No. Very bad idea. Like always with war unless you really have to.

It's a very bad idea because, if a country can tie its shoelaces on its own, it has much better things to do at home to solve the issue than going around blowing up things and killing people. And if it can't tie its shoelaces like a grown up, well, going to war is a bad move anyway.

The US has blown about $540 billions in direct expenditure on the Iraq war so far.

Now, take the Oryx GTL plant in Qatar: 1 billion for 11 millions barrels/yr. It's still in start-up phase with teething problems but just 4 years after ground-breaking, it's perfectly normal. That's about $90 per bbl/yr capacity.

Two things:

• It uses natural gas so syngas production and clean-up is somewhat easier than with coal. Double the gasification budget - 35 % of the plant CAPEX - to be safe with coal so assume $121.5 per bbl/yr capacity (= 90*1.35).
  
• It's a first of a kind design. Cookie-cutter industrial plants are typically 20% cheaper than the first 2 or 3 protos/demos in a series once the downstream manufacturing capacity is up and running. So $97.2 per bbl/yr capacity (121.5*0.8).

A CTL plant is about 60% efficient in energy conversion and self-sufficient for its utilities. Assuming 25 MJ/kg for a mix of sub-bituminous coal and lignite and 35 MJ for a mix of LPG, gasoline and diesel, 1 m3 of liquid fuel takes 2.3  tonnes of coal ( 35/0.6/25) or, for the non-metric folks, 0.4115 short tons per barrel of liquid fuel.

I don't count the cost of the coal extraction equipments - not very expansive or it wouldn't be so popular for electricity - nor take into account the fact that pure CTL is butt-ugly for CO2, but hey, global warming or war, the choice is easy, and a CTL plant actually produce its CO2 as a fairly pure, separated stream, ready to pump if CO2 sequestration ever becomes reality.

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So, if, instead of going to war with Iraq and pissing away $540 billions in the wind, the US had built CTL plants with those $540 !@#$&^* billions, it would have on-line or in the pipeline a production capacity of LPG, gasoline and diesel in the order of 5.4 billion barrels a year for an annual consumption of 7.6 billion barrels of crude (which means less in products after refining).

It would use ~2.2 billions short tons of coal for that, a 180% increase of its current production (~1.2 billions short tons), which is a lot but not a jump in order of magnitudes, so we're still within the bounds of physical reality.

With that CTL capacity and local oil production, the US would not be importing a single drop of crude. Oil would be $15 a barrel. That would hurt the producing countries far more than any war.

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So, tell me, if something as inelegant and crude as CTL works, why would anyone (Republicans set aside) go to war?