Finn d'Abuzz wrote:englishmajor wrote:Very interesting, indeed. Of course that is why there is a war in Iraq. I am trying to convince someone on another thread that 9/11 was planned well before in order to get Americans whipped up to such a patriotic fever that they'd want to go to war. Which they did. America is desperate for oil and will stop at nothing to get it.
The next war I see on the horizon, I think, will be for fresh water........
Not, I'm afraid it is not, and if you succeed in convincing "someone on another thread" that 9/11 was planned ....please reveal their identities so I may ignore each and every posting they make.
I won't even quality that with an answer. First, I have to try and understand how you might "quality" or otherwise formulate an "answer." I think I know what you are trying to say, but heaven forbid that I make such an assumption about a Northern Liberal.
The power of ideological hysteria to stultify native intelligence is astounding.
Open up your history book and put some lotion on your redneck. You can use a rag if you want to and study the Spanish-American War and the Yellow Press. Hearst's papers made a lot of money from that war. How about Poland's terrorist attack on a radio station as well as the burning of the Reichtag building as Hitler's excuse to kill communists and invade Poland. Or -how about Pearl Harbor: not planned, but allowed to happen?
What, in the world, does the preceding mean?!! I will be more than happy for you to apply lotion to the various red members of my anatomy, but if you want to converse with me, I'm afraid I must insist on coherence.
Bottom line: it took less time to get Hitler than has passed in the pursuit of bin Laden. The British and American forces need the Russians, I guess. Precious time and resources were diverted by the Iraq fiasco led by naive advisors of a president who "doesn't reflect" and makes fun of his lack of education. We all know how he got through college.
Did it really take less time to "get" Hitler than it has to "get Bin Laden?
Of course not! This is a glib statement as cute as your fishnetted bum, but it is, on an intellectual front, absurdly ridiculous. Please try and protect yourself from such self-deprecating comments.
To date, Bush has done everything bin Laden wanted him to do. (1) He got rid of Saddam (2) He has guaranteed Palestinian sovereignty (remember the land was taken by Moses through genocide) (3) he has removed all US troops from Saudi soil. Is bin Laden still on CIA payroll?
And Bin Laden has been most desirous of Bush forging an alliance with Musharif and sending Pakistani forces to eliminate the al-Qadai vermin. What a tool W has been. Little did he know that Al-Quadi is suicidal and wants the West to destroy it.
As for oil profits, you seem to have some awareness of stocks and the global economy. You fail to recognize the law of supply and demand. Prices have gone up due to China and India's demand with help from pulling Iraqi oil off stream via the war. With current oil prices (Katrina aside) how can you say oil corps are not making a killing?
To the extent that Oil Companies might have made a "killing," it has been because of supply an demand, and not sinister machinations. Otherwise, how would these bastards allow prices to drop so precipitously in the last week?
Here is the quintessential difference between the Left and the Right: The Left is of the opinion that profit is vile and degrading, while the Right thinks that profit is the engine of stability.
This is not a gap that can be bridged.
On the one hand we have an inherent dichotomy: Prosperous Lefties want to take money from their Right-wing neighbors, but preserve their own grand life style, and on the other we have the Conservative poor who appreciate that in a free market society, they have the opportunity to, financially, run neck and neck with Paris Hilton, George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, Warren Beatty etc etc etc.
Was oil a factor in the war in Iraq? Of course!
Would anyone in the West really care about what happened to a bunch of ignorant towel heads in the Middle East if they weren't sitting on the continued font of 21st century energy? Of course not, just look at Africa.
What about North Africa's oil? Arabs wear headgear traditionally just like you wear a cowboy hat. Or is it a baseball cap? The vast majority of Iraqis are Shiite (Persian) and wear no such garb, not to mention the Kurds.
What the hell are you talking about? What about North Africas oil?
Do they not wear cowboy hats or baseball caps in Canada? Do all of you Canadians actually wear those ear-flapped moose-hats that we see on SNL?
Oh, now I get it! You are arguing against my sarcastic use of "towel heads," by making a literal objective! Score minus 5 for you!
Oil attracts our gaze to the Middle East. Oil is why we have international terrorists. Oil is why Israel has not been free to crush the Palestinian vermin once and for all. Oil is why the Saudis have financed Wahabi Jihadists around the globe. Oil is why Mr Nobel Peace Prize - Jimmy Carter propped up the Shah of Iran. Oil is why Canada is prepared to drop her ecological britches to suck the foul crude from Canadian sands. Oil is why the monster Saddam was supported by The West. Oil is why a evil rat like Yassir Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The reason we have terrorists and Wahabism goes back to the 18th century when coal wasn't even part of the equation. Read your history. Believe it or not, some people don't care for secular humanism, including Wahabis. That is why they fought against the Saudi royal family, Turks, Nasser, Russian communists, Syria and Iraq.
