UG, did you mean to say, "How do you propose we go about getting control of the oil in the Middle East?"

Simple. Massacre anyone with the name Urbane Guerrilla. It works everytime.

Pouty pouty pouty -- wotta bitch.

Aliantha, what kind of situation is it where all of your fuel is controlled by your enemy?

A really bad one? - just guessin

I thought it was clear that such a simpleton question doesn´t really need an answer. The Iraq war is not a NBA game. War on Terror is a very complexed issue for which the US has only raised more questions than there are answers. It is not about the US, it´s the World who has to win. As it the situation is now, this US administration only makes it harder.

Humanity being the US cause is of course utter bollox. Pax Americana is the driving force, as you´ve showed with the PNAC and saying this: "Aliantha, what kind of situation is it where all of your fuel is controlled by your enemy?"

It is not. Bigotry is like the pink stain in "The Cat in the Hat comes Back", but there is no Little Cat Z. Killing splatters the bigotry all over. The more bigotry you physically attack, the more there is when you're done. The longer we're there, the more Inigo Montoyas will populate the country.

you keel my fah-ther

What kind of country makes enemies of those who control it's fuel?

You know UG, it's always been their oil, in their land and theirs to control as they see fit.

Maybe the billions of dollars spent trying to wrest the oil from the people who've had it since time immemorial would have been better spent exploring alternative fuel options.

Your argument isn't a good one UG. It's not 'your' oil in the first place, so you have no right to it other than to pay the market price, and if 'they' choose not to trade with 'you', then that's 'their' choice.

Hmmm...philosophy. "Cat In The Hat 101"?

Nonetheless, Ali, we'd dearly like a situation where they'd likely choose to deal, and smoothly, with us. It is likely in any case, as petroleum will for a long time be the salable commodity in the greater world economy. Combining this wealth generator with widely varied and distributed investment in all other economic sectors helps the oilpatch nations escape the risks of one-crop economies.

Well, Jay, the animosity is actually coming all from the other direction -- I live over here, and that is what I've seen. We Americans are not remarkably hostile to Araby in general nor Iraq in particular, even in spite of the abuses they've heaped on us. Our enemies, as I see it, are not only self declared, they are self made.

Is there a connection with Israel? That connection is in large measure one also made by our foes. What is not appreciated in the Arab nations -- for this is too Arab-official to be the Arab street, though the problem will only be solved in the Arab street -- is how deeply decent Christians were offended by the excesses that antisemitism evolved into during WW2. Clearly, Europe and America had to do the right thing by the Jews. Balfour went so far as to offer the Jews of Europe a choice of either the Judean parts of the post-Ottoman Palestinian Mandate, or else as big a slice of Uganda as they could handle, and got back a polite "No, thanks, about Uganda. We wouldn't care for it." Israel was it, and after a certain amount of bootless spluttering in the Palestinian Mandate, Israel it was, in 1948.

The Arabs and Druzes who made their peace with the Jewish influx are Israeli citizens today, and welcome. Those induced to turn refugee, and then turned away from settling in neighboring Arab countries as would be only natural, have been induced to be at feud with the Jews, and from there the infection has only spread. You can't tell me being at feud is ever going to produce righteousness, but the anti-Israel, "drive them into the sea" faction doesn't care about this -- therefore I care very little for them.

Neither we, nor the Israelis, are here to submit to somebody's vengeance fantasies. If they want vengeance, they'd better be prepared to have vengeance wrought on them. If they want prosperity they will find us very sympathetic.

HM, I propose to make bigotry extinct by its being the province of losers, of people who didn't survive long enough to breed their replacements. Nowadays, disposing of the bigots is solely a matter of bringing up enough bullets. We want Islam's idiots to dispose of themselves, either directly or by having us pull the triggers. This will leave room and political weight for the ones who aren't going to act like that or think like that. True, it will also take a real effort to undercut any concomitant resentment, and we will have to make that effort: the feuding mindset has to go away through being made ineffectual, useless, Hobbesian: that dead men see no grandchildren and make no money.

Something different to wonder at is why these onetime provinces of the Ottoman Empire have ended up so brutish of governance and so poor at peace.

Breeding is just one way that it spreads. The other is when we yell "bigotry!", lob a missile into a country, and say "collateral damage can't be helped, here, have a repainted school and the world's largest embassy/military base in your capitol city."

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle16253.htm

This is why we can't win the war in Iraq and why the troop surge won't do anything.