China and Russia got 100,000 troops together a few weeks ago to practice scenarios that involved "facing a common enemy" They are both expressing extreme disapproval. This is why Israel will have to take the lead on the airstrike. Also why we hear politicians babbling on about how Bush shouldn't have said anything about force and that we would never dream of attacking Iran (whatever). I think the timing of the evacuation of the gaza strip is very telling. Maybe a buffer between the all out jihad that will happen if they bomb Iran? Now it makes sense why China stockpiled all that oil last year. Maybe to run things like naval ships and military vehicles? Also explains the forward positioning of their Navy in the straight of Hormuz. Does it bother anyone that the Chinese Over Seas Trading Company owns the largest shipping port in the Phillipines? (Known Front for the People's Liberation Army) Or that they also control the contract for the Panama Canal? Or that they are dumping $200 billion into developing diplomatic and business ties with all the pro Communist nations in South America? Or that they have accelerated spending on developing offensive oriented military equipment over the last several years to the tune of $20 Billion a year? Or that they have intentially discouraged the birth of females in their country over the last 20 years so that they easily have the man power for the largest standing army in history? If you go to www.cia.gov you can read the annual security report issued for all the countries in the world. The report on China is very sobering. We cannot allow ourselves to be in a position where rogue nations at the behest of China threaten us with nuclear weapons, but do we run the risk of engaging the Dragon? (According to senior military officials in China, war with the United States is inevitable in the next few years.) Also, their military produced a new procedure manual for war in the 21st century by studying our short comings in the middle east. They recognize that the strength that we enjoyed since world war two was based on large military engagements against specific countries. In this manual, they actually praise the attacks of 9/11 because of the massive amount of damage the terrorists were able to inflict not only to our buildings but to our economy. Because of this, they have developed plans to attack not only our infrastructure, but our economy as well. In short, if Israel conducts a raid on Iran they will know that is was with the full knowledge and consent of USA. Where that leaves us I don't know. Probably with an agreemet to withdraw from the Middle East within a certain amount of time and an agreement to get out of their hair about Taiwan. Just speculation obviously, but the alternative would involve a draft I think.
sorry...i think it was $200 million in south america