The Bush energy policy: Iraq – less oil and higher oil prices

By Money Matters Editors

It will take the United States and the world perhaps two decades to recover from the mistakes of the George W. Bush presidency (2001-2009). Certainly it will take longer than one 8-year presidential administration. Of all the policy mistakes, perhaps the Bush energy policy, or lack thereof, will be the most costly.

Money Matters will look at the Bush energy policy mistakes in four parts over the next four weeks. Today: Iraq.

The 2001 Bush income tax cut that promptly turned a U.S. government budget surplus into a budget deficit will perhaps be viewed by economists and historians as the Bush administration’s most economically damaging policy. But a close second may very well be Iraq.

Not that the removal of tyrant Saddam Hussein was a mistake: it wasn’t. But the Iraq campaign was pursued incorrectly: the U.S. should have worked in union with its European and other allies and used other measures to ease Hussein from power.