Iraq War Self Funded? Iraq Won't Even Put Something On It...

But Iraq has money, a nice oil surplus in spite of the fact that current oil exports haven't reached Saddam era levels. This is appalling.

Iraq is looking at a potential boon in oil revenue this year, possibly as much as $100 billion in 2007 and 2008. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is having to buy its fuel on the open market, paying on average $3.23 a gallon and spending some $153 million a month in Iraq on fuel alone.

A back of the napkin analysis shows a $9.1 billion fuel bill for the whole time we were over there. To add fuel to the fire, Robert Bryce at The American Conservative points out that the $3.23/gallon number doesn't even include logistics costs. Those costs send estimates through the stratosphere since all that fuel for the US Military isn't even coming from Iraq. Bryce estimates the total fuel cost to be nearly a billion a week! The back of the napkin tells us that is nearly $240 billion just to keep our vehicles on the move since 2003.

The reality is that when it comes to occupation policy, the Bush administration doesn't even know what it is doing. We compare ourselves to the Romans or the British, but at least they had the good sense to pillage an area they spend so much blood and treasure to conquer. Exporting democracy to the world sounds well and good to most (unread) people - but the neocons never said we would do it for free.

Irony Is Lost On This Guy

Check out this article from the Associated Press. Here are the key quotes from his trip to the UAE.

Dubai has a powerful Iranian business community, and the West, led by the United States, is cracking down on business in and out of Iran to protest against its nuclear ambitions. Dubai is caught in the middle — eager to maintain its lucrative business with Iran, but wary of angering the United States and the United Nations.

So Bush is putting pressure on Dubai to stop allowing Iranians to use the city-state to make an end run around sanctions effecting business. All because the Iranians want nuclear power - the US doesn't want Iran to have nuclear anything.

Later in the article comes this gem.

At an exhibit on energy economy in the Gulf, Bush praised the United Arab Emirates federation for examining how to move beyond a reliance on oil.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Bush said. "This country has gotten its wealth from the ground and is now reinvesting in alternative forms of energy."

So Bush says Iran must run everything on oil, that all scientists admit won't last forever, while the UAE is praised for avoiding that fate?

If Bush could actually recognize irony - I honestly think foreign policy wouldn't be such a mess. I guess irony was only discussed in Honors English at Yale.

Global War on Terror = PIRATES!!!

Friggin Pirates! What is this, the 17th century?

When will the United States government understand that Islamic rule doesn't equal Al Qaida and 9/11? The reality is that Ethopia doesn't give a damn about what bad happens to Somalia, so they aren't the go-to people to try to work with the new Somali government. Nevermind the guys behind the new Somali regime were the same guys Clinton was fighting before the famous "Black Hawk Down" incident. And now, since we eliminated the popularly supported decentralized Islamic court based government - Somali shipping gets to deal with increases in piracy on the high seas.

Now that's a movie.

Russia Is Not Scared of Iran, Are We?

Today the AP ran a story with the headline, "Rice Says Iran is An Obstacle to US Goals In the Middle East." I am no apologist for Iran, but if they helped bring the Northern Alliance to the table in Afghanistan and they are re-building the infrastructure in Iraq - I kinda wonder what the US Goals really are.

Geography is stronger than rhetoric - the United States cannot isolate Iran in the Middle East any more than the United Kingdom can isolate Argentina in South America. The Iranians have money, technical know-how, and an interest in leading that part of the world - and outside the Iraq-Iran war, they have used those assets in peace.

Most of the story was just bs setting you up for the real story, that the US is backing off on European missile defense until Iran actually tests a ballistic missile. This is interesting because President Putin of Russia never believed the missile shield was about Iran in the first place.

The reality is that it is hard to tell what we are trying to do over there. We don't want "rogue" states with nukes, yet we offer to share nuclear technology with Egypt - home of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. We want peace and stability in Iraq, but we switch support between the Sunnis and the Shiites whenever one side gets too strong - keeping the battle raging in perpetuity. We hail the peacefulness of the Iraqi Kurd Autonomous Region, only to fail to go after the terrorist PKK there and forcing Turkey's hand. Guess what, the IKAR ain't peaceful any more. We give all this rhetoric about peace and stability in the region, while we send special forces into Iran to scout targets for a future attack.

The doublespeak would be sinister and diabolical if it wasn't for the fact that it feels like our foreign policy just doesn't make much sense at all.