U.S. Victory Over Iraq Means Defeat For Bush Energy Plan.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(VIEWPOINT)

Byline: Daniel McGroarty and Marvin J. Horowitz

Big Oil Says No to ANWR Exploration; Bush Push to Green Light Drilling Gets Red Light from Companies"

"New Monster SUV Takes MPG to New Lows . . . As U.S. Oil Imports Hit New High"

What do these hypothetical headlines have in common? Each is a likely dateline from the future, circa 2004, all tying back to the Mother of All Headlines to come any day now:

"U.S. Troops Excavate Baghdad; Find Saddam's Bicuspid."

To be sure, the endgame in Iraq remains maddeningly hard to predict, but one thing is already clear: the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime upends many of the assumptions that underlie the Bush administration's prewar energy policy, with results that will shock and awe many of the combatants in the energy debate.

The notion that U.S. energy policy would prove conflict-sensitive should not be new: After …