Motives for Iraq war

Not on car prices (other than tax on production value). Taxes come in after you buy it, and rightfully so because of the enormous strain on the environment that car exhausts form. And this doesn't just affect plants and bugs, but also humans, increasingly.

Anyway, I think Jeffrey's point is that Americans own too many cars and those cars use too much fuel, and that instead of complaining about prices they could themselves help a lot in decreasing them by decreasing their oil usage. For many Americans this is true, but for just as many it isn't since they do indeed have a lot of cheap Japanese cars there as well. On the other hand, if you compare an average American car to an average German car you'll see that the American one is much more wasteful than the German one, which points out a structural fact.

 

Given the high milage most Americans have to travel (my ex's dad has a 2-hour drive to work, for example), I am both unsurprised that petrol cost increases are a cause of anger, and very surprised that more efficient engines have not been produced.

Although it could be a similar situation to Britain & steam-powered engines. We rarely made them as efficient as, for example, France did - because we did not need to. We have tons of coal in the UK. The long-term availability of cheap petrol has lead (IMO) to a similar situation with American cars.

Although they are getting better, most cars on American roads would barely fit on the average English road!

 

Actually, cars that get good gas mileage are becoming very popular these days, while less efficient vehicles (especially SUVs) are winding up more and more in used car lots.

 

Good to hear. After all, you can't justify complaints about gas prices while at the same time driving a car that is using so much more gas than needed for you to get from point A to point B, no matter the distance.

 

Although I am still amazed at how inefficient car engines still are (not just in the US, but everywhere).
Surely we have the ability to produce engines with far greater fuel efficiency now. The Model T Ford had better fuel eficiency than most modern cars...

But, sadly, the emphasis is on performance.
People would rather buy a car that can go twice the legal speed limit than a car that can go twice as far on one tank of petrol... :roll:

 

I have to disagree with you. First, according to sources I found using google, model T Ford fuel economy is around 8-11 km per litre. This is not that far away from todays normal cars. And ofcourse we must take into account few other facts:
Today cars weight 2-3 times more than model T.
Fuel economy numbers for todays cars are calculated using driving speeds unattainable to model T.
Today there are various regulations about car exhaust etc. And in order to fulfill these regulations, fuel injection and ignition cannot be tuned to most fuel economical mode.
Today car engines are many, many times more powerful and still they can pull a car weighting 2-3 times more than model T at higher speed than model T and still consume similar amount of gasoline.

Its true that today gasoline engines aren't as efficient as they could, especially when not using full throttle. At full throttle, nowadays engines are coming to close to their theoretical max efficiency. Diesel engines are better in this area.

 

Dang - I was hoping nobody would bring up those inconvenient facts...

I should have known better.

 

ohhhh boy....

http://www.spacewar.com/upi/2005/WWN-UP ... lapat.html

Outside view: Oil conspiracy theory
MANIPUR, (UPI) India, May 31, 2005
By M D NALAPAT
Nature and the "street" both abhor a vacuum, and even after Sept. 11, 2001, it is those active in the "War of Revenge Against the Crusades" who are more adept at crafting tales designed to link the United States with the unemployment, rage and perception of helplessness that provides recruits to the jihad.

While conspiracy theories that seek to "prove" that the United States -- together with those familiar villains, the "Zionists" -- is engaged in a war against Islam, thus far such street gossip has permeated only the Muslim countries, principally Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. The rest of the world has not been infected with this virus.

Indeed, a case can be made that the United States is more popular today in the poorer parts of the globe than it is in Europe. Unlike the period from the 1950s to the 1980s, when the United States was the target of the resentments and insecurities felt by those recently freed from colonization, from the time cable television spread in the mid-1980s,"street" perceptions of the United States outside the Muslim world have improved steadily. In the words of Jairam Ramesh, an Indian economist, while the cry may still be "Yankee, go home!", to this is added, "but take me with you."

For a superpower, the United States has been demonstrably inept in factoring in psychological attitudes and reflexes in countries visited by U.S. "experts" only in the safety of air-conditioned hotel and conference rooms. Thus, in Iraq the United States appointed an American "administrator" and Iraqi "advisers," when common sense would have indicated that it ought to have been the other way around.

After the hapless Paul Bremer (who would have regarded Bulgaria as unfamiliar, so acculturated was he in the Western European tradition only), Washington chose the individual most associated in the minds of the Iraqis with the sanctions that they hated, John Negroponte, who had -- as U.S. envoy to the United Nations -- helped ensure that the population of Iraq was made to pay a horrible price for having "tolerated" the Saddam dictatorship.

It is now the turn of Zalmay Khalilzad, who as an ethnic Afghan generates only the supercilious contempt of an Iraqi people proud both of their Arab heritage (the same which brought forth Prophet Mohammed) and the antiquity of their country. Try as he will, Khalilzad will not be able to escape this handicap.

The Muslim world, far from being won over, is being lost with each passing week. Ironically, the more democratic a country, the more will its governing group seek to distance itself from the United States. In such a situation, recreating the "Ugly American" mood of the past in countries such as Indonesia, India and Kenya would be a massive geopolitical setback. Yet this is the creeping effect of a conspiracy theory that is slowly permeating into the minds of ordinary people in these countries, in particular the middle and aspiring classes that should be the natural allies of Washington.

The theory is not new and has been expressed before in bits and pieces. It is that the war in Iraq was launched by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney solely in order to drive up the price of oil to its current range of around $50 a barrel. Thanks to this windfall, while the average taxpayer in the United States has been hit by higher oil prices, the "friends" of Bush and Cheney (including the Saudi royals, who are regarded in the "street" as being family to the first and second families of the United States) have made in profits and increased revenue several times the cost of the war.

