American business has no interest in Saddam’s Iraq, but they see a potential in postwar Iraq. In that sense, Iraq was expendable. There is no big US investment there. Rather, taking out Saddam was a way to HELP bring investment there. Think Halliburton.

Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing..etc, the list goes on. That was my point. What is going to be gained from plundering postwar Iraq. 3/4 of the companys now indirectly or directly involved in Iraq are money trains for the Republican Party.

America is still ruled more by business interests more than ideological interests. Like they say, the Golden Rule is whoever has the gold makes the rules.

True, and in the current Bush administration it’s a mutual cycle of doing business to benefit both ends.

I think it has. I am fairly certain I saw it about a month ago here in Australia, but I didn’t buy it at the time.

Whoops, got side-tracked there sorry Crobato. Trying to do to many things at once at the moment. But I have no doubts as to what the American lobby groups can do to an administration. But I also have no doubts about what an administration will do to assure continued support from those parties. 🙂 Again, think Iraq last year.

The UN would matter little to a determined US-led force. The use of unilateral force in peacetime, let alone war, has new precedents now thanks largely to 9/11, and a very bitter and vengeful American President, and American psyche. In this post-9/11 world I would not be one trying to underestimate what the US would or would not do, even in the midst of international protest. Think Iraq last year for example.

Except that covert action against those pipelines would violate the sovereignty of Russia and three other former Soviet republic states.

Unless of course, they actually helped. 🙂