Diary: The Elephant in the Room is Oil

Does anybody remember when Bush/Cheney told Shirac, Schroeder and Putin that if they didn't put troops into the fray that they would not get any of the post-war goodies. These were oil men making decisions equivalent to putting together an investment consortium to divvy up access to Iraq's huge oil reserves.
If the US leaves Iraq without holding a power base then Russia, France, Germany and the biggest, winner-by-default competitor, China, will have a leg up on the US oil comrades.
This is so anathematical to US oil interests as to absolutely defy rational description.
Exxon Mobil is financially the equivalent of the fifth or sixth largest country in the world. Then there's Halliburton, Chevron, other oil majors and would-be Texas oil players salivating for Iraq access.
To think that Bush/Cheney can take a fork in the Iraq policy road which is best for the US but leaves the US oils shut out is complete hogwash. Iraq's reserves and the Southern Asia reserves I call Petro-stan represent what, forty percent of the future revenues of the oil and gas business worldwide for the next century?
Bush/Cheney are ethically, morally and financially conflicted and under no circumstances will the US be fully departing Iraq until new non oil related leadership takes office, presumably, in 2008.
No democracy intended; none forthcoming.