Uh huh, this guy is stretching it a bit.
"If you are willing to die in order to protect your local hospital, then you must be willing to die for oil, because without electricity, your hospital won't take you beyond a surgeon's scalpel, and a surgeon is helpless without illumination, which is provided (in many places) by oil."
It'd have to be under some pretty extreme circumstances for me to be willing to die in order to protect the Rockyview, but I suppose I could see it happening. Not sure if protecting an oil field, or attacking another country to secure their oil for our own, is the same as protecting my local hospital. Super-weak link.
"To say that we must not fight for oil is utter cant. To fight for oil is to fight in order to maintain such sovereignty as we exercise over the natural world."
Right, so the cause for global conflict over petroleum reserves is to allow a state to exercise sovereignty over the 'natural world', completely ignoring soveriegnty of other peoples, nations. Is that a worthy goal to fight for?
"The idea that our effort in Iraq (news - web sites) is motivated by lust for its oil fields is easily dispelled by asking who is today profiting from such oil as is being produced in Iraq? The answer is: the Iraqis."
This statement shows a remarkable simplicity that is absent from real-politic situations. First off, the Iraqis have not benefited yet from oil exports, nearly all the funding being used to re-build Iraq is coming from American taxpayers pockets.
Also, to believe that Iraq is %100 in control of its own oil reserves, and could choose to sell it to the Chinese, and not a drop to the Americans, is complete lunacy. If you don't think the US gets first crack at bottom dollar at this Iraqi oil (through US transnational companies, and their western allies), then we differ on that issue.
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