[MidGe]

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And unless you and MidGe have managed to reach some sort of enlightened state that transcends self-interest...well...


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Enlightened state that transcends self-interest would probably look like not interfering in other nations businesses. The US and it allies should never have gotten into Iraq in the first place. Now that they have done so, completely incompetently, without a semblance of a plan for what would happen after mission was accomplished ( [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ) and without valid reasons (no WMD), imo, the US should bear the burden of reconstructing Iraq. That means that every US citizen should pay increased taxes to be given to Iraq until they turn the Iraqis population to look at them favorably. Let's start by counting the well in excess of 500,000 civilians deaths over those that would have happened under Hussein, a great friend of the US, (would you like me to get links to photo's of Rumsfeld and Hussein?), reconstruction of the entire infrastructure to what it was (a model of Arab secularism in the region), and I guess we should throw a few punitive damages as well as those seem very much to the taste of the US in the last half a century.

We should add that any non governmental/civilian corporation that got involved and benefited from the war should be investigated by a properly constituted and independent war tribunal and fined accordingly (to relieve the burden on ordinary, misled, taxpayers). [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Shame on you Blackwater!