Warnings from world leaders all within 72 hours, page 6

I'm certainly no prophet, but if I had to take a guess, I wouldn't expect either Israel or Iran to start anything. I wouldn't expect the U.S. to start anything either. What I would expect is a continuation of a low-level insurgency against Israel by various Islamic groups as they chip away at the land for peace dealings that have been going on since the beginning of Israel's return to the promised land. Frankly, I think it's a silly strategy for Islam considering they've got the world's oil reserves to worry about.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, what is the basic policy in protecting the homeland and capitalistic way of life? Containment and encirclement - at a distance. Most of the time we attempt this by influencing the regimes we consider strategic. It's cheapest to buy influence and carry very big sticks. We did it against the Soviets and it continues to this day in the ME. It's a simple strategy, it worked to avoid WWIII with the Soviets, and we keep using it. So, who did we decide decades ago would be the locus of containment against Soviet expansion in the ME? Iran. Until the tail end of the cold war they were our allies. They have the most obvious geographical position to prevent Sino/Soviet or other control of the ME oil supply which everyone would agree is critical to the U.S. - for now at least. Islam is by and large not considered a threat because it cannot project nuclear power. Is Iran going to project that power even if they get a nuke? Please - this almost bankrupted the U.S. and Soviets.

Unfortunately, Iranian Islam popped our bubble of containment back in the late 70's. Even though the Soviets were already on the skids financially, I think that because of our weak intelligence on them economically, we felt we had to start squeezing from the sides. Wasn't it about this time that SH came on the scene? That certainly worked for a while and who was his aggression aimed at? Iran.

Look at the current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, would you feel encircled yet if you were Iran? IMHO, this is simply a continuation of the basic policy for maintaining our position in the ME and it's been going on for decades. Carter lost a lot of ground in the late '70's when we lost our direct influence in Iran. The bubble burst not only there but in Afghanistan also with a Soviet invasion. Reagan began to address the solution by backing the Muja in Afghanistan. It burst again when SH turned on us and invaded Kuwait. Bush 1 continued it by pushing back on Iraq in Kuwait. Clinton went into a holding pattern but both Bush 1 and Clinton took their eye off the ball in Afghanistan - they should have maintained our friends there. Low and behold, they turned on us also. The attacks of 9-11 were the peak of this - incredibly, they actually attacked the homeland - which I personally believe was truly idiotic on their part. Among other things, it provided pretext. Bush 2 did what any president would do, he kicked their asses and he kicked them hard and every American cheered and so did I. But when you stop and look around, you see that by that act, the fringe of Islam had given the U.S. an excellent pretext for restoring the containment of the bubble. Bush 2 took things a major, major step farther with Iraq. Only history will tell if this was overpressure.

So, encirclement and containment continues, oil prices are likely going to be held artificially low until capitalism can find something cheaper than oil bubbling out of the ground to run its engines of production. Iran is neutralized and I suspect most of the rhetoric is aimed at their own population and keeping them under control.

Nothing is going to change until/unless the Mahdi shows up. Then, we're going to have a real fundamental change in the ME. Religion will trump oil, capitalism, and everything else.

Somebody let me know when that happens.