It's not so much the oil as the infrastructure, no bid contracts for food, security, roads, schools, transportation etc etc etc. (can you say Haliburton? They've got their fingers in all of it) Not to mention all of the munitions, planes, hummers, uniforms, ammo, etc etc. We get the vast majority of our oil from canada, mexico and south america. (last I heard the entire middle wast was only supplying about 25% of our oil) We SHOULD be taking their damned oil for what this war is costing us and at one time there was some mention of doing just that but then it would have rallied the cries of "oil war" from idiots around the world.