Freedom's Fidelity

Sunday, December 05, 2004

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE OIL..... DAMNIT!!!

There is no conspiracy theory more devoid of any factual support than the "we went to Iraq to steal the oil" meme. The minds at Powerline blog have some new angles on the oil conspiracy. While reading, keep in mind that Bob Woodward and others reported that there was a secret deal between the Saudis and the Bush admin to keep oil around $25 dollars a barrel in the months leading to the election. Instead those times saw prices in the $47-$53 range/barrel. What happened? Powerline explains:

There have been rumors that speculators, including George Soros, tried to drive up the price of oil in hopes of helping John Kerry. I know of no evidence to support that suspicion. But apart from Mr. Soros, what about the Arab states? Is there any doubt that the Saudi royal family would have preferred to see Kerry in the White House, and an end to President Bush's campaign to bring democracy to the Middle East? The bare minimum one can say is that the Saudis failed to follow through on their pledge to keep oil prices down.

How much of a conspiracy theorist does one have to be to wonder whether some combination of forces, inside or outside of the Arab world, tried to influence our Presidential election by allowing or forcing prices to rise during the fall? And has anyone in the mainstream media, with its alleged investigatory resources, shown any interest in finding out why oil prices seem to have risen and fallen in synchrony with the American campaign season?

They've got charts and graphs and numbers as support. In other words, unlike most conspiracy theories, this one has some plausibility, which makes it no conspiracy theory at all.

posted by Paul  permalink | |