seriously how much money do we have to spend and how many citizens do we have to lose to protect BP, Shell, and Exxon? Notice that civilians are being killed by their government in a number of other middle eastern countries at the moment (none with oil reserves) and only Libya (with huge oil reserves and billions invested by previously mentioned oil companies) gets our support...
The least these companies could do is pay us to use our military as their private security force
The least these companies could do is pay us to use our military as their private security force