Iran touts economic projects in Iraq

The problem for Ms Rice is that people in the Middle East do not consider that the interests of the US should be their primary concern. The peoples of the region are not stupid and know well that oil and Israel are the only real interests of the US. They, the perennial foils of US foreign policy, are an incidental interest. The Iranians, nursing their memories of the torture-camps of the US supported Shah and constant threats of US invasion or attack, are interested in creating their own security zone by keeping the US tied up in Iraq; by ensuring an Iranian-compliant Iraq in the long-term, and by emulating Israel in its possession of a deterrent which will make it invasion-proof by conventional forces. The Iraqis, having endured the CIA-engineered overthrow of Mossadeq; the imposition of the US supported Saddam, and having seen their civil society filleted by a decade of US led sanctions - and the remains pulverized by a botched US invasion that left another 100,000 Iraqi men women and children dead and most of the rest in poverty and insecurity - are not much inclined to heed US concerns either. Recent Iraqi government delegations to Iran, Syria, and Saudi carry in them the message of the ruins of US Middle East policy.

And we have to suffer the likes of "petemurray" who wish us to think he has the slightest idea what people of the region, who are not stupid, are thinking. And that what "petemurray" is thinking and spewing is enlightened enough to cause the readers of this story, who are also not stupid, to believe. This is, until November anyway, still a free country. So we will respect "petemurray"'s right to spew.