Let’s not forget that it’s China, and not India, which has threatened a de facto sovereign nation with war if it so much as declares independence. This done, incidentally, on the basis of a supposed territorial claim to the island which even China’s supporters will have to acknowledge is dubious (if they’re honest).

The problem with China is not only what Virage pointed out above, but also that the governing regime is extraordinarily quick to make such threats in the most inappropriate of circumstances. It does, after all, speak openly about annexing Taiwan by force, despite this being a concept that was supposed to have gone out of fashion with the creation of the United Nations.

Further, the Chinese government employs all the means at it’s disposal to send most of the Chinese populace into fits of nationalist rage whenever it becomes convenient to do so, such as those manufactured riots against Japan. This is of course made far easier by the Chinese government’s clamps on freedom in the country, and its ability to censor everything, even the internet. I don’t think I need to explain that this sort of thing is not exactly healthy, and nor is it conducive to stable and friendly relations between states.

Of course, none of this means that China will invade half of SE Asia, or that it really is a threat to its neighbours. What it does mean is that China’s behaviour is a suggestion that such an outcome is still a possibility, and so countries like Australia should take the prudent option in keeping a very close eye on China’s future activities, while preparing for possible stand-offs over geopolitical flashpoints if China’s actions do turn nasty.

After all, there’s nothing actually wrong with planning for a worst-case scenario, or believing that it might be possible. By taking the prudent option and preparing for a “bad China” while still hoping for a “good China”, Australia is no more saying that a bad China is inevitable than a man taking a fire-extinguisher aboard a plane is saying that an inflight fire is a certainty.

The problem is that the royals haven’t been so faithful to the US as many believe, and their kingdoms seem to be fantastically effective breeding grounds for the sort of disaffected young Muslims who are likely to fly aeroplanes into buildings.

It really is quite impossible to miss the policy shift, in my opinion. Past US presidents followed a realpolitik strategy of “stability at all costs”, which meant that the US actually preferred strong-man dictators in the ME, as it kept everything seemingly stable and easier to manage. Over the last few years though, and especially after 9/11, the US government has come to realise that the old policy brings neither security nor real stability. Liberal democracy, on the other hand, is a system far more likely to result in peace and stability than a dictatorship is. Not only does it provide a constructive outlet for the majority of those who become frustrated and alienated, but it results in a far less belligerent outlook – thus far no liberal democracy has ever declared war on and invaded another liberal democracy.

Well if what you say is true and US is not their for Oil then there is only one valid reason. Mr Bush and others in power are war mongers. Democracy oh yes i almost forgot that they want a democratic world no wonder y Musharif in Pakistan is non NATO Alley. For this matter other Royals in the middle east are close alleys????

Hey, you’ve got to start somewhere, so why not Iraq? If we can keep this momentum going, then it will be the turn of the Saudis and Pakistan soon enough.

Besides, the idea is not to go on invading ad infinitum, instead the idea was to demonstrate once and for all that a liberal constitutional democracy could work in an Arab country, and make it better off. In doing so, you provide a third way between the current choices, which are either a pseudo-secular dictator or a theocracy. Once the Arab people realise that they’ve been fed a diet of lies for the past few decades, and that there is a better way (personified by Iraq), they’ll exert more pressure on their governments to become more accountable and institute democratic reforms.

That’s the theory at least. Time will tell if it actually works, and Iraq hasn’t been all that encouraging so far.

It’s really quite simple, A-2-S. Bush’s economic policy focuses not on raising taxes, but cutting them slightly in order to boost economic growth, which in turn increases the amount of money coming in through tax revenues.

So far, it’s been working – in the past two years revenues from taxes are up almost 30%, with this year’s rise being the second-highest in 25 years. This has helped slash the federal budget deficit from its December ’04 level of $419 billion to a current level of $325.6 billion, almost $100 billion less. In fact, at the current rate the deficit will be down to $260 billion by the end of the year, thereby halving the original deficit three years earlier than Bush himself had promised.

In other words, it’s certainly possible to get the two equations even without raising taxes or stealing anyone’s oil, so long as the economy is growing.

Besides, you’re looking at this from the entirely wrong angle. Your claim is that the US government needs additional money so therefore it had to have stolen the oil, but this makes absolutely no sense when you realise, as I pointed out, that full control of Iraq’s oil rests with its independent government and not with the United States. So regardless of whether you think the US has a motive to steal the oil, the actual facts prove that it has no such control.

