I always read your posts and I try to read every link you reference.

Middle East nuclear proliferation is the result of aggressive politics. But it is also a defense mechanism against Western hegemony. No one should doubt that.

As for the idea of a petrodollar. OPEC is after all a cartel. It is headed by Saudi Arabia. The agreement to use the dollar as the only currency for oil payment is part of Saudi Arabia's agreement with the US, part of a long history that goes back to 1933.

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. establish diplomatic relations, and in 1933 the first foreign oil prospectors arrive in the kingdom. The Americans pay $170,000 in gold for land concessions that turn out to contain the biggest oil fields on earth. Ignoring criticism that inviting foreigners into the kingdom is un-Islamic, and citing precedent in the Quran, King Abd al-Aziz invites U.S oil companies to develop Saudi oil resources. The oil companies and the Saudi government set up a joint enterprise that later becomes the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco). Its shareholders include America's four largest oil corporations.

By 1945, the U.S. urgently needs oil facilities to help supply forces fighting in the Second World War. Meanwhile, security is at the forefront of King Abd al-Aziz's concerns. President Franklin Roosevelt invites the king to meet him aboard the U.S.S. Quincy, docked in the Suez Canal. The two leaders cement a secret oil-for-security pact: The king guarantees to give the U.S. secure access to Saudi oil and in exchange the U.S. will provide military assistance and training to Saudi Arabia and build the Dhahran military base.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saud/cron/

The petrodollar is only one tool in the maintenance of US global monetary hegemony, that is, dominance over all the functions of the international monetary system. I realize that the monetary hegemony of the US and Britain relies not only on petrodollar dominance, but on the dominance of other dollar-denominated transactions such as those of major international "lending" institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.

The one thing that petrodollars provide the US is the ability to maintain a negative balance of trade indefinitely since our monetary hegemony allows us, alone of all countries in the world, to operate without any balance of payments constraints. Without the dominance of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, our monetary hegemony, indeed our present quality of life would not be possible. Even though we are the world's greatest debtor nation, we remain the world's greatest consumer.

This is a little dated (2002), but it makes the point:

The current international finance architecture is based on the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency, which now accounts for 68 percent of global currency reserves, up from 51 percent a decade ago. Yet in 2000, the US share of global exports (US$781.1 billon out of a world total of $6.2 trillion) was only 12.3 percent and its share of global imports ($1.257 trillion out of a world total of $6.65 trillion) was 18.9 percent. World merchandise exports per capita amounted to $1,094 in 2000, while 30 percent of the world's population lived on less than $1 a day, about one-third of per capita export value.

Ever since 1971, when US president Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard (at $35 per ounce) that had been agreed to at the Bretton Woods Conference at the end of World War II, the dollar has been a global monetary instrument that the United States, and only the United States, can produce by fiat. The dollar, now a fiat currency, is at a 16-year trade-weighted high despite record US current-account deficits and the status of the US as the leading debtor nation. The US national debt as of April 4 was $6.021 trillion against a gross domestic product (GDP) of $9 trillion.

http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DD11Dj01.html

I am not saying that oil is the only reason we are about to attack Iran. But oil is a primary reason. And the nuclear proliferation on the part of Middle East nations, although it has many causes, is also an attempt to subvert US global military hegemony by destroying US monetary hegemony.

That is why we are going to attack Iran. To preserve our global monetary and military hegemony.

Obviously noone is bothering to make sure everyone understands this is about Habeus for ALIENS

I think it means ALIENS as well. The problem is, it doesn't specify whether those aliens are from outside our planet, our solar system, our galaxy or our universe.

Your analysis was correct until you started speculating about GOP loyalties to causes. It's not shaped by "Middle East militarism", but by a desire to turn Iraq around, something that you and other liberals have given up on.

Turn Iraq around from what? From what it was?

You tell me. What is it now?

Of course, the Middle East will never accept us or our "democracy". Because it's not democracy.

And liberals have not given up on democracy. Here in the US, liberals seem to be the only ones trying to save it.

P.S. Liberal is a beautiful word. It means freedom.