Potemkin Villagers, will anyone (besides Greenspan) discuss the real reasons we are in the ME? OIL

[ShamelessHussy]

It is so strange to me how this is NEVER discussed in the m$m, since it is the only reason that actually makes some sort of sense.

And notice how the defensive the gate keepers get even at the mere suggestion that it may have a primary role in these conflicts... that is what card players refer to as a 'tell'

that they (m$m) ALL pretend otherwise is so dammed creepy.

[yurbud]

1. Ted Koppel said Iraq was about oil--AFTER he retired.

[branders seine]

2. and don't forget the world heroin trade

Remember _Dune_?

All about the Spice.

[ShamelessHussy]

4. yep, another excellent point that is never discussed

they (m$m thought managers) are forbidden to discuss anything that goes outside the official narrative, and who can blame them for adhering to the rules in this job market.

:hi:

[TheDebbieDee]

8. Nobody mentions that there has been no appreciable

decrease in the world's heroin supply.

After 8 years in Afghanistan there should at LEAST be a shortage in heroin. Hmmmmmm.

[ShamelessHussy]

9. yet, when the taliban were in charge, they were able to dramatically reduce it's trade

if our goals were true, we'd hire them, again :evilgrin:

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. It is actually OLDER than oil, the central Asia game that is

this is about the Silk Road. Oil is just the newest reason for control. Once oil runs out, you still meed to control the Silk Road.

Oh and it is also about containment, of drum roll, RUSSIA and now China.

The reference to India is interesting as they are reaching super power status FAST

[ShamelessHussy]

5. BRICK - and Oil is the current KEY resource in the never ending power/chess game

fortunately we have DU were these issues can be addressed, otherwise it would feel like it was all in our heads.

:hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Well it is amazing to me how many people

do not understand this.

I need to thank Zbigniew for the lesson (no relative by the way) on the Central Asian chess game. He wrote THE BOOK on that... and laid the trap for the USSR in Afghanistan.

Oh the irony. it hurts.

[ShamelessHussy]

7. indeed

amazon link...
http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/0465027261

wiki link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

it is sad but surely a sign of the times to see his child on the m$m, pandering to the elite, and playing the fool.

:hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Perhaps it is time to get a new copy and damn it RE-READ IT

:-)

Also if you can get anything on the OLD silk road

[ShamelessHussy]

11. good advice

for the current admin, but i don't think it would make any difference

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Actually the current administration does read

unlike the previous one. I suspect they have read Brzezinski's book and are desperate to avoid the trap falling om the US as well. Why the end date given.

[ShamelessHussy]

13. of course, but they apparently don't learn

and from the cheap seats we seem to be repeating practically the same steps the USSR took on the path to their demise.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. And in my view, WORST CASE, it includes the break up of the US

into anywhere from three to six successor states.

As to the learning... the Russians did not have an end date. We now do... positive step.

[ShamelessHussy]

15. just like the former USSR

and the russians end date was 10 years, wether articulated or not, another eerie similarity.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. They never articulated it

in fact, it was sudden after gorby told the military NOW OUT, DON'T CARE... and it was a rout.

That was in oh months...

This is articulated.

[ShamelessHussy]

18. They hailed the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a victory - deja vu moment, dead ahead

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. We did as well from Saigon

[ShamelessHussy]

20. as i said, they never learn

they being, TBTB

the sorrows of empires, carries on.


and so it goes...

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Well history never ever repeats itself step by step

what does repeat, is the rise and fall of empires...

We are on the way down...

Read what Gibbon had to say about Rome oh about the third to fourth century and Mercenaries

http://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Roman-Empire-Everymans/dp/0679423087

[ShamelessHussy]

25. Lessons in Disaster

'Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam' @ Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805090878/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0805079718&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=010HPHQ1FPN9TE07RAWF

I hear the wh staff are all reading it...

I also hear Obama wants to end the war in 3 years, sounds like someone who is thinking more about his own future than ours :shrug:

[sabrina 1]

17. You a re so right. I just mentioned that to my friend while

we watched the speech and the various talking morons analyzing it. She asked why they don't just tell the truth instead of struggling to come up with all these excuses for why are in these countries.

I don't get it either. I think that the American people would support taking other people's oil if they thought that without it they would have to give up their lifestyles sad to say. It would be better than continuing to tell the 'Al Queda/Boogieman story over and over again.

And the apologists here and elsewhere who bring up 'the women of Afghanistan' as if we had done a single thing to make their lives better. And if they care about women, what about the brutal dictators we are bribing with millions of dollars who literally boil their own people in oil, like Karamov in Uzbekistan whose cooperation is needed for our occupation of Afghanistan?

I will never understand why the media and politicians refuse to discuss what most people already know anyhow.

[glitch]

22. Perception as Reality. No one wants to be perceived as a greedy thief.

Hence, the illusion must be maintained.

[dusmcj]

23. agree but that's background to acute probs like Pak nukes which won't wait

absolutely, we eagerly took on the mantle of protector of the oil fields from the British, and we darn well couldn't do much else since our own Rockefeller family had invented the modern petroleum economy and we sure weren't going to give that up any time soon.

IMO the secondary effects of our involvement there though have produced phenomena which need to be dealt with more acutely than the underlying problem. It's kind of like the house is on fire and the foundation is cracking. Pick the one to fix first.

Candidates for those more acute probs:

1. Pak nukes: if their shit falls into nonstate-actor hands, the game moves to a new level
   
2. Taliban being regional douchebags on par with the Iranians: including re-hosting AQ, generally being assholes in the region, etc.
   
3. destabilization of south asia: head south out of the mountains in Afgh/Pak and you reach India. Home of a billion people with an exploding economy and more nukes than the Paks. We have to get the geopolitics right here or we're fucked.
   

Fixing the oil addiction is a long-term job which we have to get started on. But we can't wait on the immediacies while we get it under control.

[ShamelessHussy]

24. not according to the pentagon

There was an even more sobering way to frame climate change — as a security threat. For half a century, forward-looking military officers had considered with increasing concern what global warming might mean in their area of responsibility. They would surely be called upon, for example, if weather disasters multiplied. In 2003, defense intellectuals in the Pentagon commissioned a report on "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security." As reported in a leak to the press, the authors warned of a risk that "mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.... abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies." The authors concluded that "the threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism." The report was strikingly similar to the CIA report prepared three decades before (see above). Again the specific "worst-case"scenario, an abrupt change in ocean circulation, was something scientists considered extremely unlikely. By now, however, impact studies had sketched out a range of more plausible scenarios that looked bad enough. If you thought like a military officer, the IPCC's approach — concentrating on what everyone could agree was likely, while setting aside less likely but still possible scenarios — was not "conservative" at all, but irresponsible. Many well-informed military officers and other national security experts, along with many political leaders and a majority of the world’s public, now believed that the possible impacts of global warming ranked among the most dangerous long-term risks that civilization faced.(21*)


not to mention, gay marriage!