Tomas: LOL. No offense intended at all, but I just found it funny that you referred to Iraq as a "soverign nation". I guess technically maybe it still is, or soon will be, that is at least until the next time that someone bigger and stronger than them decides that it isn't again, then all bets are off.
You make a good point though. Does Iraq even have a leader yet or are they still just under direct military rule with no real government or freedom of their own? I also wouldn't be willing to count anyone that had a title only but had no real authority to back it up as being a true leader of a country. A leader with a title only, with no real authority to back it up, is no more than a puppet, a figurehead, for show only.
Of course, they probably only want a puppet government in Iraq right now anyway so that they can more easily manipulate the whole oil situation to their best advantage, without anyone having any true power or authority to put up any real degree of resistance. They didn't, after all, spend all of that massive amount of money on a war in the most oil rich part of the world for no real reason, and as the whole world has had ample time to see by now, the war was certainly not anything to do with "weapons of mass destruction that could be used to attack the United States" like we were all told repeatedly when going into this undeclared war.
Draw whatever conclusions that you will from the facts, but as for myself, I've certainly seen more than enough evidence to perceive what is really going on here to my own satisfaction. I fully expect this to be one of those things where the truth will eventually come out into the light of day like 50 years from now when the issue is far far in the past and long forgotten, just like all of the bad things that we are finding out these days about what our government did in the past century that the public knew nothing about at the time.
If nothing else, our government has become quite skilled at seeing to it that the version of the truth that they want to be in the mass media is the one that ends up there. Goodness knows that they *should* be good at it by now, after all, they have had lots of practice over the years at manipulating our media, and therefor, our perception of world events.
I believe the political philosopher Noam Chomsky puts it best when he calls this whole process the "manufacturing of consent" in a democracy. Hypothetical: You are the leader of a democracy and you want to bomb another country for whatever reason, but the people are against you doing it? Easy solution, just use and manipulate the mass media to mold public opinion over time (brainwashing) and make everyone hate that country that you want to bomb and then it's bombs away and not enough people will really care in order to make any kind of real difference, hence, the "manufacturing of consent".
Anyway, good night all. I just thought you guys might enjoy a bit of political philosophy before bedtime. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif