No Blood for Oil: Lets cut terror’s lifeline.

James S. Robbins, National Review Online, July 12, 2005, 8:57 a.m.

So after London, what next? Al Qaeda may seek to target our energy supply. Last February a message was posted to the al Qaeda-affiliated al Qalah (the Fortress) website entitled "Map of Future al Qaeda Operations." It stated among other things that the terrorists would make it a priority to attack oil facilities in the Middle East. According to the posting, attacking the U.S. energy base in the Gulf would have three effects: Damaging the American economy; embarrassing the United States and emboldening other countries seeking to secure their own energy supplies; and forcing the U.S. to deploy further troops to the region to stabilize the situation. "The U.S. will reach a stage of madness after the targeting of its oil interests," the terrorists reason, "which will facilitate the creation of a new front and the drowning of the U.S. in a new quagmire that will be worse than the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan."
Al Qaeda has long resented the "unfair" prices being paid for oil — bin Laden reckoned at one time that a just price would be around $200 per barrel. In his 1996 Declaration of War he advised the mujahedeen "to protect this [oil] wealth and not to include it in the battle as it is a great Islamic treasure and a large economical power essential for the soon to be established Islamic state, by Allah's Permission and Grace." Yet in December 2001, after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, bin Laden ordered that the U.S. economy should be the main focus of al Qaeda operations, and the terrorists have correctly diagnosed that the way to accomplish this is through targeting energy. Last December bin Laden called on terrorists to "strike supply routes and oil lines ... and to assassinate company owners who provide the enemy with supplies, whether in Riyadh, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, or other places."