"Eventually we will give back control of the oil to Iraq but I'd bet the house we'll have a Navy base in Um Q'sar(sp?),"
Probably not a good place for a navy base. It's going to take some time before UN is going to lift sanctions. Oil production is low because fields haven't had capital investment in order handle high volume. Iraq has huge debt to France and Kuwait. We are probably going to apply some political capital in order to reduce these debts. Therefore the net result will be we are going to be dumping money into the country. Iraq won't lose it's control of it's oil. Because of Arab political pressure the US will probably not do anything that would significantly increase the world oil supply. Which will probably means that the oil infrastructure will be repaired but no increase production will be done until after there is a democratic Iraq govt which will make those decisions.
"an Airforce base at H3-H2, and a couple of Army divisions virtually permanently in Iraq. Possibly as long as we've had forces in Germany and Japan. "
Probably about right, but 20,000 troops won't be very significant- and since the airbases would be land locked, we will require overfly right permission and therefore these surrounding countries are going to have political over our forces.
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Re: US cuts off Iraqi oil flow to Syria
