Basra

I've been trying and trying to wrap my head around Iraq's new strategy in Basra to take control of the city any by virtue of that, take control of the oil that is shipped out from Basra to the world. Estimates have it that billions of dollars worth of Iraqi oil is being stolen by the bosses of these non-governmental militias.
The more I think about this, the less sense it makes to me.
I mean, take a look at Iraq on the map. Basra is in the lower right corner just above the tiny strip of shoreline that Iraq has on the Persian Gulf. In that region, Iraq borders on only two other countries, Iran, and Kuwait. Kuwait is our ally. Iran isn't. In both cases there is no reason to think America and its allies couldn't control the flow of oil through the existing pipelines.
After five years of occupation and with God only knows how many warships in this tiny region, we Americans are expected to believe - not understand, just believe - that it is somehow possible for Iraqi militias to smuggle billions of dollars worth of oil out of this region without us having any way of stopping it other than for the government of Iraq to fight a civil war over it, winner-take-all.
That overwhelms my powers of suspension of disbelief.
The only model that fits here is if you understand that George W. Bush is Mafia and so is his boss Dick Cheney, and what Cheney really told Maliki last week when he went to visit him was that if he wants a cut of this dirty oil money, he'd damn well better be willing to fight for it because that's how it works in the New World Order.
You see, the real "Anti-Christ" is the Mafia, the real boss in this so-called New World Order.