I thought your post of, 23 Nov 05 - 02:17 PM, was absolutely hilarious. Now that my sides have stopped aching can I ask you a few questions regarding the rather bizarre content.

No brain no pain, Teribus. I reckon if I had your lack of reasoning skills, I'd be laughing, too. From my perspective, none of it is funny. It's just all too damn tragic.

"Some of the people who wanted the US and other Western countries to invade Iraq (and destroy Saddam's government) want Iraq to dissolve into smaller units (like in the Balkans)."

Now who would those people be Carol?

The PNAC and JINSA people. Several of the policy makers in the Bush administration are/were co-authors of the papers created by these two think tanks. Their stuff is readily available for anyone who wants to read it.

The biggest threat to the stability of the region if that were to happen would be posed by the Kurds. An independent embryo Kurdistan in Iraq would attract cessationist elements in Iran and in Turkey, so those two countries can be ruled out of those wishing to see Iraq fragment.

I have read that there are military advisors from at least one country with the hegemonic agenda spelled out in the PNAC and JINSA papers who are working with the Kurds as we speak, for the purpose of helping them fight for an independent state.

Let's have another look at Iran, while it is an Islamic Republic, it is not an Arab state. Recently it's main centre of Arab origin has been a bit restive, Tehran is sensitive to this because this region contains most of Iran's oil. The Arabs of this part of Iran are Shia. Iran should really worry about this province moving more towards an independent Shia State in southern Iraq with Basra as it's capital. No Iran does not want Iraq to fragment, as with their Kurdish population and their Arab minority stirred up, the Azeri population of Iran might just get it into their heads that they would be better off as part of already independent Azerbijan. I don't think that The Twelve Old Gits would welcome the prospect at all.

The PNAC and JINSA people are working to get Iran Balkanized as well. You can see the precursors of this effort in the US news media just about every day.

CarolC continues..."There are other people who want the US to maintain a continual, long term presence in Iraq, in the form of a puppet government and permanent military bases, for the purpose of controling Iraq's oil resources. I think these people are the ones who are saying we should stay the course and finish the job."

Why would they want to do that Carol? How would they 'control Iraq's oil resources'? With Chavez, that darling of the left, giving his oil away to the United States of America, why the hell would the US go to all that expense and bother in Iraq, they never supplied the US before so why would it be so essential now.

Because they see all of the world's oil resources as unharvested money. This group of people (not the same ones who are working to get the whole region Balkanized) don't care whether or not that oil comes to the US. They just want to make sure they are the ones who get to make a profit from it in whatever way they can (especially before oil becomes obsolete as a source of energy). These people are more concerned with money than they are with geopolitics. Geopolitics are just a means to an end for them, the end being harvesting/capturing as much of the wealth from the earth's resources as they can possibly get. And also all of the wealth from military expenditures and building and rebuilding contracts as they can get for themselves and their companies. There's lots of ways they can control Iraq's oil resources.

This second group doesn't appear to want the coutries in the region broken up into warring ethnic states. They want stable states with puppet regimes who will be loyal to them, even if that means the governments of those countries are totalitarian. That's why those poeple were so friendly with Saddam for so long, and why they are such good friends with the Saudis and other ruling elites like that.

The reason these things aren't readily apparent to you is because you think small.