And this was really the way you think a government would do it? First rig up buildings with explosives in secret without anyone knowing, then somehow get people to agree to be suicide pilots of planes, then have those planes be passenger planes so that they are not just killing the people in the buildings but those in the planes, and then have them be piloted into the buildings, and then demolish the buildings with explosives.


Really?


You really think they would do this? I know the governments do some seriously horrible shit, and that the attack on Irag was not driven by trying to get anyone remotely connected to 9/11... but you really think that the US government would create something this convoluted when there are plenty of simpler ways to create a reason to attack another country and make your populous afraid of an unseen bogeyman.

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that even blatant facts that kill their suppositions are treated as merely 'bogus information from the man' and discounted, whereas utter drivel masquerading as science that agrees with them is lovingly circulated ad nauseum.


>> ^NobleOne:
^ Spoco2: why is it so unbelievable really? Has there never been government conspiracies or secrets? In your context of your argument the Government never killed Kennedy even after coming up with the idea of backing money to silver, pulling out of Vietnam, or dis-banding the CIA... Though i am sure it was one shooter with one bullet that went all nimbly bimbly bouncing around the car and pushing Kennedy back and to the left. That was how long ago and we still don't know all the facts on it.... I am sure as shit not that naive to think it was one guy from a 3rd floor book depository with a bolt action rifle... or the coincidences that Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy were all killed within the same time frame... Or how about over throwing the Shah in Iran or the contras in Nicaragua.... Man the list is overwhelming.... Trillions of dollars in Oil will make people do i am sure just about anything....

^ Spoco2: why is it so unbelievable really? Has there never been government conspiracies or secrets? In your context of your argument the Government never killed Kennedy even after coming up with the idea of backing money to silver, pulling out of Vietnam, or dis-banding the CIA... Though i am sure it was one shooter with one bullet that went all nimbly bimbly bouncing around the car and pushing Kennedy back and to the left. That was how long ago and we still don't know all the facts on it.... I am sure as shit not that naive to think it was one guy from a 3rd floor book depository with a bolt action rifle... or the coincidences that Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy were all killed within the same time frame... Or how about over throwing the Shah in Iran or the contras in Nicaragua.... Man the list is overwhelming.... Trillions of dollars in Oil will make people do i am sure just about anything....

The UK government banned the entry of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for his extremist views yet I don't see you complaining about his freedom of speech being infringed do I? I mean his views should also be allowed in the market place of ideas. What about Holocaust deniers in Germany, France and Netherlands. The double standard of censorship is there so spare me the freedom of speech arguments.

Furthermore the UK is already a police state. This has been proven time and time again since 9/11 and the countless anti-terrorism decrees pushed forward by labor.

What you are saying makes it seem like the minority of Islamic extremists have some kind of sway over the actions of the British and Netherlands government, they don't. Muslims support Palestine and are against Israel, has this policy been influenced in either nation, e.g. the BBC screening of Gaza aid ads?

The idea that there is a differentiation between the minority and the whole is simplistic given that that is not the thrust of media coverage developed in the Western world that is transmitted to the East. You forget Islamaphobia fever of the last 7 years. Look no further then the comment histories of QM, Pprt and mharvey42 for more information. I still contend that the West suffers from an amnesia of political events that the East recalls. Most people in the US don't even know of the collusion between the US and Saddam, the CIA and the installion of the Shah in Iran and so on.

Both governments clearly are focused on the maintenance of public order and cohesion, the air ring of Wilders ideas on the higher profile is not productive, something I would be against also if a Muslim person would create film meant to explain why its okay to kill Christians. Would the same response occur? Of course not.

But since his arguments are something that are on the mind of many due to fear and misunderstanding we have a huge public clusterfuck over it. Will it lead to more peace and understanding and eventual aculturilisation of Muslims in the west? Or simply create more divisions because there is an inherent hypocrisy?

Ah the Kurds, I never knew that concentration camps existed, it seems kinda of odd to me. I had thought that intervention with Kurdish affairs ended with Operation Provide Comfort.

Even then I would not agree to the grounds for war in 2003. I would have agreed to them in 1991, when there was a strong international coalition and strong legal and moral pretense with the Iraqi use of chemical and biological weapons against its own people, Iran and the Kurds, as well as the invasion of Kuwait. But its hard to say something like that, knowing that the US bankrolled the Iran Iraq war, that it propped up Saddam Hussein after the CIA blowback from installing the Shah in Iran and the subsequent Islamic revolution. It's hard to support the American effort knowing that their meddling in middle eastern affairs created the very problems they seem to address years later, the aptly called "hes a son of a bitch but our son of a bitch" foreign policy of propping up dictators and despotic rulers, this is not even starting to talk about the ISI, Afghanistan the Mujahedeen and the formation of Al Qaeda.

