Teribus, you are entirely missing the point of my posts in this thread, and you are trying to lead me down blind alleys that have nothing whatever to do with anything I am saying about what's going on in Iraq.

I'm saying that there are competing interests, even among the people who supported the war in Iraq in the first place... some of them want us to stay (the oil interests, in particular), and some of them want us out, the sooner the better (the people who want the region Balkanized for reasons related to balance of power equations). These various people are working very hard to influence the US public to either support keeping US forces in Iraq, or to put pressure on the Bush administration to get US forces out of Iraq.

My reason for discussing this situation here in the Mudcat is that I don't think any of us (any of us who live, vote, and pay taxes here in the US) should necessarily take anyone's word at face value, even if they seem to be agreeing with whatever stance we took originally on the war. We ought to be looking behind their words and finding out what their real agenda is, and then we should find whatever solutions we can to best help the Iraqi people rather than allow ourselves to be used by people with hidden agendas.

The way to do this is not to throw around a bunch of fabricated "facts", but to look at who benefits the most from whatever decisions are made in Iraq and in the Middle East generally (and in the world generally). If hegemonic interests are the ones who benefit the most, it stands to reason that the ordinary citizens will be the ones who suffer the most, and benefit the least. I am against allowing that to happen for ethical and moral reasons, and for reasons of enlightened self-interest.