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.

In an item over on Metafilter they're talking about "the float of the PetroDollar may stop once the lighter than water part leaves the Dollar."

Perhaps Saddam's idea of Oil-for-Food in Euros was another reason for the war. And putting pressure on Saudi Arabia was not so much about throttling the terrorist's funding, more about pressure on OPEC to keep the dollar.

Still the words used in this Venezuela article, even if it's a tabloid cheap shot are 'fighting talk.' Re: OPEC (and Iran) switching to Euros, "the immediate effect would be a massive devaluation, perhaps sparking of domino-effect devaluations worldwide in US$-related foreign reserves and foreign debt calculations."

Will Isreal pull the US into a Middle East war, a war over the petrodollar?

Will bin Laden's threat to bankrupt the US come true?

Tune in next week ";->"

The Russian Sunburn anti ship cruise missile. Now in the possession of Iran.

Sad? Wondering about your own echo chamber? I am. I was 90% certain that Bush wouldn't win, that it wouldn't be as close as the polls predicted.

Listening on the internet, reading my usual sites, I figured that Kerry would pull it off.

Now, I'm realising that I've been reading people like me.

Perhaps, most people are like me, that is, most of the rest of the world. We seemed to want Kerry over Bush. Yet, the middle, the heart of America decided to stick with it's war President, it's Christian, god fearing lunatic.