Mohtalim

Are all the rage these days in the news. Condi replaces Colin. Apparently she was a Stanford professor at the age of 26, but she still flashes this weird subservient smile every time she looks at Bush. I think it's been parodied on SNL to great effect. How smart is she, really? Did she get where she is by saying the right things and having the right background?

Gonzales replaces Ashcroft. At least he's not rabidly anti-choice. The fact that he was Bush's council makes him another close ally.

Does anyone want to take bets on Rumsfeld, whether or not he'll still be around? My money is on him staying. Apparently Powell left because Rumsfeld was too big of a dick. He may have been the closest thing that the cabinet had to a check and/or balance. Everyone seems to agree that this term is going to even more closely reflect the core ideologies of Bush. How about bets on the next country the US invades?

Iran. No question. After Iraq, it really looked like they wanted to hit Syria, but looking at the news over the past few weeks, they're trying to spin Iran the same way they did Iraq.

Meanwhile, North Korea admitted having and developing nuclear weapons years ago and the US remains committed to failed diplomacy.

CNN intereviewed some CMU professor about Rice a couple days ago.

I love how the US attacked the only "axis of evil" without an actual nuclear program. but lots of oil, bonus!

Martin wrote:How about bets on the next country the US invades?

Hehe, I asked that question before the Iraq war, pretty much the axis of evil is going to be next, and since NK has nuke, it will be Iran. and like dave said, oil is like christmas bonus.

I'm beginning to think we should just invade Saudi Arabia. They've got more oil than all the axis-of-evil countries put together. Sure, they're technically our allies, but their royal family may or may not be supporting terrorists, and it would be easy to claim we have super-secret evidence of nuclear weapon production in Riyadh.

George wrote:I'm beginning to think we should just invade Saudi Arabia. They've got more oil than all the axis-of-evil countries put together. Sure, they're technically our allies, but their royal family may or may not be supporting terrorists, and it would be easy to claim we have super-secret evidence of nuclear weapon production in Riyadh.

But this would mean that we have pretty much a monopoly on oil and cause the rest of the world to be even more pissed off at us. I don't think we could fight a war against both the EU and China/Asia at once. With Saudi Arabia being the main oil broker, Bush probably already gets millions and billions in untraceable kickbacks, so why disrupt a good thing (for himself).

When has pissing off the world or placing the US in strategic danger stopped Bush before?

If anything, taking Saudi Arabia would probably improve our relationships with other Middle Eastern governments, because they'd know we no longer plan to invade them for their oil. At least until our SUVs drain the Saudi oil reserves, and by then Bush will be out of office.

George wrote:Iran. No question. After Iraq, it really looked like they wanted to hit Syria, but looking at the news over the past few weeks, they're trying to spin Iran the same way they did Iraq.

Meanwhile, North Korea admitted having and developing nuclear weapons years ago and the US remains committed to failed diplomacy.

I was thinking it might be Syria too for a while. Especially when it became obvious that there weren't any weapons in Iraq and administration officials (and their mouthpieces in RW media) kept declaring that murderous thug Saddam "hid" all his weapons in Syria to make us look bad.

But now I'm pretty sure George is right. Any examination of the papers pubicly produced by the neoconservative think tanks shows that they really can't stand Iran for some reason -- probably has to do with their deep connection to Israel. One wonders why they ever went along with that arms-for-hostages deal. Even immediately after Sept. 11 when Iran was allowing our planes to fly over their country into Afghanistan, the Ayn Rand Institute took out a full page ad in the Tartan advocating an immediate attack against Iran as the only rational course of action.

Coincidentally, if I was Iran and I saw what happened to Iraq and what didn't happen to North Korea, I would be hauling balls to get Nuclear Weapons and the appropriate missile technology while President Bush is still bogged down in Iraq. I'm sure that they're glad we're stuck in Iraq for as far as the eye can see.

You don't necessarily need nuclear weapons. You only need to anounce to the world that you have them. We're going after Iran because Bush thinks they're lying about not having them. North Korea was honest and now the State Department can't bend over fast enough.

My belief is that we're going after Iran because of focus groups. "Iran" sounds like "Iraq". Also, people seem to remember the phrase "Iran-Iraq" for some reason. They're basically the same country. If one of them is harboring terrorists, certainly the other one is.

The funny thing is that the two are very different in all but name, but the average American yokel doesn't know that. Hell, they were at war with each other, and we chose Saddam's side.