From The Australian: "...[The US] had identified the jihadist campaign as "a Saudi problem". Most of the September 11 suicide attackers had been Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. Saudi money trails were everywhere. An invasion of Saudi Arabia presented the tactical problem of waging war against a country of vast area and the strategic one of disrupting the world's oil supplies.

The Americans had established and then strengthened a military presence in countries surrounding Saudi Arabia - Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Invasion of Iraq would complete the encirclement."

This idea that Iraq was a strategic target, that it was not attacked for it's oil nor it's WMDs is fairly new to me. I've been asking why the US and UK lied about WMD, why then they thought they needed to invade Iraq. I think this is getting closer to the real reasons for the attack.

"...government could play a bigger role in setting up systems of trust for online communities too. Proposals for ID cards, for instance, could also be widened to see if they could be used online."

I've long thought that one day blogs will ber a legal requirement for everyone. Your web address will be in your ID card. Those who need to could check out your postings to see what type of character, or religious, or political animal you are. Also, your utility bills, credit card details, birth certificates—everything is stored there, for both yours' and the Gov's convenience. They may or may not be called blogs.

Two bloggers put themselves up for auction.
Darren Barefoot from DarrenBarefoot.com and Jeremy Wright from Ensight.org

Currently, the going price seems to be $650 for 10-15 posts per week, plus other services like putting up the blog, and the consultation involved. Nice, clean eBay descriptions of who, what and why.

They're interesting because they're pushing blogs to those who would not have considered them for themselves. This way they can hire a pro blogger who'll do some good stuff. It should be a good intro, then the company could take over themselves, and add that deeper knowledge and conviction that only the CEO (or near) can demonstrate.

I'll put them in my eBay watch list. I'm interested in how much they get. Not that I'm going to auction myself off, too much work right now, but eBay is a good indicator of the price the market will pay for anything. Funny that they are both Canadians?