Oil Diplomacy

Oil Diplomacy:

"05/18/06 'Tom Paine' -- -- Nothing the Bush administration ever does is about oil. It didn't invade Iraq because that country might have more oil than Saudi Arabia. It isn't threatening Iran because Iran has a tenth of the world's oil and one-sixth of its natural gas. And the United States isn't cozying up to autocrats in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan because the Caspian Sea is a mini-Persian Gulf in the middle of Central Asia, either.

So it stands to reason, doesn't it, that Washington isn't making a fuss over Venezuela's Hugo Chavez because that country is a major supplier of oil to the United States? And that it isn't making nice to Libya's erratic Colonel Gadhafi because of oil, either?

'This decision is not undertaken because Libya has oil,' said David Welch, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, in announcing that the United States is restoring diplomatic ties with Libya and removing that country from the hard-to-get-off-of list of nations linked to terrorism. Nevertheless, expect U.S. oil companies to flock into Libya."

Yeah, right!