THE US, UN AND IRAQ V

...and the esoteric literary knowledge award goes to...Gel! Pass the cake to your left. Modest portions, please.

gel

I haven't read enough about him yet to speak with adequate knowledge. He appears moderate (relative to other versions of Muslim clerics in the neighborhood). The US will continue to insist upon ongoing 'occupation' (as above, control of the resource and significant military presence), but I don't know how likely that is to conflict with Sistani's vision.

While the rest of the world debates the Halliburton contracts, the need for the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, the essential motives of the Bush adminstration, one simple truth seems to bear out. Upon completion of the conquest of Iraq (if it ever happens) the US will establish a major military presence in Iraq allowing the US to essentially ignore the remainder of the middle east. The Iraqi oil fields will become the primary souce of oil for the US leaving the remander of the world to negoiate with the Saudi's and other lesser players in the oil market. This leaves the US free to ignore the Palestine/Israel issues as well as ongoing threats of terrorism from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other hotbeds of discontent.

gel

Yes, that's the sort of notion I had about the fellow. He appears to be quite unpuppetable, pardon the word.

My view of the various dynamics, even only among the Iraqis themselves, is very dim. So I can't really predict much, even if things were more stable there.

The US can't afford to piss this guy off too much, so if he becomes a significant impediment to their goals, they will act to disempower him (sounds like that may be tough to pull off). They may, as Hobbit suggests, stage an 'accident', but that risks even greater negative consequences.

So I think they will do whatever they can to accomodate him. I really don't, for an instant, think the US presence has anything to do with 'liberating' Iraqis, so they'll allow pretty much any local form of governance so long as some semblance of 'stability' exists such that their objectives re resources and geo-politics are supported.

"Are you okay?"

My wife asked the question after we learned that Robert Stewart Flores, who killed three professors at the University of Arizona before shooting himself, was a Gulf War veteran.

She asked me the same thing last week, when we learned John Allen Muhammed, better known as the Washington D.C. sniper, is also a Gulf War veteran. Not to mention British Gulf War vet Paul Delaney, who stabbed his ex-girlfriend and mother of two 30 or 40 times. Or Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, a Gulf War vet who murdered and sodomized an 11-year old girl in Kosovo. Or Jeffrey Glenn Hutchinson, also a Gulf vet, who murdered his girlfriend and her three children on Sept. 11, 1998. Or Joseph Ludlam, who murdered his former manager in November 2000. And then there's the most famous Gulf War veteran of all, Timothy McVeigh, who killed hundreds of people in a homegrown terrorist attack in Oklahoma City.

* * *

Remember, when you go to the gas pump to buy your Middle Eastern oil, secured by the blood of American soldiers, this too is part of the price you pay. Not just being party to killings halfway around the world, which our society seems to tolerate with a glib "Let's change the channel" attitude, but also the lives torn apart back home.

You may decide it's okay -- your chances of being murdered by a combat veteran are still less than the risk of being killed in a highway accident. But as we send another few hundred thousand young men and women off to war, the odds are about to get worse.