Re: I won't deny oil is a major factor. I admit it.
I for one deny that oil is a major factor... The whole crisis over Iraq boils down to three factors: Israel, Israel, and Israel. Oil's got nothing to do with it. For that matter, the current spike in oil prices stems chiefly from the snafu in Venezuela... Besides, as I've stated repeatedly, the world oil market is a monopsony of sorts, that is, apart from the US, there's no other gas-guzzler. Europe is in recession, Russia is herself an oil exporter, India is still in the bicycle age... China? Well, I just heard that, in 2002, new car sales in China hit the... one million mark --I guess that's less than the amount of cars sold in Manhattan for the same period.... And, finally, the US already is Iraq's chief oil importer (through the food-for-oil protocol).
Yet, at the end of the day, the oil spin is quite a useful decoy to deflect public opinion's discontent away from Israel/Zionism and towards the US... Somehow, it's an oblique way to bundle anti-Zionism with anti-American feelings... without exposing the war's true motive. It casts the US as the anti-Arab bully while the actual warmonger is Israel.
Re: And since Saddam is failing to comply with a binding UN resolution (which neither Castro nor Jong are), we have more than enough rationale to justify the use of force against him.
Israel too doesn't comply with UN resolutions.
Gus |
