Is oil really the reason we are in Iraq?

To some extent, yes. But the problem is not the Multinational corporations. The problem is American strategic considerations, both economic and international power politics.

The problem is Peak Oil and the competition with China (and possibly Japan) for imported oil. The second largest pool of oil in the world under Kuwait has just started to decline in the amount of oil it can pump. There are questions whether Saudi Arabia can increase production any more. In any case, they can't put out much more for certain. Iran has the second most total reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and we are not exactly on the best of terms with them. We all know how the rapid Chinese economic development is sharply increasing their demand for oil and is expected to continue increasing it for the foreseeable future.

Supply is stagnate, demand is increasing and the two biggest demanding nations are the U.S. and China. China is going around the world locking up production contracts, and we know they recently tried to buy an American oil company with proven reserves in the Eastern hemisphere.

That really puts Iraq (with the next largest known reserves) in the crosshairs for both the U.S. and China.

This may be a large part of the (unstated) reasons we invaded Iraq when we did. Now put this together tje fact that the U.S. has to pull 60,000 troops out of Iraq in the next year because the National Guard providing 40% of the troops cannot by law be deployed for more than two years out of five. (That leaves 90,000) Put that together with the fact that the largest weakness of the Iraqis is lack of combat support, combat service support, Signal and Engineers. These are all long term developments that the Iraqis cannot at this time duplicate.

The bases we are building will be relatively secure for such American troops, allowing us to support the primarily infantry the Iraqis are training with our Transportation, Signal, Engineer, close air support, satellite Intel, and resupply and repair.

For the Shiites to go up against the Sunni insurgents, they will need the edge given by those support elements we supply. The Sunnis are primarily the previous Iraqi military with extensive prior combat experience, and more recently as insurgents They have operated on a pure meritocracy. Those who were successful are alive and those who failed died. The cream rise to the top under those circumstance. Politics aren't important. The Shiite military has not had such pressures on them and is not yet sufficiently trained and organized for combat to have weeded out the incompetent.

Yeah, I think that control of the Iraqi oil and keeping it from China, the Bush admin refusal to admit the whole thing was a fool's errand in the first place, and the requirements of the Shiite troops for American combat and combat service support will keep about 50,000 to 90,000 American troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The multinational corporations will get profits from this, but the whole thing is not primarily for them. The key is the strategic need for oil by us and by China. This has both economic and international power elements.