The future president of his enlarged European Union, from Finisterre, sorry Fitz Roy to Vladivostock, his supremeness, and our beloved New Labour Fuhrer, his Toniness is due to follow in President Putin's wake to Geedubya's little ol' ranch for talks on the terrorism war.
"Mr Blair (Times 8/3/02 page2 col.3) agreed with his colleagues( the cabinet ministers!!?) that if military action were (sic) to be taken( against Iraq) the case for it would have to be 'painstakingly made', accordingly to senior cabinet sources.
This will no doubt involve the Prime Minister submitting himself to Georgedubya inserting his arm up Blair's rear orifice to ensure that our leader is reprogrammed to carry the message around the world that what 'daddy Bush failed to do then Geedubya is gonna do'.
What is missing from all this pathetic posturing by both leaders is any mention of the effect that any renewal of military action in the middle east might have on world fuel prices.
I imagine that the opportunity to raise fuel prices on the hypothesis that action in the middle east is even being talked about has not escaped the attention of the major oil companies.
Nor would it have escaped our Chancellor of the Exchequer that such action could provide a cast iron excuse to raise the level of fuel duties.
And so we will be called upon as patriotic guardians of democracy to bail Bush out by going along with his election strategy, and to support our dimwitted Bush Sycophant in his desperate attempt to become a world leader.
Any comments or guesses on just how high the price of a litre will have to rise to satisfy these two dysfunctional, egocentric pomposities??
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I say we will see plus of £1 a lt if war is actually declared. Oil companies and the stock market are going to get extremly gittery if anything like a conlfict (invasion) takes place. And yes, all becasue Blair want's to be Julious Ceasar!
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Spot on Steve. People do seem to forget what happened a short while ago.
And how fortunate for Europe that these killing lunatics chose the USA as a target. They are the only ones who have the capacity and more importantly the will to do something about it. If it had happened in London we would have had rhetoric and abject grovelling to the perpetrators and nothing else
We should not forget that in the 30s pacifism led to a war which cost over 50 million lives. Europe is already backing off the alliance for whatever reasons We shoul all support the states and if fuel goes up as a consequence of killing evil so be it.
alvin
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Crude is back up to over $23 per barrel, it was around $18 recently IIRC.
However, most of what you pay at the pump is tax for Tiny Blur and Uncle Gordon, so the effect should only be two or three pence a litre.
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I WISH you would be less enthusiastic about some people.
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Expensive oil is a more digestible prospect than Saddam dumping nukes on the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, in which case there may not be enough oil left to be expensive anyway. Dubya (forget Tone, he just wants his picture on the news) now has the unenviable task of cleaning up the mess his predecessors made when they were too pussy-footed to sort out Iraq. He appears to be the only leader to date with the b***s to get the job done. His GB Sr. was prevented from doing it in 1992 because of the potentially resulting Shi-ite axis of Iran and the Southern Iraqis confronting the Gulf States. At the time this was considered a political and military risk.
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Growler.
AT a wedding in Oxford some time ago, I was chatting to an RAF Jaguar pilot. As usual I was very nosey and asked him all sorts of questions about his exploits in the Gulf war. He told me he sank an Iraqi gunboat and confessed that "adrenaline was brown".
Why am I telling you this? Well, when I asked him why they had not gone on to whack Saddam, he said the public outcry over the "Road to Basra" was enough to frighten the politicians into calling a halt.
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People seem to have very short memories. Does anyone remember how they felt nearly 6 months ago ?
Somehow political/economic arguments seem irrelevent when comes to the real threat posed by these hostile nations.The kind of weapons Saddam has if used could make Bin Laden look like minor criminal.
As the Americans say it's time to 'get real'. Clinton had 3 oppurtunities to assaninate Bin Laden and has said its was the biggest mistake of time in office not to authorise one of them.I think GB wont be so hesistant in removing threats to America and it angers me to see UK politicians being so Anti-american.
Fuel prices did'nt rise dramatically during the Gulf war so why would they this time ?
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I generally agree with the sentiments expressed here, and don't envy America's self-appointed task post sept 11th.
I just don't feel that America has anyones interests but their own at heart (see steel tarriffs for topical), their choice of 'Evils' belies other less righteous motivations and quite frankly the hypocrisy of the Americans of who they choose as friendly nations and who they label evil beggars belief. (Yeah we do it too but America is way up there).
Oh and to maintain topic relevance: I'm sure the western-friendly Iraq govt the US hope to install will work to lower fuel prices for the good of everyone in the developed world. Hurrah.
dan
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Yes of course the Americans have their own interest at heart exactly the same as in the last war. But it was in our interests also.. In this fight against evil it also happen to be in the interest of the whole civilised world in the same way.
And Pug your view of Chamberlains strategy I couldn't disagree more, it was more to do with his memories of the great war and the carnage which influenced him to attempt to pacify Hitler.
I spent almost two years in the Malayan jungle fighting a terrorist enemy and saw at first hand the atrocities they commit to achieve their goal. There were no cameras and reporters in there to record what took place, no interviews with the enemy, no spotty face experts and commentators appearing on TV to exxplain how it should be done and what mistakes were made.
It was carried out ruthlessly and efficiently with no prisoners taken.
The Americans are hopefully doing the same thing and we should applaud and support their efforts to eliminate the savages who carry out and support atrocities such as Sept 11th.
alvin
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Alvin.
Two alternative views on Chamberlin
1. He was a pacafist and this led to the invasion of Poland
2. He had his eye very much on the ball and delayed any fight with Hitler until this country had some semblance of military capacity to fend him off
I, personally go with the latter.
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The Growler, Steve G & Alvin are spot on. What is the alternative to taking on State sponsored terrorism?
