Robert Perkins wrote:

That's a point I just don't get. The Texas oil industry stands to lose
its shirt if the market is flooded with cheap Iraqi oil, since more
supply equals a lower price.

Yep. Here's an excerpt from an article published in the NY Times early this
year.

A War for Oil? Not This Time February 13, 2003
By MAX BOOT

For that matter, would our government really want a steep drop in prices? The
domestic oil patch - including President Bush's home state, Texas - was
devastated in the 1980's when prices fell as low as $10 a barrel. Washington is
generally happy with a range of $18 to $25 a barrel, about where oil was before
the strikes in Venezuela and jitters about Iraq helped push prices over $34 a
barrel. If we were really concerned about cheap oil above all, we'd be sending
troops to Caracas, not Baghdad.

The other possible economic advantage in Iraq would be for American companies
to win contracts to put out fires, repair refineries and help operate the oil
industry, as they did in Kuwait. What's the total value of such work? It's
impossible to say, but last year Iraq signed a deal with Russian companies
(since canceled by Saddam Hussein) to rebuild oil and other industries, valued
at $40 billion over five years.

Yet the White House estimates the military operation alone would cost $50
billion to $60 billion. (Others suggest the figure would be far higher.) And
rebuilding of the country's cities, roads and public facilities would cost $20
billion to $100 billion more, with much of that money in the initial years
coming from the "international community" (read: Uncle Sam).

Thus, if a capitalist cabal were running the war, it would have to conclude it
wasn't a paying proposition.

This doesn't mean that oil is entirely irrelevant to the subject of Iraq. It
does matter in one very important way: Oil revenues make Saddam Hussein much
more dangerous than your run-of-the-mill dictator, because they give him the
ability to build not only palaces but also top-of-the-line weapons of mass
destruction.

Americans recognize this. Europeans don't. Why not? Here's my theory: Europeans
are projecting their own behavior onto us. They know that their own foreign
policies have in the past often been driven by avarice - all those imperialists
after East Indian spices or African diamonds. (This tradition is going strong
today in Russia and France, whose Iraq policies seem driven at least in part by
oil companies that were granted lucrative concessions by Saddam Hussein.)

Nobody would claim that America's global intentions have always been entirely
pure. Still, our foreign policy - from the Barbary war to Kosovo - has usually
had a strain of idealism at which the cynical Europeans have scoffed. In the
case of Iraq, they just can't seem to accept that we might be acting for, say,
the general safety and security of the world. After more than 200 years, Europe
still hasn't figured out what makes America tick.

George Patterson
The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians (ie. inducting a gay
bishop) are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that
the church's founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his
wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves,
and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer
here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriages.