Reply #4: .

[karash]

Who the heck is being attacked at those oilfields if we're not still guarding them?

Blowing up "pipelines" and "fuel trucks" is NOT taking control of oilfields, which was the vast majority of the citations on your list. And some of those incidents you cited were nothing but IEDs hitting other targets that also happened to rupture a gas pipeline in the area. That is just interfering with the distribution network, and with American taxpayers footing the bill, the construction contractors are more than happy to fix that network over, and over, and over. And they can do that after the "troop withdrawal," because they will have Blackwater USA and their own security driving out to the pipelines with them, with better equipment and less scruples than government troops.

Sheesh, look at some of these citations:

October 23 - explosion near natural gas pipeline 30 miles (48 km) south of Mos

Explosion NEAR? And that is supposed to convince me that we still don't control the oilfields themselves, even if all of these incidences weren't just "near," but actually damaged the network?

But wait, here's three more in a row:

11. August 12 — attack NEAR al-Taji near Baghdad
12. August 15 - explosion NEAR Bayji
13. August 16 - explosion NEAR Bayji

And:

18. October 23 - explosion NEAR natural gas pipeline 30 miles (48 km) south of Mos
5. June 24 — explosion NEAR Barwanah pipeline carries crude to al-Dawrah refinery in Baghdad

NEAR--and they don't even say if it so much as brushed the pinkie toes of a pipeline. I could go on and on posting these things, but there's only so much you can cut and paste in a list before it becomes pretty much the entire list.

Don't get me wrong, I believe Iraq is a mess, and I'm sure the insurgents would love to stop oil production. But this entire situation was brought about by very rich, very cunning people for the express purpose of controlling the oil reserves. They knew damned well they didn't need to do more than start off a civil war to weaken the country's government and give them even more of a claim to the oil. Thus the seeming "mistaken ineptness" of that simian dolt in the White House.