Your article didn't make ANY arguements.

Hell, the articles you linked doesn't even refer the iraq war in most cases.

Again, the facts clearly don't support you.  You can find all the taken out of context quotes you want.

When you look at the oil figures you see 2 basic things

1) American Companies have almost no Oil drilling contracts.  FYI, oil drilled by these companies is owned by Iraq, not the oil companies, they are paid a little under $2 a barrel, then Iraq sells it for around 100 bucks a barrel.

2)   America gets less oil from Iraq then it did before.

So your arguements are completely without factual merit.

Otherwise, you'd be able to show where all these control is.  (That doesn't exist).

The US And EU actually had stronger control over Iraq when it was under Saddam.... as Saddam had to work within sanctions to export oil.

It's some random quotes vs actual hard data.    Data wins everytime.

There was a time period people Republicans tried to Spin Iraq's oil fields as goldmines.

That was after the war on terrorism lie got old and they needed a new lie to placate the american people and makett hem feel like all the money they spent wasn't going to waste.   It's another lie right up their with the humanitarian reasons and the other 50+ justifications given for the war.

Ever since Chavez won the very first elections in 1998 there has been a lot political division, which has become bigger and bigger throw out the years. I mean democrats and republicans can at the very least have a conversation in the same room, that is basically impossible in Venezuela. I have heard many stories of families who were divided and never talked to each other again because ones were Chavistas and the others from the opposition. 

However the current revolts have gone beyond political differences, like I mentioned early in the thread, people who are/were with Maduro are fighting as we speak. For the first time since 1998, the people are fighting for different reasons other than politics alone, and those reasons are: no food in the supermarkets, hard to find medicines, extreme violence in the streets, the economy going to shit, etc

As a Venezuelan, I have no fucking clue what the fuck happened in the last elections...did Maduro won legally? I don't know, did he cheated? I don't know...I mean there are stories (and pictures) of people with 30 IDs who voted 30 times, Chavistas manipulating the voting tables, setting boxes full of votes on fire, etc. 

I for example, voted abroad, it was a pain in the fucking ass because the Venezuelan embassy in Costa Rica didn't want to register me...I had to give tons of stupid papers for me to finally be able to vote in the elections...It was 5 months of constants "No, you still need this or that paper" before they let me vote...in Costa Rica alone there are 10000 Venezuelans that have the right to vote (by that I mean people that are at least 18 years old), not even half of them were able to do so, because the embassy made their life impossible, the Venezuelan constitution says that in order to vote abroad you only need a valid passport...guess they never read it (and it case you ask, yes, me and many other Venezuelans reported the fact that they didn't follow the constitution..till this day we never heard any responds) 

Stories like that were told by Venezuelans all around the World, in the U.S for example, you could only vote in Washington...my aunt lives in Houston and she had to fly to Washington in order to vote, even though there is a Venezuelan embassy in Houston. And to top all things up, we don't know if those abroad votes ever reach Venezuela, the government never told us they did, they never told us they didn't. 

Also, Venezuela is the ONLY country where (as far as I know at least) the elections are 100% done by computers...all those computers were manufactured and are manage by the government...no matter in what country you live, you can't trust your government...especially on elections. One more thing, the elections started at 6 a.m, they were supposed to end at 6 p.m, and by 10 p.m there were still people voting (as a side note, the Venezuelan constitution says that after the voting time ends, the tables MUST close, no questions asked, the people that didn't get the chance to vote because they were there too late then tough luck), the government was supposed to give the first results at 8 p.m, they gave them at 1 a.m...if you have the most advanced election system in the world (that's how Chavez referred it to) why did you took so long to give the results?  (by the way, this has happened in basically all major elections not only when Maduro won).

To wrap things up:

Is there evidence that Maduro fixed the elections? Yes

Is there conclusive evidence? Sadly, no. At least not conclusive enough to make it valid in an international court.

The government wipes their asses with the constitution papers, they don't care what it's written in there, and through that, they do whatever they want, including manipulating the elections.

To end this long post, the reason why I also don't know if Maduro 100% fixed the elections (I do believe he did it to some extend, but not completely) is because there are a lot of ignorant people in Venezuela, there are people who prefer Venezuela in the state it is, as long as the person gets the chance to rob or kill, they will vote for the one who continues this. Venezuela is a gold mine for drug dealers, they will vote for Maduro as long as he keeps it like that. I'm sure at least 60% of people who voted for Maduro don't even fucking care who he is or what he does, they only care that he continues the chaos...can't find milk in the supermarket? I don't care, I can't rob and kill this guy without ever having any consequences. There's also a lot of people who are making shit tons of money with the government (mostly in the oil company), they don't care if the people can't find toilet paper because he can buy one imported from France...

Sure it is.  Before we invaded the CBO calculated the cost of the Iraq war to be around 13 Billion dollars to deploy, + 9 billion a month.

So 21 Billion dollars.

Meanwhile, US companies are making 1 billion n a year in revenue on profit margins so low, they're doing everything they can to pull out.

So, assuming the war took 1 month, and everything was magically perfect, and nobody expected any complications past, invade, and everything is done as soon as we defeat their army...

it would take 21 years to match it in revenue.  Let alone profit.

Nevermind the fact that it ended up costing way more then that, even from the first month on... and the government had to of known it.  Since the limiting factors in the CBO's predictions were they didn't know how many troops we were going to mobilize etc.

The rosy predictions from the administration before the war started was 100 Billion.

So... Yeah.  100 year plan.

Not really a credible arguement.

