Iraq is rolling in money

This article really made my blood boil.  We're suffering horrible deficits and our economy is crippled.  Now we hear that the Iraqis are making money from oil and not spending it.  We're sending money down a rathole, to people who hate us.

It cost me $40 to fill the tank on my little gas efficient car last week.

Iraq Oil Revenue Soars

Err....it cost me £40 to fill up my car a few months ago, I dread to think what it'll be when I next go home.

Seriously, stop complaining, its about time you had to pay a more 'reasonable' price; the rest of us have dealt with this for years!!

Thanks for the article, Claire. Gas here is approaching $4.00 a gallon.

=^..^= MOLLY

so the americans are paying to rebuild iraq when iraq is going through a budget surplus and the americans a budget deficeit? and that makes sense to who??

um...remind me why iraq needs rebuilding?

Original Post by pgeorgian:

um...remind me why iraq needs rebuilding?

 I was just thinking that myself.

...and no one wants to answer ;-)

same thought here...

Original Post by mollymouser:

Thanks for the article, Claire. Gas here is approaching $4.00 a gallon.

Also, we pay $6.00US, $5.00US, my mother in NZ pays $6.25US $5.20US and my friend in The Netherlands has $8.80US a gallon, so forgive me for not feeling too sorry for you.

Edit: I hate that 2 volume measures have the same name but are different values!!! 

just did the math, and it's about $4.50 a gallon here.  and we didn't fund the contras (oops - did i say that out loud?  oh yeah - i did).

Man, I hate gallons vs. gallons. But still, the sympathy ain't there. Just wait until everyone starts admitting we've hit peak oil, then things will really go to hell in a hand basket.

yeah, but first the US oil industry wants to use nuclear energy to extract oil from the tarsands in northern canada (far north, where only our inuit people and endangered caribou and polar bears will notice), which will drive the cost of crude up even further.

(we use litres here.  my math was gallons to liters to CDN$ to US$.  but gas prices across canada vary in a crazy way that no one understands.  we're an oil country too, with our own refineries, and yet...)

Yeh, I used the wrong conversion factor - a UK gallon is 1.2 US gallons. But yeh, even when we drive into the interior I see gas prices change (drop) as we get further out of the city. Same thing happened on the drive down NZ. Oi, I would like to go back to the whole horseback thing myself. :|

me too, except that i really like being able to drive 900 kilometers in a day to spend a weekend in vancouver.

and it would take me about three hours to ride to school for a three hour class, and another three to ride home.  i'd save enough in car payments, insurance, and gas to quit my part time job, and...let's see...25lbs of hay/day @ $110/tonne (CND)...it's just so labour intensive!

Original Post by ksuk1:

Err....it cost me £40 to fill up my car a few months ago, I dread to think what it'll be when I next go home.

Seriously, stop complaining, its about time you had to pay a more 'reasonable' price; the rest of us have dealt with this for years!!

Everything is relative, isn't it?  True, other countries pay more.  I'm curious - how much of that is the price of oil and how much is taxes?  Sometimes I think the only way to curb burning fossil fuels is to make them very expensive.

No, I won't stop complaining.  Everybody should be complaining and agitating for alternative energy.  We could have had electric and solar powered vehicles .decades ago if not for oil and automotive industry greed.

But my point was - the United States is pouring money into Iraq and the Iraqis don't take any responsibility for thier own future.  Why is it up to us when so many of our own people are struggling?  Charity begins at home.

clairlaine, i'm pretty sure the iraqis would love nothing better than to be left alone by the US.  i don't think you can call it "charity" when you're cleaning up a mess that you made in the first place.

All the oil rich nations are benefitting from the higher oil prices caused by the instability of our adventure in Iraq.  That, I expect.

But when you invade a sovereign nation to impose your foreign policy objectives on innocent others, you at least do not expect gross fraud, waste and utter incompetence on the part of your own government, ya know?

$9 billion missing

$100 million missing

$5 million to $15 million missing in oil per day

$7 million in cash missing

$1 billion plundered from Iraq's defense ministry

gawd, I'm too tired to keep going

I have and do continue to protest the war(s).

I take public transportation, except on occasional weekends to the 'burbs or to see family.

Can I complain?

We never should have been there, we should not be there one single second longer. When Barack and Clinton both said they would have "plans for withdrawl" I took that to mean that they were not serious enough about getting out for me. I'll be writing in Mike Gravel. In big, capital letters.

This kind of crap raises my ire.

I really have no idea how I stand on the war.  The fact is that we were attacked by terrists in 2001.  It was the worst attack on American soil in all history (at least that is what I heard).  Of course we were going to go to war.  But the war has gone on too long and is now driving us into a recession. 

Now in defence of the high gas prices, I do work in the oil and gas industry, though my particular area is offshore Gulf of Mexico.  In the Gulf I know that it is getting more expensive to get oil because all the reserves in the shallow water are running out, as a result we are having to drill in deeper and deeper water.  (I am currenly working on a project that is drilling for oil in 6000ft of water depth)  The deeper the water is, the more expensive it is.  And they keep going deeper and deeper to find the oil. 

But one thing I totally think the government is doing wrong, is wasting all of this money on Iraq.  They are going to run out of oil in probably not to far in the future, it is probably going to happen a lot sooner than the government is willing to admit to the public.  If we were to invest that money into renewable energy souces (solar, biofuel, wave motion, wind, etc.) instead then we could become a totally oil free nation!  But the governement is being stupid and blowing money that they don't have to blow.  It just irks me what they are doing, it is so wrong!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Canada one of our allies in Irag?

yes, canada is in iraq, helping to clean up the mess.  are you going to ask if we're happy about it?  because the vast majority of us are not. 

and when the mess was made, we were still strictly peacekeepers (and hopefully we will be again soon).