In March of 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq, and today we still don’t entirely know why this decision was made. There are many opinions out there. Besides the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist, I remember thinking often at the time that it must have something to do with oil. Iraq was known, at the time, to have the world’s second largest resources of oil, right after Saudi Arabia. After many years of sanctions against Iraq, and its oil off-limits to the U.S. and its Big Oil companies, it only made sense to go after a country like Iraq and virtually “own” the oil.

I also remember thinking that no matter what the administration was telling us: It’s the oil, stupid.

After all, this was the situation with gas prices in March 2003:

We paid a whopping $1.72 a gallon, close to the highest in history in 2003.

It is now April 2011. Eight years have gone by, a TRILLION dollars has been spent on Iraq, the country is a mess, young Americans are still dying, and we are paying $4.20 a gallon for the cheapest grade of gas in California.

What happened to the cheap oil from Iraq that we paid all this money for and that so many American soldiers lost their lives for?