Zseni wrote:

Okay, so given all this: the war on Iraq is bad economic policy in that it furthers a inefficient status quo - the oil-based energy economy - at the expense of good economic policy which would also, in this case, happen to save lives: developing alternative energy sources and reducing total energy usage.

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

This is not a war which can truly be fought over economic benefit. It is one fought for economic convenience.

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

Iraq's oil is some of the lightest and sweetest in the world - that is, it's naturally very pure and a very high percentage of it is useable.

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

In a US-controlled Iraq the new regime would of course obey OPEC quotas and pricing, which means that those who will benefit most from the stability of the supply are the oil companies and especially the American and American-ally owned ones which get to set up camp in the glass parking lot we're going to leave behind. They get to work with an oil which is easy and relatively inexpensive to process and sell it at the going rate - making $5, $10 on the barrel over what dirty-oil producers like Russia get. (And Russia, bless its heart, wants to slash oil prices which makes OPEC very nervous, but I digress.)

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

The war on Iraq is not just economic convenience, it's a witch hunt, a distraction from the rising danger that the Enron scandal briefly uncovered. To me it smacks of our communism domino policy,

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

or that time we were arming Iraq in order to contain Iran - and remember all the arming of Iran we did?

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

out the reactionary fundamentalist government we installed in Afghanistan to beat the commies? (They didn't tell us they were fundies at the time!) Yeah, that didn't work out so good.

World Affairs Correspondent Zseni wrote:

Both you and Dio have this theory of Darwinist civilizational development, and to some extent history bears you out - and of course modern history certainly does.