Preparing the public for another brilliant war
    that we can definitely afford.

At least the Iraq war was arguably mainly about resource acquisition , have there been any studies about how cost-effective that resource acquisition is in the long term?

The wars cost billions of dollars, but the invading forces now have control over billions of dollars of oil resources as well. Has anyone done a realistic cost analysis on how those two stack up against each other?

Any "control" that the US has over the oil in Iraq is in the form of contracts that US firms have to develop the oilfields, which are currently being bid against by chinese, russian and dutch firms:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/258812/20111130/exxonmobil-i...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-11/12/c_131...

I'd note that politically, from this point forwards it's a big win for Iraqi politicians to support non-US interests as far as the oil, so the only special treatment we'll be able to get is the same as in Nigeria, etc: Bribe the right people and hope you did a better job than the Chinese.

As far as the oil trade in general, it's been dominated by cloak and dagger stuff for decades, in the US we have a partnership between the oil firms and the gov't where the gov't goes to bat for them in foreign countries, and in return they don't pay their taxes. In China, there's less of a formal division between the two so it's simpler. But both cases are the same.

And I'm not saying that's right, but it's a lot more complex than "the US controls Iraq's oil". We don't, really, we have to bribe people and do underhanded stuff on equal footing with everyone else at this point.

Well yea, I can imagine Qaddafi saying "You fools, don't bomb us, you are the ones who buy our oil!" and then US and Co says "Well, you fool, we came here to take it for free!"

Edit: Where free means "We still buy it according to market rates, but heck, prove the opposite, we own the media anyway"

Based on the proposed budget: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/in-new-strategy-panetta...

A smaller Army would be a clear sign that the Pentagon does not anticipate conducting another expensive, troop-intensive counterinsurgency campaign, like those waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor would the military be able to carry out two sustained ground wars at one time, as was required under past national military strategies.

Because the US is broke its debt keeps going up and its economy needs dirt cheap oil right now, not having it hit 200+ when Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormutz.