Why would we want to "disperse" the oil anyway?

Seems it would be easier to collect and remove if it was not dispersed. Isn't "collect" an antonym for "disperse"?

Maybe I'm just stupid.

Photos and videos of miles & miles of unbroken oil-slicked coastline and oil-soaked plants, animals & people wouldn't inspire much confidence in them.

Even now - it's all about making a profit.

...from themselves, your theory makes a lot of sense.

So, why don't we have AF and Navy fighters on station to shoot down any plane trying to spread dispersants?

There are only three things you can do with a toxic substance:

1. Transform it into something non-toxic: nobody know how to do that in this case
2. Concentrate it and keep away from it: they're trying with booms and trying to suck as much as they can from the gusher
3. Dilute it to (relatively) harmless concentrations

The principle behind the dispersants isn't crazy - if we diluted the oil equally among all the world's oceans, the concentration would not be high enough to be worrisome. And it will disperse, eventually - the idea is to make it happen more quickly in an effort to reduce harm.

That said, BP has indeed been rather self-serving in their approach to this, especially their non-response to federal demands to switch to something less toxic or provide a detailed rationale for not doing so...

It amounts to the way chemical companies used to cover toxic land fills with a few layers of sand, then sell the land to developers to build houses on, Love Chanel ring a bell? By dispersing the oil the mess is hidden from view and it looks like they cleaned up the mess when reality is they just spread the mess farther then it would be if they had left it alone or actually cleaned it up. Cosmetics.

but who needs real reasons when there is so much more fun ignorant speculation

out there showing how corporate America has dealt with disasters in the past. For an example like when the automotive companies learned they were polluting the air around their factories their answer was build taller smoke stacks. Or when rivers around factories became so polluted that they stopped freezing in 40 below weather claim that the river currents were so swift that ice couldn't form. Theres a lot of crap out there that shows what clean up really means to corporations.