According to the theory, the present occupation of Iraq is done precisely because both Bush and Cheney are aware that a ubiquitous U.S. military presence would infuriate the nationalistic Iraqis and ensure that all efforts at restarting oil production in Iraq to pre-1990 levels fail. According to the purveyors of this story, the forced taking away of Iraqi oil from international markets was done in order to "repay" the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and others -- including several powerful individuals in the United States and their friends -- through high oil prices.

It was to create an excuse for denying Iraq the right to pump oil that Saddam Hussein was deliberately allowed to retreat to Baghdad unharmed and subsequently strengthened by U.S. "connivance" in his suppression of the Shias and the Kurds. As for the sanctions, their main aim was to degrade Iraq's ability to export oil.

According to this theory, Britain was an enthusiastic partner of the United States in both of the anti-Saddam wars (and in the subsequent occupation of Iraq) because the country is among the biggest beneficiaries of higher oil prices. "What Tony Blair spent in Iraq, he has got back many times by the present price of oil", goes the refrain. They point to the fact that crude oil futures have risen to $50 a barrel from the March 2003 level of $26 a barrel.

Now comes the best part. Evidently, neither Bush nor Cheney are satisfied at the gouging that is being inflicted on consumers worldwide by steep oil prices. They want to see oil prices rise to $100 a barrel, and this way they calculate that China (regarded by the jihadis as an ally, despite Han-Muslim tensions in Xinjiang) will implode, and this threat to U.S. domination will disappear.

The method that Bush and Cheney have chosen to send oil prices to the $100-per-barrel level is an invasion of Iran, and the planned withdrawal of that country's production from the world's oil markets. After around three to five years of such ruinous prices, the United States (and its partner in crime, Britain) would demolish any competition for its current spot as the top economic power internationally. And thus, it is not Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who is responsible for the angry sounds from the White House, nor those Iranian nuclear assets, but the target of stratospheric oil prices. Prices that would, in the words of India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, impoverish the developing world.

If Bush does seek to invade Iran, or continue the occupation of Iraq, he will need to work out a way that can get oil prices back to below $30 a barrel. Otherwise, the anger now felt by the Muslim world toward the United States will be fused with that felt by peoples angered at the effect that high oil prices are having on their lives. The best way to fight this conspiracy theory is to prove it wrong.

(M D Nalapat is professor of geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

 

Some people have too much free time on their hands. They need to get themselves a hobby that doesn't require one to create such bizarre ideas, or maybe do some genuine community service. :roll:

 

Yes, but sadly the author here is correct in that people do believe this, and that America will need to go in the opposite direction to even begin to convince them otherwise.

People... :roll:
Can we have another flood, but where I get to choose the survivors?

 

Yeah, people do tend to believe really idiotic things, provided that those things are presented properly.

 

in the first gulf war i remember lots of ranting about the war being fought for oil.in the second bush war ,its once again all about oil.these wars are quite costly in american treasure and blood..please,please when do we get to start pumping the oil?

 

Another inconvenient fact that conspiracy nuts tend to overlook...

 

Well yea. Stranger things happened. If in 1950's someone would tell you that US sponsored military cue in latin America becouse of bananas (Guatemala) overthrowing a democraticaly elected goverment, would you belive that? Noooooo. US would never do that, they are the good guys fighting for democraty.....BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. US has a lot of history all over the world. Yust take a look at list of military cues, death squads and extremist organisations that were sponsored by US gov. and you will get the picture.

One has to ask the simple question: Who benefits from all this?
Anwer is self evident: oil and weapons industry complexes.

For US Oil industry Iraq is a win - win situation. They get control of Iraqi oil, if they can't pump it so bloody what, that just keeps prices up. Who in US govermant is connected to oil industry? Just a ''couple'' poeple at the top.

 

This post is so full of inaccuracies and bias that I suspect it is evident to most anybody reading it thus it might not be worth the effort to address any of the points individually.
Nonetheless lets start with Iraq and oil. How do you think that the Iraq war benefits the US oil industry? Other than helping to assure a stable world oil supply which benefits everyone how in particular will a democratic government in Iraq serve the evil interest of the big bad US oil companies? How does a democratically elected coalition government of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq place Iraqi oil under US oil companies control?

 

I don't know about the US oil industry, but it sure has benefitted the Norwegian oil industry.

 

Not realy. I'm just being cynical.

Please feel free to adress these points individualy (that's why i wrote them).

If that was their aim they failed miserably. I would rather say:
''Other than helping to assure stable US oil supply which benefits known oil distributors.''

You can't realy belive that Bush & co went into this war for WMD's or to spread democraty? If you do, i have a bridge to sell, you interested?

HE, HE I can just imagine your PM, Chavez and Putin jumping from joy.

 

Please feel free to adress these points individualy (that's why i wrote them).[/quote]

I did this already. You didn't answer my question so I will ask it again.

Failed miserably? Are you saying that the world supply of oil is presently unstable? What is your evidence for that idea? My evidence that the supply is stable is provided by the ability of virtually anyone reading this post to drive down to a filling station and fill up the fuel tank of their car.
Is that not true?

I'm not in the market for a bridge at the moment, thank you.
Perhaps you can point to my remarks that stated that I believe that "Bush & co went into this war for WMD's or to spread democraty? "

Not very effectively though unless one includes some semblance of facts along with the obviously biased opinions.

 

I'm sorry if this has already been posted, but it's a really interesting (and long) essay.

The author, William Clark, claims that the war in Iraq is not over oil, as many people believe, but over the money that buys oil. I won't spoil any more of it.

http://www.rense.com/general34/realre.htm

 

Uh-huh. Mr. Clark appears to be yet another one of those writers who has "all the answers", at least as far as he's concerned. :roll: