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One of the more strategic reasons for going into Iraq and removing Saddam is to establish a more U.S.-friendly regime and resume buying oil from Iraq. This would marginalize the 7-15% (take your pick) dependency the U.S. has on Saudi oil and weaken the House of Saud's hold on the region. A weakened Saudi ruling class would destabilize the country and allow us to install a more democratic and less 8th century government which would be happy to keep oil prices low for us.

Cynical you say? No, just pragmatic.

and allow us to install a more democratic...government

Doesn't that statement contradict itself? Anyway, given the way most people in Arabia think, democratic is not the same as moderate.

If you really want to be pragmatic about it, maybe we should find a smart, pro-U.S. prince and 'arrange' the succession to get him into power.

A weakened Saudi ruling class would destabilize the country and allow us to install a more democratic and less 8th century government which would be happy to keep oil prices low for us.

I'll go further and say, carve the damn place up. Time for some good old-fashioned colonialist/imperialist meddling. This time we will put things back together to suit American interests rather than British.

If King Abdullah of Jordan plays ball in the invasion of Iraq, we should restore him to his family's historical throne as the ruler of Mecca and Medina. Add the eastern Saudi oil fields and the southern half of Iraq with its oil. Combine it with Jordan and the West Bank. Call it the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia.

Abdullah and his Hashemite heirs will be independent in the same sense as a Roman Empire vassal state. He will be free to do as he sees fit within his own nation, so long as he respects basic human rights, doesn't play silly-buggers with the price of oil, makes nice with his neighbors, and recognizes the overarching supremacy of American power in the Middle East.

The Hashemites have proven that they can make peace with Israel and furthermore that they know exactly how to deal with the Palestinian filth. Give them a free hand to do so. The Palestinians and their cause will be subsumed into the Kingdom of Arabia.

Israel will be brought willy-nilly to the negotiating table with Arabia. A lasting and equitable peace treaty will be signed, which preserves the right of the faithful of all religions to travel to Jerusalem, and for the first time the right of Christians and Jews to visit the Muslim holy places if they so choose.

The northern half of Iraq goes to the Kurds on the understanding that they not make trouble for our friends the Turks.

The House of Saud, the Wahhabi mullahs, and all medievalist Arab cockroaches who wish to live in 7th-century squalor, will be driven on camel-back into the southern and western wilderness of the former Saudia Arabia. The borders will then be sealed and all theproducts and influences of Western civilization will be taken away from them and their descendants forever. Not so much as a bicycle will remain to pollute their "holy" Islamic lunocracy.

Syria, Iran, Libya and any other troublemakers should then be put on notice that their nations face a similar fate unless they come along with us into the 21st Century.

With the control of the Middle Eastern oil thus gained, we use the proceeds to triple the size of our military, and dictate the terms of a new Pax Americana to the rest of the world, including Europe and China.

-ccm