What are those "western interests" that Isis threatens? If Iraq's principal product were asparagus, western interests in obtaining healthy green vegetables would presumably not be at risk. But Iraq has the the world's second largest oil reserves in the world: like asparagus, the US can get oil elsewhere - but its attempt to control world energy flows has led it to kill a million people in the Mideast in the last decade - and to continue to do so.
"Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the more astute of the senior planners and analysts, pointed out in the journal National Interest that America's control over the Middle East 'gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region.' If the United States can maintain its control over Iraq, with the world's second largest known oil reserves, and right at the heart of the world's major energy supplies, that will enhance significantly its strategic power and influence over its major rivals in the tripolar world that has been taking shape for the past 30 years: US-dominated North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, linked to South and Southeast Asia economies." [Noam Chomsky]
The day Haass' article appeared, British PM Cameron repeated the US/UK cover story for ongoing imperial occupations in the Mideast (now made all the more urgent by the China/Russia oil deal):
'...Cameorn told MPs today that Britain cannot afford to see the creation of an "extreme Islamist regime" in the middle of Iraq. [The PM has apparently never heard of the chief US client - after Israel - in the Mideast: Saudi Arabia. --CGE] The prime minister said that the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) threatening the government in Baghdad were also plotting terror attacks on the UK.
'"I disagree with those people who those people who think this is nothing to do with us and if they want to have have some sort of extreme Islamist regime in the middle of Iraq, that won't affect us. It will," he said.
'"The people in that regime - as well as trying to take territory - are also planning to attack us here at home in the United Kingdom. So the right answer is to be long-term, hard-headed, patient and intelligent with the interventions that we make.
'"The most important intervention of all is to make sure that these governments are fully representative of the people who live in their countries, they close down the ungoverned space, and that they remove the support for the extremists."'
There's a move afoot in Parliament to impeach (an archaic remedy) Tony Blair for similar lies. The Bush-Blair-Obama evocation of "terrorism" (= the resistance of people in the Mideast to US-led invasion and occupation) as an excuse for more murder is wearing thin.
--CGE
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/54d08a7e-f31c-11e3-a3f8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3500Lir7X http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/18/tony-blair-impeach-iraq-war_n_5506525.html
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