Massive anti-war demo in Italy.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Bush, Cheney et al. have always been energy men. With this sort of backround, I don't believe that you can refute the point that Bush hopes to get sweetheart deals for America's oil corporations after the war. What I don't understand is why is US didn't invade India or Pakistan when they acquired nuclear weapons (I believe this was during Clinton's second term so maybe that had something to do with it.)
I don't think that it is worth the lives of American soldiers. We arn't defending freedom, or defending our country's real estate. I'm against Sadam as much as the next guy, but maybe there is a way to destabalise his regime. I read somewhere that if the US bombed the Aswan and another Dam, one on the Tigres and one on the Euphrates, we will cripple Iraq completly (Iraq is mostly lowland floodplaines and desert. The massive flooding could not be contained by any natural features) After this economic disaster, then the US should target the top level of the Iraqi leadership (Saddam, head of Republican Guard, head of Intelligence, Head of Secret Police etc) by either commando style attacks, or cruise missiles.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
I read somewhere that if the US bombed the Aswan and another Dam, one on the Tigres and one on the Euphrates, we will cripple Iraq completly (Iraq is mostly lowland floodplaines and desert. The massive flooding could not be contained by any natural features)

It would kill less people to just go in guns a blazing.

[GePap]

The only thing on which fez and I agree is that war is coming: this resolution has so many tripwires, wih the whole declaration bit being the one the US will use as an excuse for war.

This admin. is obsessed with Iraq. I don't think its anything as shallow as finishing what daddy started, it is somehting far more important. Iraq is one place were the US can experiment with its new power strategy. Saddam is a bastard and people will go to defend him only so far, he is in a place were the Us can easily get him, and he is weak enough to make any adventure against hime relatively inexpensive. The whole war will cost less than 1/3 of one years military budget: the US can swallow a cost of 120 billion.

I think these anti-war demonstrators are misguided: the pacifist line is too simplistic a world-view. Violence can be an effective tool of political strategy . The notion that this is some noe-colonial thing is also highly misguided. The US doesn't like commitment- it wil flee Iraq at the first sign of it being possible. The idea that this is all for oil is also misguided. The possible benefits are too small for that scenrio to be true. I think people overestimate the possible profits.

This war is something far more devious than any of those: more subtle but long-term more pernicious and dangerous. It is an experiment on a new vision of how the US should use its power to infleunce evenst aorund the world to it benefit. It is the beginnings of a new round of active US involvement in the world, a new 'cold war' against an even less defined enemy than 'international communism' aftre this last decade of drift. Because the enemy is so vague, the aim so vague as well, more room is left for dangerous unintended consequences. The last time the US had a really active policy such as this was the 1980's. Two long term consequnces of those 1980's polices? Osama bin laden and Saddam hussein. I don't worry about saddam giving WMD to terrorist (still an incredibly idiotic argument and I can't believe how someone like Condi Rice can speak of it without breaking into hysterical laughter), or using them himself in any way. What I worry is what new long-term demons this new crusade will give is come 2020.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by GePap
The US is not going to invade Iraq for the Oil: it wil take years to get Iraq back up to pre-guf war production, even if all goes well.

That's where you and Ming are wrong.


It is all about the cost of war and the benefits for american oil companies.


Let's take it one at a time again.


1) Cost of war.

Will cost you for 1 year, 2 tops according to your and european estimates. Your estimates come from your state department, european estimates come from top banks.

Within 2 years maximum you will have "erased" whatever financial losses you had in the war by:

_huge increase of oil in Iraq (although the full potential of it will be developed within 10 years after you succesfully install a proUS regime).
_contributions from your allies, exactly like it was done in the Gulf war.

You payed almost nothing compared to what Germany S.A. and Japan payed.


2) Benefits for US companies.

Oil prices will drop after the latest 2 years if you attack and succeed.

But,
Under a pro US regime installed in Bagdat, American Oil companies will get full and the most lucrative exploration/exploitation rights in the Iraqi Oil fields.



SO yes it is very much about oil and the economy too.

[Bereta_Eder]

As well as "polemic talk" to keep Bush up and running. Never said it wasn't.

[Datajack Franit]

Another thread turned into fresh-made shyt by Fez

[DinoDoc]

You didn't read the first posts by Zorba the Greek, did you?

[Seeker]

"This is about the continued war on terrorism."

So why the heck fight Iraq?

If the Prague connection turned out to be static, then what does a mostly secular Ba'ath dictator have to do with Saudi terrorist malcontents?

Why is the possibility that Saddam MIGHT get a nuke more of a cause for immediate war than, say, North Korea revelation that they already have enough plutonium for two, and they blatantly admit their weapons program?

Why is it that South Korea and Japan are still dealing with and even economically assisting NK, heck even the US may keep open its oil aid?

Why does Saddam have to be attacked right now, and the brutal dictator Kim Jong Il, who has attacked and sunk vessels off his coast recently, and who still carries on a program of espionage, who is developing a Special Economic Zone while Saddam builds bunkers, can be left in peace?

It's not directly linked to al-Qaeda. Saddam has a minor peripheral role in Palestinian terrorism, but less than Saudi charities.

So it isn't terror.

It can be WMD, because NK has an admitted program and probably two already, and yet they are left alone...

So what is it? Saddmans big scary army?

I'd love to know.

Also: Why was containment and detente an acceptable strategy with Khruschev and Bresnev, and not with the infinitely less threatening Saddam? Nobody called JFK an 'appeaser' for not waging all out war on the USSR in an attempt to 'impose democracy'.

Should Reagan have handed Gorbachev an ultimatum instead of getting perestroika? Why not give peace a chance?

I know that every Big mac, every Playstation, that a North Korean can afford is a far more deadly weapon to Kim Jong Il than all the US troops stationed here.

[uh Clem]

Seeker, it's like the joke about the drunk who drops his car keys in the alley, but looks for them under the streetlamp because the light's better there. Bush will attack Iraq because he can. Reasons don't matter at this stage, assuming that they ever did.