Before oil, Wahabism was about as meaningful as oatmeal enemas. I have read my history, and perhaps you have as well, but you, obviously, failed to learn from it. If corn husks, not oil fed the energy demands of the world, no one would give a rat's ass about Islam, let alone Wahabism, Sufiism, or whirling dervishes. The Cult of Mithra was pretty dominant in its day, but now almost no one knows anything about it. Without oil, Islam would have been swept into the dust bin of history.
If only Lawrence of Arabia had oil to play!
For all of you gadflies who would open our eyes to the influence of oil...no fu*king kidding!
Now, let's return to Iraq.
If the United States was truly ruled by a cohort of venal scumbags, owned by American oil interests, would they really have invaded Iraq?
(SEE ABOVE FOR REPLY).
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BUMPER STICKER: I FEAR MY GOVERNMENT BUT I LOVE MY COUNTRY?)
Would it not have been much easier for these soulless puppets of American petro-interests to accommodate Saddam in any way he thought fit? Hell, the French and Russians followed this avenue. Were our oil-interest puppets just not venal s.o.b.s but moronic ones at that?
Yes, it would, as witnessed by Rumsfeld hugging Saddam while Kurds were being gassed. Saddam just got a little too uppity, like Noreiga and Castro and Allende. Saddam's plan to peg oil prices to the Euro might have been a factor?
Corporations in general (irrespective of whether or not they are domiciled in the US or are tied to oil) are compelled by the capital markets to achieve short term successes. Check it out, the War in Iraq did not drive US oil company stocks consistently up. Au contraire. The war in Iraq, perforce, reduced Iraqi oil production. There may have been a time when big ass companies looked to the long terms, but no more. If oil interests in America were trying to influence Bush it was in terms of keeping things stable in the Middle East. I would bet considerably large sums of money on the fact that oil industry magnates (unaffected by their ideology) were not in favor of invading Iraq.
(SEE ABOVE, i.e. supply and demand). Since Bush had to pull forces out of Saudi Arabia his Texas cowboys figured Iraq was the natural strategic location for the flyboys. Too bad they weren't up on history, or they would have been able to anticipate the current civil war in Iraq.
The ideological idiots would have us believe that Corp Bloodsuckers make their decisions based solely upon the impact on profits and share price (In reality it has a lot more to do with share price than profits. One might think the two are inextricably woven, but they are, alas, not.), and maybe they do. However this is not consistent with the notion that the Corp Bloodsuckers will also influence (if not command) the White House to take actions that hold no promise for immediate profits or increased share price.
It is not ideology but simple facts that Condelezza, who used to work for Chevron, and Cheney for Halliburton, etc etc is that enough of a revolving door? There is more involved than oil: it is, in Eisenhower's words 'the industrial military complex' and the need for a rationale (idealogy) for its existence. Fact: the rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer and the middle class is getting ripped apart, economically as well as politically. As the middle class shrinks, the US gets more and more like the Banana Republics it has dictated to. Fascism is alive and well in Amerika, disguised by a pseudo republic, Hollywood, video games, and Ronald McDonald smiles. Read Brave New World?
Sorry folks, but even the Bad Guys have to be consistent or they will soon be nonexistent.
And yet....there may very well be future wars based upon fresh water. Insightful, unless one is parroting a futurist. In any case substitute water for oil. The political and economic dynamics will be the same. The geography, of course, will not. When water significantly supercedes oil as a crucial natural resource, the Middle East will retreat back towards the Stone Age, and Canada (Hoo-yeah EM!) will become the new Saudi Arabia.
You got it mixed up. Stone age lingered in Europe and North America much longer than the Mid East. Currently, Turkey controls the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates as well as making regular shipments of water to Israel via tankers. Egypt and Sudan control the Nile. The Caucasus and Caspian hold vast amounts of water. Given that this is all in the Mid East don't hold your breath.
But hell those lovely Canuks...give them the pivot point of the global economy and they will lead us to the Promised Land
Yeah, eh? And hopefully Canadians will do that without another war.
It is too tedious to reply to each and every one of your blathering psoting. They all seem to say the same thing and so refer to my prior comments.
PS: What the hell is with "Amerika?"
What do you mean by this?
America is the equivalent of Nazi Germany?
America is the equivalent of Stalinist Russia?
It's, I suppose, cute with your fellow World Savers, but does it have any sort of realistic meaning?
Please edify.
!
