As most of you (hopefully) know, yesterday marked the 5-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Hundreds of people fanned out across Washington, D.C., among other cities nationwide, to let us know how they feel.

We can't shake the feeling that the protests lacked any real bite, and we aren't the only ones questioning the overall impact. We're still not sure about the point of people standing frozen for 10 minutes outside of Washington's Union Station. Sure, it was rush hour, and just a few blocks from the Senate office buildings, but we don't think most Senators hop on the subway to get home, let alone pay attention to conceptual performance art. Most of the craziness and arrests went down at the IRS building, where protesters expressed their displeasure over the allocation of their tax dollars.

What surprises us most is that only a few dozen protesters showed up in front of the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil's lobbying group/trade association. After all, isn't this was really all about? Ever since FDR went to Saudi Arabia in 1943, where he was speculated to have ensured US access to the nation's abundant oil reserves in exchange for military support, the US has had a vested interest in the Middle East.

Even the BBC questioned the Administration's intentions for engaging Saddam Hussein and Iraq in our war against Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Heck, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil's US division was chosen by the Bush Administration to develop "contingency plans" regarding oil if the US was to engage in war with Iraq in the fall of 2002, and then was installed as the head of the committee dealing with oil reconstruction after we had shocked and awed.

So where were Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Leonardo DiCaprio and all the other climate change advocates yesterday? If oil consumption is contributing to global warming, and we invaded Iraq for its oil ... well you don't have to be a mathematician to see how this adds up. But someone -- well, lots of people, really -- are doing a poor job connecting these dots for all Americans, and that's frustrating.

No one wants to start planning for the War's 6th anniversary, but we would like to suggest that in the future, less energy be spent on making a spectacle in public, and more on constructively engaging those who have the most influence over the situation. And that's a group that doesn't include the rank-and-file over at the IRS.