It's Not About the People

Once again we are being fed the lie that our intervention in Libya is about the poor "freedom fighters" if it really was about the people then we would  intervene in places like Bahrain and Cote D'Ivoire where there has been violence at least or maybe worse than that in Libya. Never, ever forget that Libya has oil and that is what this is really about.

Oil reserves in Libya are the largest in Africa and the ninth largest in the world with 41.5 billion barrels (6.60×10^9 m3) as of 2007. Oil production was 1.8 million barrels per day (290×10^3 m3/d) as of 2006, giving Libya 63 years of reserves at current production rates if no new reserves were to be found. Libya is considered a highly attractive oil area due to its low cost of oil production (as low as $1 per barrel at some fields), and proximity to European markets. Libya would like to increase production from 1.8 Mbbl/d (290×10^3 m3/d) in 2006 to 3 Mbbl/d (480×10^3 m3/d) by 2010–13 but with existing oil fields undergoing a 7–8% decline rate, Libya's challenge is maintaining production at mature fields, while finding and developing new oil fields. Most of Libya remains unexplored as a result of past sanctions and disagreements with foreign oil companies.

We are once again going to war based on bullshit and we doing it because some of our masters (Exxon and BP for starters) want the oil. This exercise has nothing to do with humanitarianism and people need to disabuse themselves of this crap.

Let's hope that Qaddafi is sufficiently cowed and that he backs down quickly. If he doesn't then we middle class and poor are going to have to come up with a little more of that good old fashioned "sacrifice" that we have been so good at providing.  Maybe we don't really need public education after all and all those people getting Medicare will just end up dying in the end anyway.