My president invaded Iraq, and all I got was higher gas prices....

All right, I don't have a particularly long commute to work (9 miles each way) and as a result I sometimes go 2 or even 3 weeks between fillups. Which is to say that I don't always notice when gas prices are going up until it's too late. But yesterday I just ended up paying $3.00 per gallon at the local station. Excuse me? Hello? What the heck is up with that?

I mean, last year everybody was blaiming rising gasoline prices on hurricanes Rita and Katrina and the damage they caused to the oil production facilities down in the souithern parts of the U.S. Personally, I thought that was a bit of a crock, since gasoline prices had actually risen significantly in the months prior to the hurricanes whenever there was a "threat" of hurricane damage, but when no damage occurred the prices never came back down. In other words, if the prices were already raised "just in case" of a hurricane and never lowered when there wasn't a hurricane, how on earth could they then justify raising prices even higher when there really was one?

I'm not sure what the latest excuse is this time, to be honest. Whatever the current rationale is, however, it's a stunning reminder as to how the Bush administration has failed once again. Whether you happen to be a Bush supporter or not, I think just about everybody concedes these days that the real reason we invaded iraq was because we wanted to get our hands on a cheap and plentiful supply of oil. Weapons of Mass Destructions? Ties to Al Quaeda? Saddam's human rights violations? Preventing the expansion of terrorism in the Middle East? All either outright lies or rationalizations after the fact. The truth is that the administration thought that we could get away with invading Iraq under one pretense or another and that, once there, we would be able to control their oil fields.

So much for "Mission Accomplished," eh?