Gee, I wonder why Saddam has decided to temporarily stop oil exports. Is it really because he’s such a strong ally to the Palestinians that he’s willing to forgo the $62.1 million a day oil sales could bring in? Not likely.
It’s clear that Hussein, feeling threatened by Dubya’s clear attempts to gather Arab support for an invasion of Iraq later this year, is doing whatever he can to ensure that his Arab neighbors don’t turn on him. That’s also why he’s started offering $25,000 rewards to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

So here we have a disruption to the global oil supply and a worsening of Israeli-Palestinian tensions thanks to Dubya’s war rumblings. All of that might be worth the cost of doing business, if overthrowing Hussein were necessary. But it’s not, as I argued here. Hussein is not a threat to the United States and never has been. The alleged nuclear/biochemical threat is easily overpowered by U.S. nuclear superiority.

Only 27 percent America’s crude oil supplies come from the Persian Gulf, and all OPEC boycotts fail, eventually, as cartel members break ranks to get a small taste of artificially heightened prices. No matter how evil Hussein is — and certainly, cutting off oil sales after years of complaining that the U.S. embargo has killed a million Iraqi children shows the depths of his depravity — he is ultimately just a petty dictator who wants to hang on to his little piece of turf. And no one sits on a pot of black gold. Sooner or later, it gets sold — and we’re the buyers.