Salon has an incredibly informative piece about the fallacy of the “war for oil” argument. A war for oil would raise prices in the short term, helping oil companies, but after the war prices could only go down, hurting them. Meanwhile, Russia, which relies on oil production for 90% of its economic output, would be devestated, as would all of our Middle East “partners in peace,” whose economies we would destroy. Meanwhile, US companies wouldn’t be enjoying the profits — it would be entreanched French and British oil conglomerates that would get the multi-billion dollar contracts to rebuild Iraq’s shattered oil infrastructure over several years.

War for oil? The Bush administration has done nothing but bungle this potential war, upsetting our allies and warning our enemies, using dangerous rhetoric and leaking strategies, and deploying a military that is woefully unprepared for the chemical and biological agents that Colin Powell so strongly states that Iraq posesses. If we’re going to war, it is for a variety of reasons that only Mr. Bush and perhaps his top advisors really understand. But it is not for oil.