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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (111212)	8/13/2003 1:28:00 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Hmmm. Before we overran Iraq, we already had troops in SA. After the war, we have announced we'll remove our troops from SA. How is this a clever plan to get "hot and close" to SA? Jacob, how simply can I say this? Before the war, our troops in SA were needed to keep Saddam in his box. That meant that if the Saudis kicked us out, our whole containment strategy went to pot. We were militarily dependent on the goodwill of the House of Saud. Now we are not. And we still have an army on their borders. Not that position matters very much. In fact, if you think about it, all we now care about from Saudi Arabia is real cooperation in the War on Terror (for eight years, since Khobar Towers, it has been lip service with the Interior Minister still blaming 9/11 on the Joooooooos) and oil. Come to think of it, if the House of Saud fell, how bad would it be? Whoever replaced them would still need to sell the oil. Maybe the Eastern Provinces could be annexed to Iraq - they probably would be if the inhabitants were asked for their preferences. This is called counting up lots of new options that we didn't have before. And, lo and behold, we are now starting to get some real cooperation from the Saudis. Who'd a thunk it? WindsofChange.net has an interesting overview of the series of recent articles on SA. Too long to post, but worth a read, even just for the links: The Long Goodbye, Al-Saud Style windsofchange.net

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (111212)	8/13/2003 2:45:13 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Jacob Snyder; Re: "Unfortunately, it only takes a few patriotic Iraqis with RPGs to wreck this plan." An oil industry plant can be destroyed by simply setting a few valves to incompatible positions. Anyone who's lived near one of those things knows that they periodically burn to the ground, even in countries where RPGs are few and far between, LOL. Refineries are bombs just waiting to go off. Some links: ... In construction, Standard ordered FHU-700’s 600-ton reactor shell built using 2 1/2 -inch thick steel alloy, reportedly the heaviest used in refining up to that point. The blast smashed the shell into 13 pieces ranging from three to 136 tons. Of these, a 60-ton fragment traveled farthest — 1,200 feet. The separator portion of the hydroformer broke into 29 pieces, one found 1,500 feet away from the blast. Along with the major pieces, a volley of metal debris ranging in size from two inches to 80-feet long tore through the air, acting much like shrapnel. This would cause most of the damage in residential areas. The blast’s concussion broke almost every window in a three-mile radius. ... ... And, in the only trauma fatality directly linked to the blast, a 10-foot long steel pipe crashed through the ceiling of a home four blocks from the refinery, killing a three-year-old child as he slept. The pipe also severed the right leg of the child’s eight-year-old brother sleeping beside him. Nearly 1,500 Whiting residents in neighborhoods bordering the refinery were evacuated. ... Why is the Whiting disaster so little known today? At the time it ranked second only to Texas City for total property loss in a refinery accident — a distant second. The following year a 500,000-gallon sphere containing pentane and hexane exploded at a refinery near Amarillo, killing 19 people. In 1984, a community only 30 miles away pushed past Whiting in the refinery disaster rankings . At Romeoville, IL, a rupture in a monoethanolamine absorber column resulted in a $127 million fire. Ten refinery firefighters and seven other employees died when a vapor cloud release ignited. ... fireworld.com ... MAY 1999 — Fire swept across the switching deck of a delayed coker unit. A coker operator was hospitalized in critical condition with burns on his face, neck and arms. The same refinery has been the scene of at least three other coker unit fires since 1993. One such fire in 1998 was blamed for a 10 cents a share drop in the company’s quarterly earnings. ... fireworld.com -- Carl