Thursday, March 22, 2007

Interesting newspaper article....

here's a snippet:

"...if this country once begins to suspect them, or any among them, of any dispostion to make political capital at home out of a course that would lead us to war, it will never forgive them."

Damn that Bush administration!

Oh, wait a minute, you want the cite from the paper huh?

Here it is, The Times of London, OCTOBER 2, 1922 (Taken from A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin, Owl Books 1989, pg, 542)

In case you're wondering, I didn't cite that to exhonorate Bush, Blair and their respective administrations, but rather, to point out that super powers have always played some version of "the great game" with countries of the Middle East, and Iraq has been their personal ping-pong ball for almost 100 years.

That same book also points to a terrible harbinger of things to come by quoting from a letter to the wife of a Standard Oil Company geologist in Iraq, who claims he it there to map out the greatest known source of oil now remaining and to "claim it for America as it rightly belongs." Unfortunately that happened under the British Protectorate of Iraq after King Feisel was installed. It caused quite a stir. King Feisel banned Standard Oil from surveying which eventually lead to Standard Oil and the American Consulate proclaiming that they supported the "protectorate" and had no intentions of undermining it (as long as they got to drill for oil) and....privately, they wrote that Iraq was a country of such warring tribes that the British "protectorate" was absolutely essential in protecting Standard Oil's interests...

Things haven't changed much have they?

Meet the New Boss
Same as the old Boss.

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