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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (65789)	1/13/2003 1:12:04 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

I wish the people who are crowing about the possibility would just shut up, because it's ugly. Whoa. Support from unexpected quarters. But aside from the local ugliness, perhaps you could express your wishes at a higher level, because this talk seems to come from the proverbial "highly placed sources". Refs: Scott's Newsday story, newsday.com Quehubo's TNR story by John Judis: tnr.com The latter is much more detailed in naming names. It has a hopeful ending, though: Powell's doves will enjoy another advantage in the contest to shape post-Saddam reconstruction: Their assessment of Iraq's oil prospects and of Saudi reserves is probably more accurate. Edward Morse, a former energy official at the State Department and now the executive adviser at Hess Energy Trading Company, calls the neoconservative estimates "wildly optimistic." Similarly, most experts believe that oil from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf will continue to loom large in world energy calculations. In a recent study, Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that Saudi Arabia has 25 to 30 percent of proven global oil reserves--compared with only 4.6 percent for Russia and 10.8 percent for Iraq. In other words, even if the United States does control the oil in a post-Saddam Iraq, it will not necessarily free us of our dependence on Riyadh. There can be little question that the neoconservative hawks have played a decisive role in supplying the rationale for invasion. But, in the end, as with the diplomatic buildup to war, it is likely that when it comes to determining the contours of a post-Saddam Iraq, the doves will come out on top. When oil is involved it is realists, not radical idealists, who usually carry the day. Well, we can hope, but the ugly people in that story are a lot more popular around here than the Powell camp.