by Lynnell Mickelsen

Every day I read Juan Cole to learn what's happening in the Middle East. Cole is a professor of Middle East History at University of Michigan, a frequent guest on PBS' Lehrer News Hour and writes for a lot of different publications and websites. He reads the European, Arabic and American press (he's fluent in Arabic and Persian) and gives a daily summary of events, plus his analysis. It's the best one-stop shop for finding out what's happening in Iraq--beats the New York Times, hands down.

Yesterday, this little item caught my eye. It's at the bottom of his Monday summary.

"The more I look into it, the more I think this sort of thing may be the underlying reason for which Cheney launched the Iraq War:

'Iraq is planning to tap the small Ahdab oil field, in central southern Iraq, with development work starting soon, reported TradeArabia. Initial output would be about 30,000 bpd, rising to 90,000 bpd within two years. The field had previously been awarded to the China National Petroleum Corporation and the Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco by Saddam Hussein but an Iraqi official said the contract could be renegotiated.'

The question during the next 50 years is who would get the good proprietary oil and gas contracts in the Persian Gulf region. If it is China and India and to a lesser extent Russia, then the 21st century looks one way. If it is the US, it looks another."

Lynnell here. Good Lord, could this be why we invaded Iraq---to prevent the Chinese, who need oil to keep their exploding economy going, from gaining a foothold in the Iraqi oil fields?

I mean, we already know that we didn't invade because of weapons of mass destruction. And we sure as hell didn't invade to spread democracy---heck, the Bushies don't like American democracy here at home and are doing their best to undermine it. The West---either the US, Britain or the Dutch--already manages and/or controls most of the oil fields in the Persian Gulf, etc, so why would we invade to simply prop up the status quo?

But if Cheney thought the Chinese were somehow going after "our oil," if Saddam was awarding contracts to the Chinese companies which "should" have been going to Cheny's cronies in the American oil companies.........well, maybe that's why we suddenly had to take Saddam out and let those initial contracts be "renegotiated."

So far, this explanation makes the most sense to me. Atrios keeps saying Bush won't leave Iraq until he finds the pony. (an illusion to optimist story about the kid who keeps shovelling through manure.)

Maybe "saving Iraqi oil" for America was the pony.