"In an article in the Saudi English daily The Saudi Gazette, Md. Maqdoom Mohiuddin and Khamis Mushayt wrote an op-ed and book review which exposes an alleged U.S. plot to invade Pakistan, and then later possibly Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey."

This surprising item alerted me to this book by StratFor's boss, George Friedman. StratFor is a private CIA, being paid by companies to tell them of risks.

The book tells of the 'real' reasons why the US went into Iraq: to scare the shit out of other wavering countries to back the US and not Al Qaeda. Apparently. It says that WMD and terrorism links were merely a smoke screen, or propaganda.

This clarity (even though Wolfowitz has said this openly) wouldn't have been enough to pull the US street with them.

I have been puzzling why they lied about WMDs. Seeing that I must have been a cover, but for what? Still, I wonder if there was one reason, I guess there'd be many. Oil, being another, though, I wouldn't think oil would be primary, surely, there are hosts of reasons there.

The fact that Friedman's book, apparently, doesn't mention oil, at all, leads me to believe that this wasn't an oversight, just that it's our Achilles' Heel.

But scaring the crap out of the House of Saud meant they clamped down on Al Qaeda's finances. Or, so Friedman says. He goes on that Al Qaeda will be looking, once more, for a method of bring a jihadic uprising to the Muslim world. Though he thinks that the insurgents in Iraq are merely foreign fighters and that the Iraqis are against them. This is echoed in a Debkafile story about Al Qaeda blessing decapitation as a "Muslim method" for killing Westerners and their supporters. "Prophet Mohammed, who declared that decapitation is the most effective means of intimidation and deterrent against the enemy." In this 'blessing', actually a long PR release from Al Qaeda, they ask themselves, "why are not enough Iraqis fighting the infidels and the occupation?" Still, then, the Arab street hasn't bought the Al Qeada line. They still haven't risen up.

This is exactly what Ayman al-Zawahri expected the Egyptian masses to do when he assassinated Sadat in 1981. It never happened. Many Palestinians cheered the fall of the twin towers, some Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Saudis... the list is endless. But many didn't—many feared the giant's wrath. Many sympathised with the US. Was it Al Qaeda's plan to cause a crusade, and the surf the backlash? If so, and, though the situation in Iraq is messy, there appears to be no mass uprising.

What next then for bin Laden's strategy? Sure, the toppling of the House of Saud would be a huge goal. And very dangerous for the West. Will Al Qaeda admit after 20 years of trying that the Arab street is too disinterested in their Islamic rantings and stunts? What if they went military, not terrorist and tried to crack oil production—everywhere?

Our reliance on oil would surely bring a recession. Our economies are too 'market lead' or bubble based to stand a real shock like this. Would it weaken us enough, such that Al Qaeda's mission to cause an Islamic uprising somehow worked?