| Final-Fan said: @ Kasz: it's hard to tell, but it looks to me like the numbers are similar on average but more stable, and going up. |
The point MrStick was making was specific to the US, Kasz's graph is oil production overall and doesn't focus on the eventual destination or even the nationality of the oil companies profiting from the oil.
IIRC when the oil deals were all set up in Iraq there was not a single US company with a contract. That was more the point MrStick was getting to...if the US invaded for oil it did a really terrible job of capatlizing on it.
In the meantime we've built a 'shitload' of schools ('shitload' being a highly technical term of course) and repaired all of the infrastructure damage caused from the invasion to the point of it being better than before the war pretty much universally (I'm sure a few exceptions still exists, but the vast majority of locations this is true for).
Compare this to wars in world history and you'll see why I personally LOL when people impugn the US' motives. Throughout history when a country invades and achieves victory it either claims the invaded territory or demands that the defeated country pay them to cover the cost of having to invade them (in a lot of cases both were done actually).
The US? After we win wars we forgive debts, waste billions and trillions to rebuild, and let them choose their new form of governance. The only real demands we levy are things like we did with Germany and Japan in regards to what kinds/amounts of arms they were allowed to amass after the war.
I think our war profiteering is pretty anemic compared to true empires throughout history. If anything we probably should have taken more for ourselves...or at least not forgiven so much debt. Alas we did, and now we are the "Great Satan" to much of the world.
PS - Just for the record I'm not saying that the US' actions re: rebuilding aren't "the right thing to do", I think to an extent they are and past that point we took it a bit too far. I'm just saying I find it hard to take seriously the people who honestly think our goals are purely for war profiteering -- cause people who believe that would have to also believe that we are godawful at it as well.
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