Though that's the last i'll say on it since this arguement isn't even located in the right side of the world in regards to the thread topic... and argueing with people about this is like argueing with 9/11 truthers.

I'm not arguing anything I was just saying "trillions" wasn't the original planned expenditure for the war. I said I don't know what the Iraq war was actually for.

However the people higher up in the administrations wanted it. They misled MPs in the UK parliament to get the green light for the UK to participate and there are mumblings of the likes of Tony Blair being tried for War Crimes over the Iraq war.

Interesting post. I had no idea the situation was so complex, i should read into it more. 

If anything you have encouraged me to vote. I wasn't going as i saw no point but after you saying how hard it was for you, since you was abroad. I may as well, my countrie's general elections are in 2015 anyway. 

I'm glad politics don't get so heated in Britain. It's just crazy. I guess this makes the winter of discontent 1978 seems like nothing almost. 

Also I just wonder if the opposition have what it takes to sort Venezuela's problems before a civil war or worse happens. 

Between you lot, Brazil, Egypt, Ukraine and Syria and others. The last thing the world needs is another conflict

Just because the CBO says something does not mean that politicians listen, or interpret it correctly.

I think the war was motivated by oil only secondarily, and really was mostly about "finishing" the job that HW Bush started, but oil had to play a part.

Well yeah.  Cheney said it would be more expensive then what the CBO said however.  

I'd actually argue that "finishing the job" was the secondary reason.  The first being a naive belief that American military force could be used proactivly to make the world a better place via nation building pro-western democratic nations.

Iraq just became the most convient target because of the Gulf war.

Had this Venezuelian stuff been happening at the time, there is a very good chance that it woud of been the target.  However considering the climate.  I can't see the US getting too involved even though it's our "back yard".

I can't help but feel there is a good chance this becomes an Egypt like sitution all over again.  Too many bought off people, and fixing the Venezulian problem will take patience, and some cutbacks in popular programs to the "Chaviistas"

i am Venezuelan, i live in the capital, Caracas.... the economic and social crisis right now, nationwide, is just awfull. i been crying every day seeing the many horrible things that are happening here since the protests began. you guys dont even know half of the things that are happening....

paramilitary groups are working together with the public forces to dissolve the manifestations, these paramilitary groups are very radical, they are government supporters, they are armed and they shoot to kill the protesters, almost all the people that have died, were because of bullets injures, others have died because of the brutal represion by the public forces... the government denies this. most of the people that are put to prison for protesting are being tortured, before being released.

At first I was a bit surprised that the few users here saying to live in Venezuela pretty much all seem to be supporting the protests, as I've read an article quoting numbers that a private market research bureau just released.

According to their survey, not even every fourth Venezuelan (23%) believes the current protests to be wise or that replacing Maduro would even bring positive change. And almost 75% believe that if even Maduro should be replaced, this should be done the "democratic way" - by public vote, not by violent protest from armed groups.

I guess this can be explained by unrepresentative/small sample size. It seems that similar to the Iranian protests a few years ago, the protesters are not representative of the whole population, but usually belong to a more or less specific population group. In Iran for example, the protesters were almost exclusively from relatively wealthy urban (upper) middle class youths. The situation in Venezuela seems to be quite similar.

So considering that video games are probably still too expensive for typical, relatively poor Venezuelan families, I assume that the Venezuelans posting here tend to be from relatively wealthy middle-class families as well, and are thus likely to feel similar to the protesters.

Anyway, I hope this Capriles guy does not come to power. From what I've read, he seems to be a pretty bad politician who would do just about anything to come to power.

that is not true, in fact it was Capriles the one who did not agreed to call people to the streets, it was leopoldo lopez who did that. (and he call to pacific protests, even if he would have not done that, it was bound to happen eventually, just last year, there were around 5000 protests nationwide, most of them related to reinvindications or because of the social crisis, insecurity, scarcity of basic goods, one of the biggest inflations of the world, etc)

Is true that most people do not support the protests if the approach is that Maduro abandon the power. But the majority (I mean the people with the opposition) thinks that the protests should continue if they have an specific approach, like the ones I mentioned before. The opposition has always said that the way to get out of this government is the constitutional way or at least the principal leader, which is Capriles. The constitution establishes that we have the right to protest if they are pacific of course.  

The problem is that most of the manifestations that have occurred the last days, nationwide, are spontaneous. Is just the society going out to the streets because they are mad. Mad with the government because of all that have happened the last few days (the dead students, the armed groups, the brutal repression, the tortures, etc) and of course their call is to throw down this regime. But I don’t think that’s the answer, it doesn’t help at all if that happens. 

The other thing is that the country is totally polarized, a big part of the population supports the government, but another big part are against it. Is like half and half. And that’s a very complicated situation, you see part of society protesting, but another part is just calm going to their works like nothing’s happening. We have become and intolerant society and that doesn’t help with the radicalization of the manifestations.

most of the opposition is middle and upper class people, I think that’s true, but there’s part of the lower class that do not support this government or they are being affected by the economic and social crisis but not necessarily are against it. And we have seen that in the protests, a lot of the lower class neighborhoods have joined the protests and that was very surprising. Also the manifestations did not begin with the opposition leader leopoldo lopez call to go out to the streets, the protests began before February 12, in the state of Tachira (that state that was militarized). Because the students started to protest there. In that area there has almost been like a month of protests. And then the students call expanded nationwide. Some of the opposition leaders joined to that call, and of course they move more people.

The events of February 12 provoked the radicalizations of the protests because of what happened that day.