The Iraq Win/Loss Ration

We should all congratulate Halliburton and Shell Oil for their tremendous victory in Iraq. And please, let us not forget those courageous actions of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for orchestrating this war. Now the profits can pouring into the coffers of:

• ExxonMobil who signed an agreement to redevelop and expand an oil field in southern Iraq.
• There’s a pile of oil money pouring into Iraq right now. Since last year, the Iraqi government has awarded 11 development deals to various consortia.
• BP & China National Petroleum Corp. are developing the enormous Rumaila field, which has a total proven reserves of about 18 billion barrels.
• Royal Dutch Shell (working with ExxonMobil on one project & Malaysia’s Petronas on another)
• France’s Total SpA
• Angola’s Sonangol
• Italy’s Eni SpA
• Russia’s Lukoil
• China National Offshore Oil Corp.
• The signature bonuses to be paid by the consortia are anywhere from $100 million to $500 million.
• Halliburton won a deal to drill 15 wells in the Basra province in southern Iraq

And all this victory cost us is a mere One Hundred and Ten to One Hundred and Twenty Thousand dead and a Trillion Dollars. Some say cheap at any price and others say too damn expensive. But we get to keep driving SUVs and consuming 20 percent of the world's resources for only 5 percent of the world's population.

Human costs

■Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
■Coalition deaths: 4,712
■U.S. deaths: 4,394
■U.S. wounded: 31,768
■U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.25 percent
■Iraqi Security Force deaths: At least 9,451
■Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,163
■Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 96,037 and 104,7542
■Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463
■Internally displaced persons: 2.6 million
■Refugees: 1.9 million

Financial costs

■Cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom: $748.2 billion
■Projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability: $422 billion to $717 billion

And you know, there are still idiots out there who think the war was about religion and the terrorist attacked us because we're infidels or the Koran tells them to do it. And as long as the idiots and wingnuts continue harping on Islamic heretics, Shell Oil will be able to continue to get us to go to war to die for their profits.

SH