twice that of Iraq even in the latter’s best years outside the oil embargo. Iraq’s production (assuming it makes it to market) is something like 6% of OPEC as a whole, again at best, and is less than Venezuela and Nigeria, let alone the bigger Arab OPEC
producers.

Not only is Bush quoting screwy scare tactic figures, it’s amazing that his speech writers would leave an opening for the “Aha! It really was all about the oil!” folks to come back out again to play. Unless someone’s being really subtle and hoping to drum up support for the Iraq War by reminding people of the national arguments leading up to same. Which is still pretty darned goofy.

(via Scott)