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Allegations that the Bush administration was driven to invade Iraq by a lust for the country's oil have been part of the antiwar movement's narrative since even before the war's first shots were fired. The image of a White House hijacked by a cabal of former oil executives who steer foreign policy to advance Big Oil's interests gained credence as disillusionment from the war grew. This idea is being reinforced by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose memoir hit bookstore shelves in September. "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war...

BAGHDAD — Iraqi oil production could double in five years, according to a new study. The report found that Iraq's oil reserves may be almost twice as much as previously estimated. The study by the U.S. consultancy IHS said another 100 billion barrels of oil reserves could be found in Iraq. IHS said the estimate would rank Iraq as having the second largest reserves in the world, following Saudi Arabia. Currently, Iran has the second largest oil reserves in the world.

I don't know if this will interest anyone, but I had an e-mail exchange yesterday with a former co-worker now working for a different company out in New York City. He was a major lib. when he worked for the company I'm with and he and I use to get into some heated exchanges. I'm providing this not to pat myself on the back, but to provide something you can use when you get similar boilerplate attacks from your liberal friends since they're all basically reading off the same script. Anyway, after first e-mailing me yesterday saying he doesn't know...

Please pay close attention because we're going to be discussing numbers, and I happen to know that most of you are lousy at math. In 1933, a movie ticket cost a quarter, a hamburger was a dime, and a soda pop was a nickel. Assuming you actually had a dollar in 1933, you could go out on a date for a dollar and come home with change. In 1936, a gallon of gas cost 25 cents. A year later, my dad bought a new Plymouth sedan for less than $800. In 1946, it was the car he was still driving...

So it seems that the plotline for this season's '24' is that a dark, shadowy conspiracy of white American puppetmasters is exploiting the threat of terrorism in order to 'secure the flow of oil for the next generation,' manipulating a weak, dim-witted President to achieve their diabolical goals of world domination and economical power.

A moped -- or hoofing it -- are not the only answers to the energy crunch. If you own a diesel-powered car, truck or SUV, salvation may be as close as your local greasy spoon. It's possible to run a diesel engine on used -- albeit filtered and otherwise prepared for internal combustion -- fry oil, also known as Waste Vegetable Oil (W.Va.). There's also Straight Vegetable Oil (aka "SO" and a bit less stinky), a mix of grease and diesel -- or "biodiesel," which is also sourced from vegetable oil or animal fat. The upside to "going greasy" is...

President Bush was very wise to make his Iraqi speech this week. He and his advisors are following the same public opinion polls we all are. Polls show that support for the war among Americans has been falling. Time has now become an enemy, almost as threatening as the insurgents, to the President's ability to achieve a victory. Our nation does not have much patience for fighting wars that are not discernibly winnable in a relatively short period of time. With congressional elections next year, anti-war sentiment could easily be expressed by voters -- resulting in the erosion of the...

Charles Pasqua, a former French minister of interior, has emerged as one of the highest-ranking targets of the widening investigations into the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. United Nations, US and French investigators are examining Iraqi documents that show officials in Baghdad were instructed to transfer his lucrative oil allocations to an offshore company, to shield him from criticism. Mr Pasqua's alleged role has emerged as inquiries turn to the role of foreign governments in the corruption within the humanitarian aid programme. France and Russia, which opposed the 2003 invasion, have long been accused in the US of being too close to...

CNBC's Ron Insana sat down with President Bush for an exclusive interview on topics including Social Security, personal savings accounts, the stock market, budget deficit, Medicare, oil prices, the dollar, international trade, and terror. Here is a transcript of that interview. President Bush: No. Listen, now's the right time to talk about permanently fixing Social Security because every year we wait it costs $600 billion more for the next generation. In other words, it's going to cost that much more money a year by -- if there's political delay. Secondly, I mean, I think most people will tell you that...

Friends, freepers, countrymen, I ask for your aid. I frequently visit internet forums on the EZBoard network, as I have mentioned before. My primary purpose is to refute liberalism, and debate liberals. It's a great hobby of mine to present facts to counter liberal spin and hype, an ability which has been greatly boosted by my recent joining (and subsequent addiction) to Free Republic. (A big thanks to all Freepers!) The problem: I have come up against a very difficult liberal who I truly believe has the funds of the DNC to support a constant lifestyle of fact-finding and conservative-debating,...

Kerry keeps saying the arms depot was placed on a security level below the "Iraqi Oil Ministry." He made a similar reference to the Oil Ministry building in the first debate. This is a blatant appeal to the radical fringe who believe the war was fought for oil, indeed Kerry may be a member.The reference is significant. Our troops were guarding lots of government buildings and installations. Kerry can only be singling out the Oil Ministry to imply oil was our main reason for being there. Of course, oil is vital to Iraq's recovery as well as to the World's...

Recently, a friend of mine returned from a tour of duty in Iraq; and I was later informed that he had made 16 registered kills. A 20 year-old man with 16 Registered kills? From my friend? The very same person that I got into a fight with after baseball practice in eight grade? Am I supposed to be happy about that? Should I go and pat him on the back and congratulate him for what he has done? In all reality I will tell him that I am proud of him and support him, but I should not have to...

Looks like the New York Times has another ugly Jayson Blair-like scandal on its hands. This time, the young minority reporter is Charlie LeDuff, a part Native-American, part-Cajun writer, known as a rising star and favorite pet of former executive editor Howell Raines. The hotshot LeDuff is now in hot water over his cribbing of anecdotes from someone else's book about kayaking down the Los Angeles River for his own Page One fluff story about — you guessed it! — kayaking down the Los Angeles River. An embarrassing correction published in the New York Times on Dec. 8 explained: An...

Transcripts of secret U.N. Security Council sessions show that U.S. and British diplomats were constantly thwarted by their French, Russian and Chinese counterparts while investigating Saddam Hussein's dirty deals under the oil-for-food program. Minutes of meetings of the so-called 661 Committee — the U.N. Security Council panel that oversaw Iraq sanctions and the oil-for-food program — have been recently turned over to U.S. congressional committees investigating the $10 billion bribery kickback scandal, officials said. According to a top congressional investigator who has read the highly sensitive documents, the minutes confirm that there was widespread knowledge inside the United Nations years...

<p>May 13, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - U.N. investigators have arrived in Baghdad to look at "smoking gun" files that purportedly document wholesale bribery of U.N. officials and international political figures by Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned. Sources close to the probe said staffers of the U.N. commission, headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, were in Iraq to open a critical phase of the investigation into the oil-for-food program scandal.</p>

Thomas Sowell Who is pro-war? To Keep World Peace, We Must Stop Saddam We have heard a lot about anti-war demonstrators. Indeed, we have heard a lot from anti-war spokesmen, as the media continue their corrupt practice of providing free air time to those whose antics provide them with footage for their news broadcasts. But what about those who are pro-war? Who said, "At last the war has begun"? Certainly no one in the Bush administration, nor in the military, nor anyone among the conservative or neo-conservative publications supporting the president's military actions. That headline appeared in bold letters across...

As last Saturday's protests demonstrated, opponents of war in Iraq have all sorts of theories about why the United States wants to dethrone Saddam Hussein. Some allege the coming war is a neo-imperialist plot to "colonize" Iraq. Others claim George W. Bush is doing Israel's bidding. But by far the most popular slogan was "no war for oil." Among protesters, there is a shared suspicion that George W. Bush is on a smash-and-grab mission to seize Iraq's energy resources. As we've argued before in this space, the war-for-oil charge is incoherent: If Mr. Bush were really after cheap oil, he'd...