Personally I think the largest example of international do nothingness is the 800,000 killed during the Rwandan genocide. Somehow Iraq is okay to invade to liberate, Bosnia is okay to invade to liberate but not Darfur and not Rwanda. The UN simply sat and watched a country collapse into internal genocide.

Other countries' socialist policies, like in say, the whole of Europe, do quite well compared to us.

Actually, this is causation without correlation. If you go to Europe, living situations are deteriorating. Their massive amounts of welfare have created a situation in which immigrants are coming not for opportunity, but to be subsidized by programs they haven't paid into their whole lives like existing citizens. Sound familiar? Our programs are being strained by the same problem. I won't deny that they've made better decisions with their socialist powers over the past twenty years. If you want to make this an argument about whose dictator is doing a better job at emulating the market, then certainly Europe wins. France, for example, gets 80% of their energy from nuclear power and is the largest energy exporter in Europe. I'm jealous. That's what the market would have chosen. Our dictators, however, have been blocking it for thirty years due to the influence of the radical environmentalist lobby. Our government-directed economy has also pumped billions of forcibly appropriated money into agri-business bio-fuels like ethanol. It reduced the supply of food because it became more profitable after all the subsidies to grow corn for ethanol than some other crop for food. And it takes almost as much energy to create as it produces. Negative net result, that money would have been better off staying in the hands of people who really couldn't afford to have it taken away. We realize this now, but it never needed to happen. Any product that wouldn't be able to compete on the market without being funded with stolen money isn't worth a damn. So why did we think a bill could do something the market couldn't? All subsidies are retarded, they have collusive anti-competitive redistribution written all over them, and that's exactly what we got despite election year promises that it would give us miracles.

In fact, imagine if a stranger comes to your house and says "Hi, I'd like to take some of your money from your paycheck every week because I think I can spend it better than you can on products and services for your life. You look pretty busy, irresponsible, and unintelligent." Would you give it to them? Why would you do that? That's essentially socialism in a nutshell. People spending other people's money on the claim they can do so with greater thrift than the person that earned it.

Another thing that we do different than Europe is maintain a gigantic military empire. Of course their socialist programs are better, they don't have a military industrial complex sucking trillions of dollars away from them. It's really not necessary in the nuclear age. No nuclear power has ever been invaded domestically. Because it's a losing proposition. If you win the ground war, they have nothing to lose so they launch them. But we're idiots over here, we have this manchausen syndrome where our CIA creates problems that eventually blow back in our face, at which point we can launch all out invasions under the pretense of self-defense. This might include installing the Shah in Iran. Or giving bioweapons to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Or arming afghani warriors to fight the Soviets. Or paying off Musharraf in Pakistan to be a puppet. Terrorist propaganda becomes effective because of this shit.

Nowhere else in the world has a more libertarian system than us, as near as I can tell, and it handicaps us.

Price fixing interest rates = socialist
Bailout out bankruptcy with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Allowing one industry to loan out money they don't have, at interest = socialist
Subsidizing one company and not another = socialist
Taxing one company and not another = socialist
Nationalizing private industry to be financed with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Directing industry and research with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Declaring lending standards discriminatory to low income people and forcing banks to remove them via the Community Reinvestment Act = socialist
Issuing a non-market determined or constitutional money, banning competing currencies, and taxing dollar debasement gains on gold as if it were income = socialist
Blocking nuclear power for 30 years = socialist
Blocking domestic oil drilling for 20 years = socialist


Actually no, they would just need to get enough market power, and apply it ruthlessly to stomp out competition wherever it rises.

Bullshit, no one but the government has endless streams of capital to buy up anything and everything. Only government monopolies are self-sustaining, because they're the only monopolies financed with forcibly appropriated money.

In your version of the world, AMD shouldn't exist. Aptera Motors shouldn't exist. Right? I mean, giant corporations a thousand times their size existed before they even entered the market. They should have been bought out. Oh, wait, what's that? Not all companies are publicly traded.

