But this logic doesn’t hold water.

Just because oil prices haven’t gone down doesn’t mean that the U.S. didn’t invade Iraq for its oil.

All it means is that the Bush team even screwed up that aspect of this fiasco of a war.

I’ve read (I believe it was noted by Chalmers Johnson) that a hidden aspect of the Iraq War (which has been pretty much ignored by the MSM) has been the spectacular success of the insurgents in sabotaging Iraq’s oil industry.

I’d suspect this will continue for many years. It’s impossible to guard thousands of miles of oil pipelines across vast tracts of desert.

It was Noam Chomsky who noted that for all of America’s lofty talk of “freedom” and “democracy,” the average Iraqi on the street knows damn well we invaded their nation for oil.

Meanwhile, I neglected to point out that the earthquake is winning China sympathy. Nobody’s gonna have the heart to boycott or protest under these conditions.

Sad to say, but Chinese leadership is probably thanking its lucky stars that the earthquake came along close to the Olympics and will probably deflect attention from their human rights issues

There are a lot of disgruntled Chinese exiles who claim that the real number of executions is much higher. They also claim that China has far more people behind bars that it wants to admit.

Maybe these exiles are right.

But I’d like to point out a couple of things. First of all, if you follow the mindset of today’s Chinese leadership, you’ll note that they really have little reason to lie about things like their execution stats, or number of prisoners.

The fact is, China’s leadership has shown again and again that it absolutely doesn’t giving a flying f*ck what the world thinks about its policies. China’s leadership is also extremely hostile to criticism from other nations, particularly from the West.

Also, note that disgruntled exiles aren’t always the most reliable source for info. In many cases, these are people who don’t even live in the nation they’re criticizing (and they haven’t lived there for decades, in some cases).

In fact, it was an over-reliance on believing tales spun by exiles that was at least in part responsible for the U.S. being so monumentally misinformed about the real state of Iraq, before it invaded that nation.

Last, but not least: let’s remember one thing. The U.S. invaded Iraq basically to grab its oil and we now have the blood of over a million Iraq civilians on our hands. We simply have no leg to stand on to criticize other nations now, whether we want to accept this or not.

Today, citizens of other nations are not about to let us lecture them on human rights. Come to think of it, the old adage "People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones" would fit neatly inside a thought balloon shaped like the Unit…