I get heartily sick of armchair pundits always knocking the USA. With the benefit of hindsight, of course they have made mistakes and generally they admit them. It is however unprecedented for a nation with America?s might to use their power attempting to sort problems in the world rather than colonising weaker countries.
I am also uncomfortable with the Presidential style of our PM but we live in a tabloid age where presentation counts for everything. Achieving office was the aim and he has won two elections, with huge majorities, with that style. I wonder what chance a fat, bald upper class politician like Winston Churchill would stand of ever getting elected today.
Lastly, and getting back to the original point, we could consider Margaret Thatcher. IMHO on the domestic front her policies were disastrous and to a large extent responsible for the divisive society in which we live. History though will, rightly, remember her for standing up to Argentina over the Falklands.
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Yes, Alwyn. I was in the E. Province of Saudi during the Gulf War, close contact with many troops, my job was in the logistics sector.
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I don't think anything short of a global conflict will have much effect on oil prices. The economy of the Middle East is funded by oil exports, and in order to avoid economic collapse they have to sell the stuff at a price the rest of the world are prepared to pay. They also know that any attempt to starve the world of oil supplies would probably result in the west simply going in and helping themselves. Political Correctness would soon go on the back burner if we felt our economies were in serious danger of long term damage from a few rogue states.
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Tom,
If you changed your paragraph to read "I don't think anything short of a global conflict NEED have much effect on oil prices" then I woudl completely agree.
That, sadly, will not stop prices shooting up anyway as a combined effect of panic buying and profit taking.
M.
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gandalf,
you can quote as much tabloid rhetotic as you like about Dubya. He may come across on TV as a southern redneck good ol' boy but anyone who underestimates him is making a BIG mistake !
As far as fuel prices are concerned, the level of taxation in the UK means that the cost of crude has a relatively small effect on pump prices. Without doing the math, I suspect that if crude was $100/barrel, regular unleaded would still be under £1 a litre (4 times what it should be IMHO but that's another issue).
(Anyone care to do the calculation ?)
Kevin...
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"anyone who underestimates him is making a BIG mistake". Er, isn't he the one who waved to Stevie Wonder?
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Agreed, and being under-estimated is one of Dubya's great strengths which he has used well, in my view. I would like to see a few more Donald Rumsfeld's kicking *** and a few less PC wimps running the world. Imagine how Clinton would have dealt with OBL! Hey, let's have a dialog with this guy, see what's bugging him, reach a compromise that won't scare the folks backl in Little Rock or on The Hill.
Back to motoring: I have no doubt whatever that the strategists in DC have figured out on one of their models to the last cent where the oil price will go if they fix Baghdad, and that it's a totally manageable outcome with the cost/benefits on the side of the free world.
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Oh, and if we get Iraq back that's got loads of oil anyway.
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Dubya's not in charge; he's the front man for the same politicians that were in charge fifteen to twenty years ago. They grew up politically in the late 1940s and 1950s, and have the same isolationist paranoia as fueled the Cold War. Just as then the US wants to protect its foreign markets. Afghanistan will provide an excellent site for an oil pipeline from the Russian republics to feed the US's addiction to the black burny stuff, and keep Dubya and his mates in lucrative oil company directorships. Likewise Iraq.
Alvin, I must take (a little) issue with your assessment of the start of WWII. The Americans studiously avoided being involved in the war until they absolutely had to - even Roosevelt took some time to come round to the idea that war was bad for business. In the late 1930s they made a lot of money supplying steel to BOTH sides. Nothing to do with pacifism. And another thing: President Hoover made the Depression worse by putting up tariffs on imported steel, among other things. Sound familiar?
Chris
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Growler
I'm not sure if your comment was aimed at me, but just for the record, I am far from anti-American. I work mostly for Americans (they pay better than the Brits), and, among other things, have spent the last fifteen or so years researching and writing about American history and culture. In the last year or two I've published mostly over there. They keep commissioning me to write more, so they must like what I have to say. I just don't think it's useful to see this as America good/Adul el... bad.
Just as we do, the USA depends on oil supplies. They will act in their own interests, which may or may not benefit us. Not a criticism, but a fact.
Chris
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Chris,
Too big a subject as to what started the war and can not be put into simply pacifism which is not what I was saying. I was referring to an earlier thread which suggested that Chamberlain may hve been shrewd in delaying the war.
What one should remember is that that America made it possible for us to maintain the war through supplies. (FDR to congress that would you not lend your hosepipe to a friend etc.)
Their entry into the European war was inevitable for many reasons including using their navy to escort supplies to Britain but more importantly they could not have allowed Germany to defeat the USSR which would have placed them in an impossible position.
Of course the USA do these actions such as Afghan for their own interests which is natural but in this century it has usually been also in our interests (including WW1) We should recognise this. And also be grateful that the worlds policeman for the last half century has been the states and not the USSR. Very easy to find faults and be analytical as to their actions but provided it ultimately is in the interests of the free world it has to be good for us.
alvin
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I'm not going to disagree with you on any of that Alvin. We just have to be aware that the USA will look after the USA. And Dubya will look after Dubya and his mates. Amazing to think that in 1942 (IIRC) the USA actually banned the sale of new cars in order to make sure the car manufacturers kept up aircraft and tank building.
Chris
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Well, being anti-American is cheap and easy, always has been, but the prospect of having Abdul el Towelhead with a nuke in his repertoire I find a good deal more disturbing than a powerful USA.
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Thank you all for your contributions to this thread. I am impressed not only by the quantity of the replies but also by the quality and depth of some of the arguments put forward.
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But I thought you'd passed on into the West with your friends, and I was ready for the return match with those remaining!
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Sauron,
You are welcome to engage with those who remain, but beware of the power of Reuel!
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