The reality is, in order for a MARKET monopoly (note: in an environment where they don't have access to government specific powers like inflation and subsidization) to stay that way is to continue to offering the best product at the best price. Because then there's no window, no opportunity for someone else to come in and eat into that marketshare. If a company is delivering crap or overcharging, however, that immediately opens a window for someone else to come in. That's how AMD got so large, Intel was doing exactly that with netburst architecture. Even with a monopoly position, competition was waiting in the wings.

Suppose Microsoft took XP off the market and put Windows 3.1 on the shelf? Do you think they wouldn't go bankrupt? Do you think a competitor wouldn't arise to take their place? Because they're an all-powerful monopoly, right? They don't have to deliver shit, they can just buy Macintosh and anyone else while they pay thousands of programmers to create a product that doesn't sell.

Doh. Someone doesn't understand basic market principles.

One of my favorites from the roaring 20's was the rate war. Slash your prices to nearly nothing, and let your company lose a lot of money, on the premise that the smaller company will go bankrupt before you do.

Actually, large businesses with lots of workers have far more overhead and are much more inefficiently run. That's why most businesses today are small businesses. My mother owns an advertising business for wedding directories with no one but herself employed. A local newspaper owned by the Gannett company recently created a staff of twenty people to try and compete with her. They lasted two years before the magazine ended the operation. It was costing way more money than it was bringing in, and the so-called greedy megagiant slashed it.

Nuttery, Ron Paul is the only politician who believes in the law? Seriously, that's what you're saying? He's probably the only Republican who believes in the law being supreme, but there's more than a few Democrats who believe in the supremacy of law (including some joker with a law degree from Harvard running for President...).

Supreme law is the constitution doofus. It's the law that came before all other laws, it's the laws against government to prevent them from becoming a tyrannical, collusive nuthouse like all other governments before it by assessing which powers, which enablements, it shouldn't have under any circumstances. And inflation was one of them. But after a couple hundred years, people became complacent, arrogant, and ignorant, like yourself, and politicians found that they could ignore it with impunity. There was no longer a bunch of gun-toting, tea-hating radicals ready to hang them on the nearest tree when they broke it. There was nothing but the opposing party. But that party loves to spend, too. So they compromise by allowing the other to break it so long as they get to break it in another way. Remember how the bailout failed and then got passed? They put some extra pork in there to get the votes they needed. Rum and arrowheads...

http://www.greenfaucet.com/economy/porky-the-bailout-bill/19680

Welcome to our country, and the socialist enablements that make this spending possible.

No, but he can still bribe the politicians to look the other way on violation of rights. They do it now, and I'm not sure why it would change, just because the companies have more money to spend (according to your theory).

The bottom line here is that attacking Democrats as being socialist is a huge fucking straw man. We like the free market, and we want it to work.

No, you don't, You don't even know what it is.

Most investment banks are now crying out to be regulated in the wake of this credit crisis, and given that they bribed the government into deregulating them in the first place, that should tell you something.

They're not crying to be regulated, they're crying to be bailed out after being regulated. What do you think regulation is exactly? Do you realize that the fundamental way in which banks operate is fraudulent? How do you regulate that? How do you oversee to make sure fraud is being conducted in the best way possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking#Money_creation

This is the type of nonsense I hear from the republicrat camp. Regulation, the buzzword of the day. It's meaningless. To "regulate" the bank runs this system was causing, the Federal Reserve was created to backstop bankruptcy. Yes, failure, that free market pinnacle that makes private business suffer and fear consequences for risk and imprudent policy. Or how about the FDIC, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INSURANCE on deposits. Don't worry, now you don't have to fear about losing your deposit on this scam industry. We've regulated it with the FDIC. OOPS, THE FEAR OF LOSING ONE'S DEPOSIT WAS WHAT DETERRED PEOPLE FROM GIVING IT TO HIGHLY LEVERAGED INVESTMENT BANKS OFFERING ABNORMAL YIELDS, CAUSING THAT BUSINESS MODEL TO GROW, CAUSING OTHER BANKS TO FOLLOW SUIT IN ORDER TO COMPETE.

The problem is regulation on fraudulent activity that should have never been allowed. It slowly but surely eliminated basic deterrents and self-regulating principles by backstopping risk and rewarding bad behavior.

We can disagree about Al Jazeera. They've improved in the last year or two, but they lost my trust a while ago and will have to do a lot to regain it.

