Having read all the posts and replies to posts in this thread as of Tuesday evening, I feel compelled to address an issue that seems to be generally ignored.

Everyone seems hung up on the ideas of should we go to war, and what are the justifications, and is the war about oil, and will the allies support us, etc.

Has anybody given much thought to the consequences of doing this war, whether we win, lose, or draw?

There will be no winners here. Oh, sure, we may (probably will) go in and just like last time kill a bunch of poorly trained, inadequately equipped Iraqi soldiers and blow up a lot of tanks and bridges and things. But the financial consequences of this action will be devastating -- more so to us than to Iraq.

A dozen guys commandeered a couple of airplanes and flew them into a couple of skyscrapers and damn near took down the whole US economy. We have thousands of skyscrapers, thousands of jet planes, and yet this relatively infinitesimal attack on our resources had enormous consequences. I don't mean to belittle the loss of life and the tragedy of the attack. But only a tiny fraction of one percent of our assets were destroyed, and yet... Don't ever say that terrorism isn't effective.

So imagine what the effects will be if the entire Arab community, or even a sizable portion of it, unites and acts effectively against us. An oil embargo, a dozen effective suicide attacks, could prove immensely damaging, not to the physical infrastructure of the country, but to the confidence, the "psychological infrastructure" of the citizenry. With the overall economy balanced on a razor's edge (can you say multi-trillion-dollar national debt?) it will take very little to push us over the edge.

Want to take it a bit further? Read the book "Warday" by Streiber & Kuselka. The premise is a very limited nuclear strike against the US (total of 6 bombs, all exploded high in the atmosphere doing little blast damage, but the EMP would destroy most communications, make inoperable any automobile built after about 1980, destroy most civilian computers in the country taking out virtually all of the banking records... How many millions do you think would die with no transportation, no communication and thus no government?

We're not just playing with Iraq's future here. We are putting our own very much at risk.

tanstaafl.