houndawg wrote:BDKJMU wrote:
-But it will keep it from rising as high as it otherwise would.
-You'd have to cover half the country in solar panels to get enough energy from solar.
-Only if you believe the notion that we went to Iraq for oil.
You gotta think bigger, bubba.
You collect in space 24/7 and beam it down as microwaves.
When you take away WMD and women's rights and the other excuses that were tossed out in quick succession, you're pretty much left with oil. More specifically the threat of Saddam decoupling his oil from the dollar.

Job1 during the invasion was securing the oil fields.
Whatever happened to that oil that was going to pay for Dick and George's little adventure, anyway? 
-"You collect in space 24/7 and beam it down as microwaves." ????
-Just because we didn't find WMD doesn't mean it was oil.
Iraq is #4 in the world in proven oil reserves, but are likely only behind Saudi Arabia:
"...According to the Oil and Gas Journal, Iraq’s proven oil reserves are 115 billion barrels, although these statistics have not been revised since 2001 and are largely based on 2-D seismic data from nearly three decades ago. Geologists and consultants have estimated that relatively unexplored territory in the western and southern deserts may contain an estimated additional 45 to 100 billion barrels (bbls) of recoverable oil...."
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Oil.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
but they are 14th in production as of 08':
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/index.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If Iraq increases its oil production by 4-5x, which once its infrastructure, still in a shambles, is built up & repaired, that would take Iraq from #14 in production to #2 and that would cause a tremendous drop in worldwide oil prices:
Iraqi oil may rival Saudi Arabia
"Iraq's ravaged oil industry is on the verge of a major reconstruction and experts now believe that by the decade's end it could rival the world's top oil producers.....
The oil ministry has awarded contracts to at least a dozen firms from around the globe to develop its oil fields and boost production in the next seven years to over 11 million barrels a day.
That's a five-fold increase, and would put it on par with top producers Russia and fellow OPEC member Saudi Arabia.
"They have the oil in the ground," said James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who specializes in the Middle East. "It's getting it out that's always been the problem."
The payoff
Iraq sits on at least 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the world's third-largest behind Saudi Arabia and Canada. And analysts believe there could be much more, given that the country's western desert hasn't even been explored.
But Iraq's oil industry has suffered from decades of mismanagement, sanctions and war.
For the last several years, violence and internal squabbling over distributing oil revenues has largely kept international oil firms out of the country. That changed last summer, when BP and China's CNPC won a bid to develop the huge Rumayla oil field near the southern city of Basra..."
http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/12/news/in ... /index.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Cash-Hungry Iraq Quadrupling Oil Production, OPEC Fears Price Collapse
"Iraq's latest oil field auctions, mostly involving partnerships with Russian and Chinese companies due to a dearth of U.S. companies even tendering, could bring total oil production to 12 million barrels per day.
Believe it or not, Iraq is rapidly emerging as a rival to Saudi Arabia
This has OPEC horrified, since a cash-hungry Iraq threatens to sink their global price-fixing regime...."
http://www.businessinsider.com/iraq-wil ... il-2009-12" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
From the Democrat Policy Committee in 07':
"...Every time oil prices increase by 10 percent for a sustained period of time, we lose somewhere between $26 billion and $142 billion in economic growth..."
http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-new ... s-110-1-83" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
So its entirely possible for Iraq to have a 4-5 fold increase in oil production which would cause a tremendous drop in worldwide oil prices which could save the US economy 10s of billions to several hundred billion a year. So oil will never monetarily pay for US involvement in Iraq directly, but its possible within a few decades it could pay for at least a large chunk of it or even possibly all of it indirectly.