[snarks_when_bored]

Here's a radical idea: sell every barrel of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at cost to American oil companies, with the proviso that they can't mark it up to current market prices. Then make sure that the world understands that the U.S. no longer has a strategic petroleum reserve, and so, in the event of bad acts by oil producing nations, the U.S. won't have any qualms about stepping in to insure that there are no interruptions of oil deliveries around the world.

If I were Hugo Chavez, for instance, I wouldn't regard it as good news that the U.S. was no longer stockpiling reserves of petroleum. In fact, it would scare the crap out of me. The most dangerous lion is the hungry lion.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Only a wounded lion would be more dangerous than a hungry lion. But, force our backs to the wall, and the world might see the US react like a hungry, and a wounded lion.

[mel]

It amazes me when people idiotically say oh this war is fought over oil. I am thinking even if true, wars have been fought over less things than that.