I do not intend to rehash this well harrowed issue, save to point out that the Israeli PR sucks!

Don't try to engage me on the rights and wrongs of the issue. The fact is that the U.S. is fully in support of Israel. Why? Because it is their bastion of influence in the Middle East. However, it seems to me that some balance should be drawn.

The effort and dollars of U.S. support are NOTHING to do with justice/right/wrong, they are ONLY about oil. If you think otherwise, you probably believe the OSCARS are straight too!

In my opinion, it's about time the U.S. acted DIRECTLY in its own interests rather than through its Israeli surrogates or the Seven Sisters (major oil companies).

The current limited engagement is worldwise news because of the Israeli/Arab/U.S. interaction – how's it look to the average viewer (who is probably Islamic)?

If we are going to say f*ck the Palestinians, the fact is the Israelis are right – might is right – we may as well abandon all the BS and just take the oilfields – that would at least be a definite and worthwhile objective in terms of U.S. lives. But for Chritst's sake do and do it definatively, and kick-out the old guard all at once.

There's a generation of TV watching, western-loving, educated, neglected middle-class just waiting in the wings to support a U.S. action with the balls to do what has to be done, hopefully sooner than later. If not, we created such an entity – just as we did in S. America – then it was for influence and the United Fruit Company, This time, my friends, it would be about OIL.

The Euro's would shout about it, until they realized that their energy supplies were secured from the brainstorms of an interbred, murderous, royal family (dictatorship) derived from a bunch of desert muffins who happened to have a few more camels that the next guy at some time and made his "X" with the British a century ago!

Let's get real for once! History is not some Walt Disney cartoon, it never was. And, like Santayana said, we should look to the past and learn its secrets – rather than f*cking about and trying to keep CNN on our side!

It's NOT about oil. Not entirely.

A rudimentary understanding of economics and supply and demand tells us the arabs will ALWAYS sell oil to us.

The USA is their # 1 customer, prolly accounting for about HALF of their sales. No matter how much you don;t like your #1 customer, you DO NOT piss off your #1 customer, to the point of LOSING your #1 customer. ESPECIALLY when your #1 customer is (thru oil sales )funding your little war with your mortal enemy.

Now, for the supply and demand part -

Say America stops buying middle eastern oil. As I said before, that's about (prolly) a 50% drop in sales. The world market becomes glutted with oil. The price plummets to $2 a barrel. The Arab cash cow withers and dies. And Arabia turns into a desert wasteland.

Oh yeah - the Arabs will ALWAYS sell us oil. They may haggle over price, but they will ALWAYS sell.

(As a side note, did anyone notice gas prices just jumped up - the DAY before the ANWAR drilling proposal was taken off the table by Bush????)

That said, its HIGH TIME for Bush to kick the eco-terrorists against ANWAR drilling in the nutz, and rape, pillage and plunder the ANWAR region for oil.

Oil independence for the US, Arabs lose their $$$ to fund terrorists, and we all live happily ever after.

I don't claim to be anywhere near an expert on middle east issues, but I have a question about your "it's about the oil" argument.  If our stake in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were about oil, why don't we just forget Israel and start sucking up to the Saudi's and other middle east nations.  They're the ones that are the major oil exporters.  How are we helping our chances of getting oil from them by aiding one of their enemies?  I just don't follow the logic.  

If the arabs stopped selling to us, there'd be no other "#1 consumer of petro on the planet" to sell it to.

They'd lose half of their sales, that means they'd have to shut down half of their economy/economies.

That just wouldn't work.

If anything, I think its exactly the opposite.

Our dependence on oil is keeping us from ENTIRELY sucking up to Israel.

And keeping the Israeli contingent within the US gov't from send $20 billion per year over to Israel. Or $200 billion. Remember, in their minds, the US exists to feed Israel. (Or so it seems)

My $0.02

Has anyone noticed that this wave of suicide bombers didn't start until we started talking about going after Iraq.  Saddam has orchestrated this whole thing to take the heat off him and it is working.  He is also the one that started the oil embargo talk.  He has to be loving it, he feels that he now has the other Arab nations on his side after years of isolation.  

In the meantime, all the Israel haters and Palestinian apologists have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker with posts and threads saying that we will give up support of Israel when gas is 2.50 a gallon, etc, blah, blah, blah.

I prefer to think of it as a balance of power.  After all, who are we kidding when we talk about not buying oil from those middle eastern thugs.  We, the great give it to me now, satisfy all my wants, damn the consequences, bigger is better and still not big enough people of the U.S. of A.  We have become slaves to our own oil consumption; our economy is directly linked to it.  Support of Israel is a much better barganing chip than the threat of taking our business elsewhere.  We supply Israel's military machine, and were it not for the reigns in our hand, Israel would start a route of which Douglas McAuther would be proud.  Arafat is finding out right now what happens when the U.S. lets Israel act as it will.  We as a nation are to concerned about public opinion to act in our best interest, so we must pay another to act on our behalf.  I consider it money well spent.

I disagree.

How do you figure support of Israel as a bargaining chip??

In the Arab mindset, we are siding with their enemy. This is declaring us to BE their enemy. The more $$$ we send to israel, the more the Arab nations have to raise the price of oil to be able to fund their war against Israel. Some bargaining chip. We're bargaining ourselves into paying a HIGHER price.

Further, our BEST bargaining chip against the Arabs IS taking our business elsewhere (namely, ANWAR, which in reality would be giving the business to ourselves).

Use Walmart as an example.

If you think your local gadget store is too expensive, do you throw rocks at their windows, or write nasty letters to the editors about the store owners mother to piss them off to get them to lower prices?? No, a pissed off seller will RAISE prices when they see you coming.

No, in order to get them to lower prices, you simply, politely tell them their prices are outrageous, and that you will be shopping at Walmart. COMPETITION always drives prices down.

Want to drive mid-east oil prices down? tell teh Arabs we gonna drill ANWAR. Prices will plummet for Arab oil. They HAVE to in order to compete in teh world oil markets. When Bush came to office with threats of ANWAR drilling, we saw gas prices plummet. THE VERY DAY we heard ANWAR was off the table, prices spiralled upward.

Wanna increase Arab oil prices? Side with their mortal enemies - Israel. They HAVE to raise prices. They HAVE to. they have a war to fight, and WE are funding their enemy.

Whatever the Arabs, Iran, Iraq, Syria and other allies of Osama/Al Qaeda/Hezbollah/Hamas/Jihad, desire....

....We should do the exact opposite.
Fuck them.
We should NEVER let them believe that they MADE us change a policy, EVER.
To allow this would be a HUGE error.

Garandman, if you truly believe that the price of gas in the U.S. is totally dependent upon mid-east policy I believe you are whoefully underestimating the situation.  And while I understand that ANWAR is a solution, it is a future solution not an immediate one.

Your Walmart analogy uses faulty logic.  Throughout history we have supported groups aligned against those whose policies we sought to change; economic, political, or otherwise.

Fucking A man. Sending money to israel is like shoot ourselves in the foot. Why do we give a fuck about israel anyway ? We need oil. Either cut aid to israel so that we don't have to pay higher prices becuase the arabs hate us. Or go in and take the fucking oil fields by force. We can't keep playing both sides of the fence which is what we've been doing for years. Now it's getting innocent Americans killed on our own soil.