Simple, a very large hose.

Yes, the most recent governments were puppets set up by colonial powers. But I would hardly make the assertion that the goverments of Iraq, UAE, or even Saudi Arabia are legitimate. They hardly represent the indigenous people, save for the select families who control the oil. They are sheikdoms, essentially. Family run organized crime that has found some legitimate revenue in the oil they nationalized from the American and European fields. Iraq has spent most of the past thrity years murdering its non-Sunni populations, and has refused to give a home to its large Kurdish population, instead using genocide to "cure" the problem. They all practice an heretical religion that demands conversion or death and is anti-thetical to all other faiths and forms of government, particularly democracy. They sponsor terrorism around the world, either directly or through financial support. They operate a cartel, illegal in most of the world, to artificially set prices on a world commodity. So family run crime + heresy + terrorism + cartel + anti-west and anti-democracy = illegitimate government. Or perhaps you think Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao were legitimate governments? Our own Declaration fo Independence memorializes certain inalienable rights. That means these rights belong to every human because they are found in the natural law and are given to us all by God, not the state. They are inalienable because they cannot be taken away by the state. Governments who deprive their citizenry of inalienable rights act in an illegitimate manner.

Pickle, we have governments guilty of similar crimes throughout Asia, Africa and parts of South America; would you have us do the same there? or is Oil the factor that leads you to want to enslave Arabia?

Interesting you should bring up the idea of "slavery." The Arabs have been, and still are, in the slave trade for thousands of years. One of the first actions America took upon its founding was to battle the Barbary Coast Pirates, who enlsaved Chirstians sailing upon free waters ("From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli.").

Of course oil is a factor. Why shouldn't it be? It provides the world's energy. The whole idea of going into Iraq in 1991 was to keep a madman from cornering some of the largest oil reserves in the world and using them for blackmail against the West and other Persian Gulf nations. Oh yea, we also liberated a "country," er emirite.

If Nigeria or Venuzuela get out of hand, should the world allow them to disrupt the free flow of oil? Good question. What rights do sovereign nations have against other nations when a necessary commodity is artificially restricted?

i wrote a long diatribe about invasion and corn and genocide, but in thinking it really had nothing to do with aviation or oil prices.. post deleted

We do have a habit of sticking our noses in other ppls tents so to speak!:D

That's funny! :D

Begs the question of are we buying any of their oil?:eek:How much are we buying?:D




Wheels on the bus go round and round .



3 beers and this is all i could come up with.

Begs the question - are we "getting it" or are we buying it? Enough of this - 'it's all America's fault' Carter'ish mentality...