re: #424 Obdicut

I apologize for thinking and posting you would agree our long agreements with Saudi Arabia are reason to defend them. Interesting though that you would suggest we just up and break those agreements. If Saudi fell to the extremists and the oil stopped flowing west you might really regret it. Maybe. Global economic consequences would likely be severe.

So back to where we almost started-Do you deny that we have interests in the region worth defending by force if necessary?

re: #425 Obdicut

I also don’t get this fantasy where Iran just starts raining missiles down on its neighbors; why that would happen, what Iran would stand to gain from it. Is this just a scenario where they become North Korea part Deux?

Was it a fantasy to have a deterrence policy in the cold war? Maybe in the abstract but reality was what it was. IMO it’s a fantasy to ignore nuclear armed nations and proliferation. History teaches us that nations will respond to nuclear armed nations that they have tensions with.

You say this is fantasy as if missiles ready to go would not constitute a threat. As if there were and are no sources of serious tension between Saudi and Iran. As if missile war would be new to the region. Well Saudi Arabia and Iran are strategic opponents in terms of religion and energy economics.

And again we have binding agreements. The US has interests in the region it can will and in some cases must fight for. And that is all we need to know for the discussion of how Bush described the threat from Iraq as a threat to America includes our interests in the M.E. with or without our approval.

The rest of your points are your valid objections to US policy, a quite separate topic from how Bush meant “threat to the US”. That phrase is clearly meany to include our interests, treaties and obligations. Just to get back to where we started many comments ago. All this discussion in a dozen or so posts just to back up my point about what a President means when he says “threat to the US”.