So alternatively I guess Saddam remains in power and the Iraqi people continue to suffer and die by the thousands every year while pigs like Saddam and his sons continue to rule and do whatever they please to or with whomever they please. Sounds like a great future for Iraq to me……….

From the very start Americans have publicly put great emphasis on the fact that only Americans and British companies get the reconstruction and oil export contracts. Later, some Polish companies were invited, as well.. The rest of the world was absolutely excluded. What more proof would I need?

So all of a sudden we invaded Iraq to steal their oil and share some of that with Britain and then give a little to Poland? The Iraqi government has control of the oil and they can contract out to whomever they choose. America is not stealing the oil. They are getting the Iraqi government on its feet so that it can use its natural resources to accelerate the process of rebuilding the country.

Precisely. It really amazes me how some of those here still refuse to see this most basic point: That the US has no control over Iraq’s oil. Perhaps that’s because by admitting this, they would have to give up one of their favourite criticisms of the US.

Yes he invaded in 1990, who is talking about the Gulf War of 1990, we have a dispute over this recent one, and America..could have gone and you know kicked Saddam that time, it caused a Shiite Uprising in South, where people hoped Americans will come to Rescue, No Abrams came, it was the the T series.

Uh, yes. So? I disagree completely with the decision to leave Saddam in power in 1991, but that decision was made by a different American administration with a different policy, so why should it be used as criticism of the current US president’s decision to remove Saddam now? Besides, it makes no sense to claim that Saddam should have been removed in 1991, but not in 2003.

Why all of a sudden? It was being planned that since the very start.. Don’t you remember the dispute on this forum about that? You were among the toughest defenders of the idea that ONLY US and British companies should get all oil export and reconstruction contracts after France, Germany and other Europeans refused to participate. Whom are you trying to cheat here and why?

This is just proof of your ignorance on the subject. The restriction of contracts to the countries involved in the Coalition was applicable to reconstruction contracts only, and even then was valid for only as long as the United States was the governing authority in Iraq. With the advent of an independent and democratically-elected government in Iraq, all that has fallen away, and any company from any country on earth is eligible to bid for oil export and reconstruction contracts now. I’ll repeat: oil export and reconstruction contracts are NOT currently limited to the US and Britain.

Impi is otherwise a nice guy. But he takes everything from the perspective that people who are in charge in the US are moral and honest and so are their actions. That is what I call naiviety. It is nice, but also somehow childish.. Otherway, he has my sympathies..

Give me a break. Kindly point out to me exactly where I have assumed that those in charge of the US are somehow entirely moral and honest. Your ad hominem attacks on my (perceived) position are unwarranted and actually somewhat pathetic.

In all my posts on this thread I have not taken a position on the moral standpoint of the US government, and for good reason. Instead, I have argued about what is, while debunking your incorrect assertions that the US invaded Iraq for its oil. The very fact that the old “war for oil” lie is not true does not mean the US is suddenly acting entirely benevolently or with altruistic intentions, it just means that there were other reasons for the invasion that you must consider. That’s if, of course, you’re capable of seeing the Iraq invasion in more complex terms than making it all about the oil.

Of course you can set up any legally elected government after you have secured profits from oil export for yourself by long-term contracts. Now you can do a small cheap ceremonmy to the world press about ‘how you place all oil production and export in Iraqi hands’.

This must be the cheapest trick on Earth and I find extremely surprising how easily can masses be cheated. If you cared to read about the background of recent revolution in Bolivia (Morales) then you would see what does it mean ‘placed all gas production and export in Bolivian hands’ but I guess people with Sit-Com culture won’t be going as far as to try to see thing from broader perspective.

That makes absolutely no sense. The legally elected government of Iraq was not “set up”, it was properly elected through a process created and overseen by the United Nations and independent electoral advisors, and NOT the USA. In fact, I have met one of the United Nations electoral advisors involved in that, and he was just about as anti-American as you are. It would be disingenuous to claim that the current Iraqi government was somehow “set up” by the United States. We’re not talking about the provisional government here.

Your comment about “long-term oil contracts” is also laughable. The United States specifically structured the rules around the interim governments to make sure that they were not allowed to enter into any long-term oil export contracts until a democratically elected government was in place. Therefore, the new, democratically elected government, has complete control over all oil export contracts and is NOT bound by anything signed before it came into office with regards to oil.

