"it borders on offensive at times"

I accept that some Scots harbour a rather nasty deep-seated resentment of all Englishmen - and I'm against this. But there are historical reasons for the existence of this widespread resentment, and furthermore you only have to listen to the moronic prejudiced ramblings of gorillaman - who won't even acknowledge that Scotland is a seperate country with its own culture, traditions and languages - to realise that plenty of Englishmen still hold equally prejudiced and distasteful views about the Scots.

"one-issue, isolationist"

Firstly, the SNP are not a one issue party. While in the past some of them could have been accused of being one issue politicians, the party has grown into a fully fledged party with a comprehensive set of policies. Secondly, the SNP advocate independence, not isolationism - An independent Scotland would be a member of the EU and would work closely with Britain.

Exactly right.

The moment for humanitarian intervention in Iraq was in 1991. Although the Bush Administration pretends that humanitarian intervention is the goal now, the war plan by Cheney/Rumsfeld and the actions/inactions of the CPA under Garner and Bremer give the lie to that one.

My concern is that Iraq War 2003 will erroneously support the conclusions of the military "realists" of 1990-1995 and stand for the proposition of isolationism first. The Coalition force betrayed that region in 1991 through the doctrine of military realism. It had the troop strength to prevent a massacre and it did nothing.

From their website:

"BritainandAmerica.com is a proud believer in the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. This new blog will focus on political developments in the USA and offer an alternative account of those developments to that provided by, for example, the BBC (the Corporation itself recently acknowledging its tendency to anti-Americanism at its own 'bias seminar').

In some important respects the next US election will be more impactful on British citizens than their own General Election. Only the USA has the military power to defeat the terrorists in nations like Afghanistan and Iraq. If American voters choose isolationism over the next few years the whole world will be dramatically affected. If American voters choose protectionism the international economy and the poorest nations, in particular, will suffer. Without American leadership on global warming the Brown-Cameron commitment to climate change will be almost pointless.

If the implications for the UK of American politics provide one big theme of BritainandAmerica.com another big theme will be British media reporting of US politics:

The Financial Times and Economist have influential readerships in America.
High proportions of the online readerships of The Times and Guardian are from the USA.
And then, of course, there is the BBC. BBC Online is read widely in the USA and BBC foreign affairs programming is supplied to ABC and many US radio stations. BBC journalists are regular pundits on American news programmes. On Sunday night the BBC's Katty Kay was telling Chris Matthews that the world community would be disappointed at America if American voters did not punish the GOP for Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
In today's global media village the British media are bigger and bigger players in US politics and they tend to help the Democrats.

Updated regularly BritainandAmerica.com will profile the main players in American politics and provide briefings on key themes including the role of Christian conservatives; the power of money in US politics; the increasing ghettoisation of news; and the power of tax policy at elections.

It will also look at what UK politicians can learn from American campaign techniques and use of the internet."

SIMPLISTIC PATRONISING ILL-INFORMED TRIPE. The BBC is an objective news organisation - something which is sadly lacking in America. The last thing we want is the ill-informed ideology driven nonsense that passes for news in the States. It's also about time that British politicians started questioning the so-called special relationship. Blair's blind support of American (and Israeli) government policy has risked our security and damaged our international standing.

"What's really sad is that archliberals like Olbermann, by default, HAVE to want us to lose in Iraq. After all, if Iraq makes it as a free nation, that means WAR WORKS."

There is no way I would ever put the words 'war' and 'works' together.

But honestly everything the guy says is and has been around for the last 2 years, he's probably the first one in the journalistic community to come out and say on air hoping to attain Edward R. Murrow status. He's already preaching mostly to the converted.

The fourth estate in the USA is crippled beyond repair now I believe, for democracy to exist there needs to be a biased free fourth estate. But even so, looking at 9/11, at all the freedoms of information provided in the USA, a country can still be convinced to go to war fairly easily through fear and a few Powerpoint presentations.

First it's Afghanistan which was fair game, then Iraq which was fear tactics and "don't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud", now it's stuck in a war it can't really leave without losing face. Isolationism at it's finest. All the meanwhile the enemy, Osama Bin Laden is nowhere to be seen, the faceless enemy George Orwell warned us of in 1984. This is all an example of the perpetual war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war

And don't bring Israel into this. That's beyond the realm of understanding, as there are no innocent parties there anymore, for every atrocity Hamas and Hezbollah commited the IDF has commited in kind.

The American goverment has been playing puppet master with so many nations that eventually they will be targetted themselve.

Look at the level of paranoia displayed by the american administration during the cold war era, so fixated are they on assuring dominance that they go as far as intervening in other nations. Look at the Vietnam war, the administration thought that Hanoi would take Seoul, become a large communist state join with China and thus create a Iron Curtain in the east.

Yet had they investigated further they would realize that the East Asian rim is about as unified as Serbia, the Vietnamese were dominated by the Chinese and they would never ally themselves with them. Lack of local information cost them lives, money, and years tied up in a needless war. They werent fighting a communist war, the Vietnamese were fighting a war for freedom.

Then one brings up Bamdrew's point. Remember that Osama Bin Laden started a terrorist campaign against the US because of the military buildup in Saudia Arabia. Pick up a globe once in a while, look at the current spread of American military bases, it's astounding. The forces of the United States military are located in nearly 130 countries around the world. Some of these deployments have existed for nearly 50 years, as in Japan, Germany, and South Korea, while other deployments have more recent origins such as the current occupation of Iraq. This and unilateral actions that create these terrorists.

The videos provided on VideoSift clearly represent this, the documentary clips I posted, along with the defense budget displayed in Oreo cookies (LOL but very relevant really)

This is becoming almost cyclical now. The more pressure you apply in these and other regions the more you will beat the drums of war, its been nearly 5 years since 9/11 and what exactly has the administration achieved? Osama Bin Laden is loose, there is chaos in Iraq, the american economy went from a surplus to a huge deficit, the middle east is even more tense now with Iran.

At some point there comes a realization that maybe the policies adapted for the last 60 years do not benefit the american people or the world. Instead of creating allies, we have gone back to the days of pre-colonial isolationism.