I certainly agree that big Corporations (international and domestic) need to be hacked up a bit. They have far to much power and influence. I do NOT however buy that they control whether the US goes to war or not. I do NOT believe Iraq was about oil. We haven't seen a drop of it and it has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, a tremendous amount of lives, and more popularity and international influence. Anti-war activists and leftists love to say oil oil oil as much as they can to make those that supported the war look like evil corporate sell-outs. It's a very common political partisan warfare technique VERY often utilized by the left. (The right has its own devious techniques, but the left has mastered this particular one.) Anyway, arguing Iraq is a dead stalemate every time, so it's pointless to go on about it. Bottom line, corps have too much power, but not all the power, AND not all corporations are run by demons bent on greed at all costs. You need a certain breed of board members for that sort of heartlessness.

"Ordinary People" don't want war. That is true. But they do want certain things to be and others not to be and they don't want to be the ones responsible for what it takes to make those things be or not be. For example. The west (primarily America at this point) sees the sudden rise and dominance of staunch Islamic culture in western Europe and does not like what it sees. America is all for religious freedom--heck, we were founded on the concept--but America also values secular governing as well as some level of assimilation of immigrants. In other words, come to America, but if you don't want to be an American, if you want to be a somewhere-else-ian living in America trying to impose somewhere-else-ia's laws, please stay in somewhere-else-ia. Makes sense. America has a set of values, laws, and traditions it holds dear. Seeing sections of western European nations suddenly under a pseudo-official Sharia Law makes most Americans cringe and worry about their rights and their culture. Americans say, "we don't want that in our nation" but they don't want to be responsible for preventing it (or other things). People love to protest things while reaping their benefits. Sad state of affairs. (I'm not saying that example was a war-related one, but it fits otherwise.) One of the major functions of governments and leaders is to make unpopular decisions that are necessary. They lose popularity and even become demonized by some, but the job is done and the public can benefit and still feel innocent about it.

As for the US and S Ossentia? 1%. That is the amount of western oil that comes through that pipeline. We don't need it. We wouldn't START a fight over it, but we would defend it against an aggressor as it is in fact of western interest. We didn't need to fight over it as it was in no danger and we were in no way in danger of losing it. America has no vested interest in S Ossentia. A 1% loss in supply is barely a hick-up, especially as oil demand is now decreasing here at a record pace.

As for America moving ships closer to Iran? GOOD!! Iran has repeated threatened to shut down a HUGE tanker route. Since Israel is scared to death (and rightly so) that they might get nuked in the next couple years, which fits with Ahmadinejad's 12th Imam religious views, they might wind up attacking Iran's uranium enrichment plants. It will CERTAINLY happen if Iran tests a nuclear weapon as N.Korea recently did. If that happens, we still need that route open. If Iran shuts it down, that's a major problem for us here, even if we don't drop a single bomb in that country. This is an almost inevitable confrontation. The USA MUST not fire any first shots though. Not this time. Not ever again. However, did we start this devastating war in Georgia to move our ships? No. That idea REQUIRES that you believe that all those with power in the US are truly evil mass-murders, plain and simple, purely literally. It is fine to think that we may have taken advantage of the situation to make a tactical move, but starting it for that end is a little off the charts. Having forces in an allied nation is not surprising. That does NOT by any means mean we started it or encouraged it in any way shape or form. That leap is loaded with fallacies.

I am far too long winded.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
Al Jazeera is an excellent source of news, many BBC journalists work with them and two British journos I know speak very highly to their integrity.

I do indeed distrust the US government as much as I distrust the British government, and I have lived through a 30 year conflict with the British that has opened my eyes to the propaganda regarding international affairs in British news, including the BBC.

It's not a case of me buying into any particular news story. The US has a military presence there to protect oil interests - that's a plain fact. That's what rings the alarm bells for me when suddenly there's a conflict.

It's not about assigning blame, I'm not interested in trying to show where blame lies. That's a childish game and a distraction. Bush is not the emperor at all, I do not believe for a second that Bush is in control of anything whatsoever, the idea that the man is a statesman running a country is plainly ridiculous. He is as much a puppet of corporate America as the Shah in Iran was before the people rose up and put him out of power.

It's all about perception - *why* do you think it is that the same people who think that America blew up the towers to start a war are the people who believe America is behind this conflict? What is at the heart of that perception? It's because the official version of events doesn't ring true to people who have lived through propaganda in their own country.

What is happening in Russia is part of the wider global conflict involving the superpowers, and it's all over resources and investments on a scale that ordinary people can barely comprehend. Russia, China and America/UK are slowly hardening their military and strategic positions around the world.

