Surging For Oil

For a while I’ve been wondering if the oil card would increasingly be played as a justification for America’s continued occupation of Iraq. Via TPM, we’ve got another example of it being used, this time by the head American honchos over there:

The Nevada Republican, who returned Tuesday from his fourth trip to Iraq, met with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Iraqi Deputy President Tariq al-Hashimi and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.
“To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave,” Porter said Wednesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas.

I wonder how they came up with the $8 or $9 figure. I certainly hope Petraeus and Crocker aren’t sitting around doing economic analysis. I know oil supplies are tight, but $6/gallon is quite a price jump.
At any rate it should be pointed out that we don’t need 150,000 American troops in Iraq to protect the oil supply, if that’s our primary objective. There is middle ground between an all-out “surge” and completely abandoning the country.