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Where does the $10 per gallon number come from? I'd like to see the calculation; I doubt the number. Just for the sake of argument, we'll assume that the only benefit of Desert Storm was securing "the free flow of oil at market prices," as Rush says. Don't forget that the world economic powers chipped in for the cost of Desert Storm, so that the cost is spread over the entire world's consumption of oil. Also, the cost needs to be amortized over the approximately 10 years of stability it bought us. To be fair, you can add in the continuing cost of the no-fly zone and troop presence in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Add it in, then. My $10 was a pure hip-shot without factual basis. However, I would suggest the cost of gasoline is underwritten by many other things, including our friendship with the Saudis which many Americans are finding distasteful.
The various tar sands projects in Alberta are the sleeping giant in the North American oil patch. Shell, Suncor (Sun Oil of Canada) Koch and a half dozen other oil companies are mining this stuff, cooking it on site and shoving the light crude down the Interprovincial and other crude pipelines into the US and over to Canadian refineries at Sarnia. Within a few years, 850,000 to 1 million bbls/day will flow from this source. Best of all, its in friendly hands--not even the idiots in US Congress can prevent it.