I don't know the reason why, it could be the beginning of the merging of the 4 big monetary unions into a global economy and central bank/government, it could be that each of them wants greater regional control of the planet, it could be that they are all working together toward a single goal, it could be that they are preparing to go up against each other.

Ordinary people do not want war, the only people who benefit are the super rich and the powerful. Russia rolled mini battlefield nukes into S Ossetia last night, and while the masses of the planet including you and me debate about what is really going on and who is at fault, people are getting slaughtered.

Maybe it's time we put our time and efforts into really trying to get people to talk about peace. Enough really is enough.

Thanks for your message




In reply to this comment by Doc_M:
Taking the last part first, I disagree. That aside, I get news from quite a few sources. I am painfully aware of the bias on both sides of these sources. However, based on study, I trust some more than others. For example, Al Jazeera... black listed, "opinion journalists"... suspect, Al Franken and Sean Hanity... grudge match? That's entertainment. My statement that a need for loathing was required to buy this new story 3 days after the war suddenly and almost inexplicably begain was not meant to offend but merely to exaggerate the point that people who tend to distrust the US tend to blame everything in the world on them, even when the coals aren't even ready for burgers. These are the same people who think we detonated our own buildings to start a war over oil, when neither of those clauses is true.

News on this current struggle is so mired in propaganda and selective publication right now, it is hard to make heads or tails of who is at fault, but blaming the US and namely the Bush Admin. is so predictable a cop-out it's cliche anymore. Bush is not the Emperor Palpatine and America is not the Galactic Empire. heh.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
It seems they are outing America anyway, Osettians are claiming that the 'west' is behind the Georgian attacks - being reported now on BBC and international news. Of course there is no way for you or I to know one way or the other.

Why do I have to assume a hatred and loathing of America? I'm not claiming anything, and I'm not narrow minded or naive enough to only post news clips which I happen to believe or which happen to fit my own personal ideaology. No need to be defensive. It's not people like us who are making these things happen, we are mere bystanders.

I'm trying to get all the news I can as it rolls in, watching it unfold on the news in different countries gives you a much wider picture rather than sticking to one single news source. The *way* it's being reported in different countries is *as* interesting, if not *more* interesting than the content of the reports.

You aren't convinced by this because you have a preconceived notion that it is 'ludicrous'. That's your culture talking, not you.

In reply to this comment by Doc_M:
I'm not convinced. It still appears to me to be conspiracy theory hogwash. In my eyes, it would require a SERIOUS loathing of America to assume such a thing is true on a whim. America did not "orchestrate" any Georgian action. That's just ludicrous. They would out us since they're being obliterated at the moment, since we're not helping. You have to assume that America is EVIL in order to assume these things. If a naval move is made at the same time, than it is because America is taking the opportunity that has been laid before them. Prime time for easy action.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
It sounds like it, but it isn't...

http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&q=warships%20gulf&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn



In reply to this comment by Doc_M:
>> ^Memorare:
read an article today suggesting the aggressive move by Georgia was orchestrated by the US as a strategic diversion to keep Russia busy during a naval blockade of Iran. shrug


Sounds like a bunch of conspiracy theory crap to me. Propaganda.

The first frames tell you everything you need. The 2 arches holding swords are from Baghdad Iraq. The rest of the video is from the 8 year war and hostage crisis. Ridiculous.

Lets comfortably forget that the CIA backed the rule of the despotic Shah of Iran.

I take it you didn't know we were selling arms to both sides, supporting Iraq after the CIA operation to install the Shah of Iran back fired in the form of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and creating the subsequent hostage situation. Not even mentioning the whole Iran-Contra affair. The CIA itself stated that this would happen, categorized as operational "blow-back".

Why re-install the Shah of Iran? Because the Iranian people wanted to simply nationalize their oil supply away from corporations from the UK and the US.

archchef, you don't seem to understand the nature of this conflict. This isn't world war 2 where the other enemy is clearly wearing a different uniform. The resistance now is blending in with civilians, using guerrilla tactics. US forces are not just fighting terrorists, they are fighting ordinary people who see this as a violation of their land. The addition of actual terrorists makes this even worse.

This is exactly the replay of events when the UK attacked Egypt over the Suez Canal, only that was resolved in days rather then years, by now this is the longest US engagement since World War 2. The resistance is the same faced by US forces in Vietnam, home forces fighting for their land, politicians at the time saw that as a part of the cold war when in reality it was a civil war.

