I agree with you, a nuclear wasteland of glassy sand is not peace and an empire is not just a "squeeze" as Conrad said, but this is what they believe.

I never said it would be successful William, I said that they would try. These are same people who claim that they create their own reality (and still think so!). The plan is, as I said, is to dominate the Middle East, and with it the oil. They think they can do it, they believe that they can do it. So they will try. Obviously the Russians and the Chinese are laying their own plans and have their own dreams of empire. The strategic planners in America disagree, they believe that this opposition can be overcome. It's how wars start of course, and it will start a war. Maybe the big one. Probably the big one.

If you read the current thinking on the balance of forces among the nuclear powers, it is clear that America now has finally achieved superiority. While the Sovs were sinking into the muck and the Chinese were busy with internal strife and then building factories, America was very busy modernizing, MIRVING, MARVING, and improving the CEP of its thermonuclear arsenal. China's nuclear 'deterrent', with its 18 liquid fueled (takes 2 hours!), single warhead, stationary ICBMs is considered laughable by the Pentagon. Russia is not much better. Their triad is almost gone, on a good day they may have one boomer under the sea. The bombers are obsolete, not dangerous at all anymore. Current strategic analysts now believe that America has finally achieved first strike capability. It may even be true. In fact it probably is true. MAD was the only true limit on American power and now that is gone. This fact alone changes everything.

So, to "oversimplify" again. America needs the oil, wants global hegemony and thinks that they can do it. All these silly objections about who owns stock in America, or how some other country or the UN will "feel" about it, don't matter much to the fascist/strategic/pragmatic mind. It needs to be done (their thinking not mine) it can be done, it will be done.

If you don't take the oil, where will you get your fuel for your SUVs? Biofuel? Switch grass?

America will take the oil, your way of life depends on it. And yes, nukyouler weapons are very much, on the table.

more on MAD: http://tinyurl.com/ebtv3 (foreign policy magazine)

"To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire.." so true.

Jeebus! I never thought I would say that.

Any occupation is farking Brutal. BRUTAL.

Depending on who you talk to, Iraq has lost between 60,000 and 1.2 million killed.

A good comparison is Poland. The population prior to the war was roughly the same as Iraq, @ 34,849,000. By the end of the occupation, which again is roughly about as long as America has been occupying Iraq, they had lost 5,600,000 people or 16.07%

The Germans killed 5 times as many people as the Americans. One could compare Iraq with occupied Norway, who lost "only" .042 of their population but then the Germans considered them fellow Aryans.

France lost 562,000 -- a "mere" 1.35% of their population, but then they, despite the fact that after the war, every second Frenchman claimed to have been a Maquis, did not resist to the extent that the Iraqis have.

If the low number is true, then, in historical terms, the Iraqi occupation has been kind indeed, even the higher number does not approach the Germans, forget the Mongols who tended to kill, well... everyone.

If America wanted to, using conventional weapons alone, kill every man jack in Iraq, in about a week.

Having said that 1.2 million dead Iraqis is still a stack of bodies approximately 189 miles high.

If you want to compare the actions of America today with the depravities of primitive nomadic tribes people who wandered the Steppes nearly a thousand years ago or with the Nazis who managed to "elevate" themselves to that same historical standard of depravity, and then somehow feel good about it. Well go ahead.

Perhaps the Iranians who not attacked anyone, anywhere, for hundreds of years would be a better standard.

Bush tortured and tortures. No doubt about. It is not new though. Not at all. It is time to remember your history.

The US has used torture for decades. All that's new is the openness about it.

By ignoring past abuses, opponents of torture are in danger of pushing it back into the shadows instead of abolishing it.

It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City.

It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/dec/10/usa.comment