It's no great fantasy to think that I fanatical muslim who runs a tyrannical theocracy and calls for the death of entire countries would do something irrational and use a nuclear weapon.  Yes the USA is the only country to use the weapons, they are also the only country making actual international efforts to dismantle all these weapons.  What country got Russia to drop their current stockpile?  The US,  which country dismantled a lot of their own nuclear stockpile without any pressure from another nation?  The U.S. again.  You say we shouldn't demonize other nations we don't like, but that's all you have been doing for the US.

I know you're not defending him but you're denying that he obviously is attempting to obtain nuclear weapons, which has been what I've been arguing this whole time.

What you're saying though about the fact that Pakistan has not attacked India yet does not convince me of anything.  The same could be said about the Holocaust before it happened, just because a certain action seems so horrible that it would be unlikely doesn't mean that it won't happen.  What did Germany stand to gain by eliminating the lesser races?  Nothing but the rallying of their people under Hitler's ambitions.  What would destroying Israel do for Admadinejad?  Nothing, but rally his people under his ambitions.  If you don't think the people of the middle east hate Israel with an unbelievable furor then you simply don't know many of the people in that area.

I don't see how NA/European nations caused the problems in Africa. I think the african nations are the ones causing their own problems.

@ Kasz:  it's hard to tell, but it looks to me like the numbers are similar on average but more stable, and going up. 

@ the OP:  I think Clausewitz would agree with you:  "The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."

Wtf, how does this site work? I just posted a long post and now it says something else? And what's up with the extremely terrible layout? 

"Paul the Octopus is a symbol of western decadence and superstition." President Ahmadinejad . Iranian President is a  good strong leader who is seen as a good leader in the eyes of the Iranian people. To the western world he is portrayed as a mad dictator  by Western propaganda . The US media make him out to be a terrorist because he is against the US Imperialists way of life. Anyone who speaks out against US Imperialism and Globalisation is considered a terrorist. 

President Ahmadinejad is a man of peace.  Murdoch media has  ruined the reputation of Ahmadinejad through lies and misrepresentations. 

First of all, let me clear this up: Ahmadinejad is a fuckhead. He is anti-semite, he probably is a holocaust-deniar, etc. But that doesn't mean everything people claim about him is automatically right.

There is still absolutely no evidence for this. In fact, the by far most reliable pre-election polling (and the only one carried out by a western institution, "a company whose work for ABC News and the BBC in the Middle East has received an Emmy award", quote Wikipedia) suggested that Ahmadinejad would win with even a few percent more.

This poll was carried out three weeks before the election however, so opinion could have changed. But after the election, with all the rigging accusations , the american polling agency "World Public Opinion" then did an even bigger post-election poll. All the results from this poll were extremely close to the official election numbers, and 83% of the respondents said they were confident that the declared election results were correct. This is quite interesting since the protests directly after the election should tend to cause people to doubt the official results.

What's true however is that Ahmadinejad is rather unpopular among young people and in the big cities. And that is where the protests actually happened, so the images seen on TV gave a very unrepresentative impression when it comes to Iran as a whole.

So the Iran election was not anything like the Afghanistan election a short time later, where there was absolutely clear evidence the election had been rigged in favor of the US-favored Hamid Karzai.

There is still no evidence for this either. Just a few weeks there was a CIA report that claimed that Iran might be able to build a nuclear bomb within two years, but they had no evidence whatsoever that Iran is actually trying to build one. In fact, they didn't even have any evidence that Iran even wants to build the nuclear bomb.

But, to be honest, it is quite clear to me that Iran really wants to build the nuclear bomb. It's the only thing that could prevent Iran from being attacked by the USA or Israel. Even one of the leading israeli military strategists said that after the US-invasion of Iraq, Iran would be "crazy" not trying to build the bomb.

While I personally believe that Iran really wants to have the nuclear bomb, I consider a nuclear armed Iran a no bigger threat than any other nuclear armed country. There are US intelligence reports that estimate the chance of Iran attacking another country with nuclear weapons at about 1%. Unlike most other countries in the world, Iran has been a very peaceful country for far more than one hundred years. The real threat intelligence reports see when it comes to a nuclear armed Iran is the realistic chance of a nuclear retaliatory strike.

I would have thought that by now everyone had heard that this was nothing but a completely wrong translation. What he actually said had more to do with israel's occupation of palestine.

Btw., israeli prime minister Netanyahu on the other hand really uttered the threat of wiping Iran off the map - and this man really has nuclear bombs. Probably hundreds - nobody really knows, since Israel denies giving information about their nuclear arsenal.

Considering there's no freedom of speech in Iran it's pretty hard to know the Iranian people's true opinion of him. And I'd take globalisation over sharia law any day of the week.

Finally, how can you defend a man who picks on a poor defenseless octopus??? Shame on you! Shame on you!!!

The point MrStick was making was specific to the US, Kasz's graph is oil production overall and doesn't focus on the eventual destination or even the nationality of the oil companies profiting from the oil.

IIRC when the oil deals were all set up in Iraq there was not a single US company with a contract.  That was more the point MrStick was getting to...if the US invaded for oil it did a really terrible job of capatlizing on it.

In the meantime we've built a 'shitload' of schools ('shitload' being a highly technical term of course) and repaired all of the infrastructure damage caused from the invasion to the point of it being better than before the war pretty much universally (I'm sure a few exceptions still exists, but the vast majority of locations this is true for).

Compare this to wars in world history and you'll see why I personally LOL when people impugn the US' motives.  Throughout history when a country invades and achieves victory it either claims the invaded territory or demands that the defeated country pay them to cover the cost of having to invade them (in a lot of cases both were done actually).

The US?  After we win wars we forgive debts, waste billions and trillions to rebuild, and let them choose their new form of governance.  The only real demands we levy are things like we did with Germany and Japan in regards to what kinds/amounts of arms they were allowed to amass after the war.

I think our war profiteering is pretty anemic compared to true empires throughout history.  If anything we probably should have taken more for ourselves...or at least not forgiven so much debt.  Alas we did, and now we are the "Great Satan" to much of the world.

PS - Just for the record I'm not saying that the US' actions re: rebuilding aren't "the right thing to do", I think to an extent they are and past that point we took it a bit too far.  I'm just saying I find it hard to take seriously the people who honestly think our goals are purely for war profiteering -- cause people who believe that would have to also believe that we are godawful at it as well.

I'm pretty anti-israel, I think they're a terrorist state, but I'm not for their genocide.  But Iran still calls for death to our nation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92myDzAFgU4   (he also claims Iran has cured AIDS at one point, lawl; got to wonder if the translation is totally accurate though) 

Socialists oppose wars, we do not want to die in  wars which profit the ruling capital class. Ruling capital class started wars in the  Middle East to fight against socialist freedom fighters. Wars are started solely for profiting the ruling elite and lives are sacrificed for profits. 

Iranian President is a man of peace. He does not want war but he fears that the US will invade his sovereign nation of Iran. Sharia law has worked effectively in Iran. Why is everyone against Sharia law?