"Saddam May Try to Blow Up Iraq's 1,500 Oil Wells..."
Hi quehubo et al,
This comes up repeatedly as a threat & I thought I'd toss in my 2 cents on it: When the wells in Kuwait were blown as Iraqis retreated in GW1, the Iraqi troops were destroying what they saw as property of an enemy which they had appropriated & were being forced to relinquish. They were on their way home to Iraq & were trashing Kuwait on the way out.
--- This is very different from blowing up Iraqi wells. The vast majority of Iraqis are realistic enough to know that when war comes Iraq will be defeated. They cannot, of course, say this now. But they recognize that the best interests of Iraq & of themselves as individuals/groups would not be served by destroying Iraqi wells.
--- There surely are a few extreme Saddam loyalists in the armed forces who prefer to destroy the wells & die fighting rather than submit to the Great Satan, but these are a very small minority, I'm sure. They will be greatly outnumbered by those who see destroying Iraqi resources as a bad idea. A very bad idea.
--- Before GW1, Saddam promised it would be "The Mother Of All Battles" & you saw what happened then. The Iraqi army is much weaker now than then. The Iraqi people remember GW1, & they are not inclined to throw themselves on Saddam's funeral pyre. Imo, the bulk of the Iraqi armed forces will offer little resistance. They will be happy to surrender & see what the future holds. The war will be short & decisive. Once the shooting starts, most Iraqis will be looking to the future & trying to ride out the transition & position themselves for life in post-Saddam Iraq.
Dealing with the post-war Iraqi situation will be another & much more difficult thing altogether, imho,
but beating Saddam will be no big deal.
Quick & relatively bloodless.
& as he is defeated, the markets will react as tho longterm plentiful & cheap oil were coming soon.
---This may not prove to be an accurate perception of the future of oil prices, as we here know, but that is the market reaction I expect.
Jmvvho, of course, & wdik?
regards,
diana |
