Scary Situation Brewing in the Middle East...

Hmm interesting.... everyone see Syriana here?

That movie was chilling once you thought about who was pulling what strings...

 

Actually, this could be good for the area.

I know it sounds crazy, but listening the other day (before the elections) there
was a reporter that has been studying the Palestinian government and he said
that the election was looking more like a referendum on corruption and not terrorism.

Apparently Hamas has been doing alot of public service while the Fata party has
been mired in corruption. It appears that many of the voters have gotten sick of this corruption and want a government that actually delivers the goods and cleans the streets.

As part of their electioneering they had dropped calls to do away with Israel. And many of their other statements were really geared in winning support.

He went on to say that if Hamas scored well in the election and they actually had to govern it may push them into more of a moderate position. It is hard to be a terrorist organization when you are the government.

Of course the real test will be if the Hamas party as a whole keep to their election PR and actually follow through with their promises. And whether or not the party stays together and governs. Quite possibly we may see a split between the moderate side that have won the elections and those that still want violence.

Now the headache of trying to govern will now be placed on their heads. They will have to put up of shut up.

 

I for one have grown so tired of the middle east. I can't wait 'til the day when the Us does not need their oil. It will be interesting to see how they react when oil is selling to the third world for say $10 a barrel!

 

For once we strongly agree! I guess it's on how we get there we argue....

 

yea.. and pray a little woudn't hurt.... we all know its gonna hit the fan sooner or later... its not going to be pretty when it happens... it makes we wonder if even being in energy will help.

And there are some people that would be downright scary to have in office when it does.... A sissy spineless fearfull mama'sboy is not who you put in office when the most evil in the world come to challenge you. You don't want someone who only understands peace when its time for war.

And though war is nasty, where would we be without it? If we never defended our rights to be free we would be enslaved to some ruthless warlord..... just what do you think is going to happen when Israel goes to war?

This talk does not tend to make someone popular because no one wants more war.

But face it or not.... when it hits the fan in the middle east... the world will not be in the sidelines watching... they will be forced to pick sides and we will be in a world movement to act one way or another. Any war that affects the whole world will force us to take action of some kind. I'm sure our footprint we will be very influencial.... as will Russia's.

You get the picture...

 

Of course, remember, Iran is not Arabic... It's Persian, & Shite Muslim vs Arab and Sunni Muslim for much of the Arab world.

 

I believe the U.S. State Department, will not FULLY recognize Hamas as the governing body of the Palestinian people and will use the hardline approach against the Hamas government, until the next Palestinian parliament election in a few years.

The United States government will quietly support a Netenyahu election bid in Isreal, to counter balance the Hamas government.

 

Or.... rewind 10 years and get back into the petroleum-free transportation business!

 

And oh crap!

I was hoping the Iranians would take up Russia's offer but they've balked.
Iran Says Russia's Nuclear Plan is "Not Sufficient"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/internat...cd2d143&ei=5070

Darn! Well, the game's not over yet.

 

Iran has absolutely no intention of actually accepting any offer, they are just stalling to give themselves time to finish their weapons development. This has never been about nuclear power for Iran it's about nuclear weapons and nothing else. The only real question is what they will do with the weapons when they get them? and what other countries in the region will do, such as Turkey. Will they start a nuclear weapons program to defend themselves?

What Iran means when they say "not sufficient" is that the nuclear material Russia would provide them with would not be sufficiently enriched for weapons use, it would only be reactor fuel.

 

I agree. This has nothing to do with Energy, they are just good at playing the game (good for them). The question is what are we prepared to do to stop them? A war would be VERY expensive and cut oil supplies. It would also be impopular after we alienated the rest of the world with our foreign politics. Our troops are also spread thin. Iran must like this situation. EU is too weak to act and US spent all it's capital and resoources on a far less important target (that wasn't a threat to begin with). I think the war in Iraq really helped Iran to take this step since they now know we can't really respond in ways that work (and we still need their energy). This could get interesting.

 

If you want to know who is running things get a copy of the book "The Committee of 300." You'd be surprised at who is on that council.

On another note- The US has no business meddling in other people's affairs unless it directly affects our vital interests. Just my opinion. B)

 

Gibbon might be a more enlightening author to be reading these days. One wonders if all of this would be happening if we hadn't forsaken our role as the world's peacekeeper.

 

Of all the posts here, this one scares me the most, actually.

As if having us by the energy cajones wasn't bad enough, we now also have no money. Ouch.

 

Maybe it'll teach us never to wage a war until it's absolutley neccesary. I've been thinking about this the last few days and I understand Iran. I'm sure they where afraid that they where next at the beginning of the war but since we didn't use enough troops (or had a plan) we created this problem ourself (before IRAQ we could always threaten with war). I think we are spread so thin now that we have few options. I think this should have been considered before going to war. Was Iraq really this important?

That said I must confess that I was for the war when it started on different grounds. Saddam was one of the worst dictators of the world and I was happy to see him go for humanitarian reason and I believed it should have been easier then it turned out. I did believe the military actually had a plan for what to do after they removed him. That the US army could remove him fast was easy to see but to then find out they had no plan beyond that step was "amazing".

This whole affair also thaught me the that a countruyshould never fight a war that isn't neccesary, and should consider how they spend their political good will. I don't think we played our cards well (*to eager to use force*).

 

If we want to preamptively eradicate any possible danger to the USA we should start seriously deploying warheads at every conceivable large meteorite and all passing comets within our solar system. :lol: :lol: This is pretty much the same analogy that we get on daily basis from warmongers and FEAR spinners. Before the term terror existed in a daily journalistic nomenclature world was dealing with bandits. Besides there is an ongoing debate who is a terrorist or who is not, not just in the USA but globally. One might say that a bomb released from a legitimate military plane that goes astray and kills innocent people the bystanders that were left alive would certainly feel terrorized. If that's not terror then what is? Even though there was no initial intention of wrong doing.

 

Not until the science comes up with some kind of brain scan that will be able to determine that someone's mind possesses such tendencies. Until then, one has to live with the notion that some individuals (political enemies, religious enemies, chocolate ice cream haters and so on) randomly or not randomly will target innocent people for whatever causes they might have.
One doesn't have to deploy the entire military might to suppress or eliminate entire regimes. Mosad proves it by secretly utilizing lethal injections or obscure diseases to its adversaries or individual killings, that’s what we have CIA for. It would have been much less expensive to spend money on a few bullets to target those so-called terrorists or evildoers, criminals, bandits, pirates etc. But unfortunately it takes time to infiltrate such individuals and it requires superb intelligence, and what I mean by intelligence is not just an ability to look intimidating and being equipped with massive power. One might have sophisticated air force with satellite targeting but it's not good enough if we are guessing whom to target. And targeting for appeasing people domestically unfortunately generates grater global dissent and possibly creates bigger hordes of possible terrorists, like a never-ending cycle.
Would you like to obliterate entire neighborhood anywhere in the US to rid of bunch of escaped convicts or madman as they scatter around and hide, killing and being extremely dangerous? Surely it would be easy just to blow up a couple of blocks just to solve the issue, but I guess we are not doing it at home yet, are we?