In fact, the first long-term oil export contracts are only expected by the end of this year, when Iraq’s Parliament passes a comprehensive oil law to regulate the industry.

So let’s summarise: The United States invades an oil-rich country, yet declines to take direct control of the oil, preferring instead to hand over authority to two increasingly independent interim governments, while at the same time banning all foreign ownership and control of Iraqi oil until such time as an independent government can make its own choice. In the process, it also spends billions of dollars of its own money to try stablize the country, while not taking a single cent of Iraqi oil revenues in return. Finally, it supports a democratic Iraqi election, allowing others (not necessarily supportive of the US’s goals) to both oversee and assist the election to ensure it would be as free and fair as possible. The result is a democratic government that has absolutely no legal obligations to the United States and can sell its oil to whoever it wants.

Great way to steal the oil, eh?

PhantomII, thanks for that, and you expressed my sentiments far better than I did. I will admit, it constantly amazes me that people can not only believe the silly “war for oil” thing, but that they seem awfully eager to oppose any democratic progress in Iraq for fear of it being seen as a victory for America. For all their professed “concern” for the Iraqi people, and their trotting out of civilian casualty numbers, it has become increasingly clear that they don’t really care about them at all.

What do you guys think now?

I find that claim exceedingly unlikely, and I honestly thought those two newspapers would have more ethics in running such an uncorroborated story. To put it simply, American soldiers would want to keep Zarqawi alive, because he would be a fantastic intelligence source, just as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was, and killing him would be utterly counter-productive.

In fact, the first American troops on the scene would likely have been those from Task Force 145, which is made up of special forces and intelligence personnel, meaning that they were even less likely to kill somebody who could provide valuable information. Looks to me like the Sunday Times and Observer are guilty of being taken in, hook line and sinker, by an enemy psy-ops operation.

The war is legal, of that there is absolutely no doubt now. While you can debate the legality of the original invasion as long as you like, the fact remains that after the initial invasion the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1483 (and later 1511) which removed any and all legal ambiguity about the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq. Now that Iraq has a democratically elected independent government, the Coalition forces maintain their presence through the new government’s requests. So the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq is entirely legal.

I think it’s also wrong to compare the relative “stability” under Saddam to the more transitive situation we’re seeing now. Most people may not realise it, but a temporary stage of relative anarchy almost always follows liberation from a totalitarian regime, as we’ve seen in Russia, some of the former Soviet satellites, and even my own country. Now while it might be easy to compare the two superficially, and say: “Well, it was better when it was stable, even though it was a bad government”, this is a mistake, and you have to take a more long-term look at the issue.

For example, by the United Nations’ own estimate, approximately 30 000 civilians have died as a result of the post-liberation chaos in Iraq. This is a fair number, and it would have been better that all of those deaths were prevented, but then you’ve got to remember that around 15 000 – 20 000 Iraqis died each year under Saddam and the brutal abuses of his regime. Iraq will become stable over the next few years, as the Iraqi forces gain in strength, and that chaos will largely disappear. Saddam, had he been left in power, would just have gone on killing, and Iraq would have become poorer and poorer. Now, Iraq has a future, it has a path to not only stability, but also prosperity and safety. Is it not awfully cruel to claim that they do not deserve that?

Besides, it’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this. I’m sure none of those in here would claim that it was better to allow Apartheid to continue in South Africa, but it ironically went through a very similar stage as Iraq is. In the early 1990s, over 10 000 people were killed in ethnic violence in South Africa, and over the past 10 years, over 200 000 South Africans have been murdered as part of the crime wave that swept SA after the end of that repressive system. Looking at the stats alone, one might be tempted to wish instead for the relative stability that existed under Apartheid, but this would be wrong. That’s because despite the deaths, despite the crime, and despite the temporary violence, South Africa is a better place today than it was 10 years ago. The economy is growing, people are getting wealthier, and there is a great opportunity to do well. I believe in 10 years time, we’ll look back and say the same thing about Iraq.

Oh yeah, and the whole “war for oil” thing is so idiotic I don’t even know where to start. Sure, maybe before the war you could have claimed that was the case, but now that America has done what it promised and not only handed over power to a legitimate Iraqi government but placed all oil production and export in its hands, it only makes you look silly to claim that America went in to steal Iraq’s oil.