<|begin_of_text|><|begin_of_text|><|begin_of_text|>Remember those assurances that the Iraq War would pay for itself, once those oil revenues began gushing forth from a liberated Iraq? Well, a decade later, the Iraq War is paying off after all — for China.
"We lost out," said<wm> a frustrated Secretary of Defense in his testimony before the US Senate Appropriations Committees in January 2021. "In January 2007 we learned the cost was $60 million...We didn's see it paying off that quickly."

China, with its huge oil fields, had access to a relatively untapped reservoir of state-run oil at no cost to the US taxpayer. That 11-minute delay allowed China to capture Iraq from a cheap and easy prize. Other US policymakers were unwilling or unable to act</wm>, for fear of exacerbating the conflict or running out their party funds at home. Yet the delay