The only way to win was through diplomacy and cooperation, instead now we are simply radicalizing an entire region against the US. Many question why Iran is so hostile, well of course they would be after the CIA implanted a Shah of Iran when Iran wanted to nationalize it's oil supply, which lead to the Islamic revolution. The CIA itself stated that the way events played out in Iran there will be considerable "blow-back" against the US. Cuba, as Castro said 'flushed it's toilets' on the US after the Bay of Pigs.

No administration thinks about the implications of their actions down the line, only thinking of objectives that are short term like 4 years. This has to change. But clearly modern history is not an important subject these days.

BicycleRepairMan is right.

QM's main prerogative is to muddle the argument, bringing factors that have nothing to do with the discussion to throw it off to the deep end and create another polarizing affair. With people like that you don't get fair and rational discussion or debate, you get partisan politics. I say that because for all the times he says we are the Chomskysift and the leftist PC pinko liberal whatever he still keeps coming back because he just likes to stir up shit by saying ridiculous things. Like Ann Coulter.

As for Iran, it's anti-American because of American involvement in installation of the Shah of Iran by the CIA of which the CIA itself said it would receive 'blow back', the covert word for "It will come and bit us in the ass one day". Blowback.

That's a really simplistic view, quantummushroom, that's akin to saying yeah well we screwed over a bunch of nations just to gain a foothold for ourselves, we're cool now so stop blaming us.

You don't realize that such activites by the goverment is actually holding you, the average citizen down. How exactly? Well think about the gap between the rich and the poor in America, it's so large now that there is a reduction in the number of people who are middle class.

Now let's think back about all the military incursions that America has been involved in and pick a few cases to look at. We'll look at Nicaragua, this starts back with Theodore Roosevelt who extends the existing Monroe Doctrine in 1904 allowing the US to interfe in a latin american state guilty of "chronic wrong doing" (I mean much more vague can this be). The Monroe doctrine comes to define america's policy in Latin America.

US Marines land in Nicaragua in 1909, after a similar pattern of interventions in Cuba (1898), Honduras (1905) and Panama (1908). Nicaragua becomes a US protectorate there after.

In 1926, Augusto Cesar Sandino lunaches a successful guerilla war against US marines and the Nicaraguan National Guard under Anastasio Somoza Garcia. The Sandinista rebels are a pro-liberal group that insists on a redistribution of land to the peasantry, which is violented opposed by Somoza. Sandino was murdered by the National Guard in 1934, Somoza who is a US ally then runs a brutual dictatorship until 1979 when the Somoza Dynasty is overthrown by Sandinista National Liberational Front. Jimmy Carter at the time tried desperately to prop up Somoza's regime until the bitter end. Nicaragua after years of oppressive rule lay in ruins with 40,000 to 50,0000 killed.

When the Sandinistas finally come into power, everything is done to demonize them with accusations of undemocratic policies, genocide, drug-trafficking. This is while US media remains silent on the documented facts of Sandinistas remarkable reforms. Oxfam, with it's experience of working in over 76 developing nations finds the Nicaraguan goverment to be exceptional in it's commitment to addressing inequities in land ownership, in extending health, educational and agricultural services to poor peasent families.

Until 1989, the US goverment pursues a policy of destabilization by suppyling an insurgent army of 'Contras' in Nicaragua.

The question is "Why would the US goverment feel threatened by socialism in a smaller, weaker country such as Nicaragua"?

This comes down to the Rotten Apple theory. If a tiny impoverished nation with miniuscle resources can begin to do something for it's own population others might ask "Why not us?". The weaker and less economically endowned the nation the greater the example that can be set. The rot could spread, threatening regions of real concern to the rulers of the world.

Same thing with Iran, which in the late 40s grew tired of it's resources being plucked by corporations. The CIA however interevened, a coup occured and the Shah of Iran came into power. This of course back fired a few years later with the extreme Islamic goverment emerging. The US goverment then makes links with Iraq, supporting Iraqi military operations into Iran, while selling arms to both sides. This of course back fires with the usage of Chemical and Biological weapons by Saddam. The US goverment distances itself.

1991, Iraq invades Kuwait. For a long time the international community does not do much other then decry the situation. However intelligence arrives saying that Saddam's forces are massing on the western border of Kuwait with Saudia Arabia. The american administration deems it too risky to allow Saddam to possbily enter Saudia Arabia. And the rest is history. But no wait. It's not all over yet. Suddenly only 100 KM away from Baghdad, coalition forces are pulled back, the regime in Iraq is unchanged, no pressure is placed on the regime to allow free elections to occur.