"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." - Michael Ledeen

I don't think your eighth reason is quite in-depth enough - it is not just to test the weaponary, it is to use some of it up so that it has to be reordered, boosting the 'defence' corporations stocks and shares.

Bazaar Macabre

If you've watched T.V. and you've seen the war
And if you've wondered what it's for,
Then listen to me and I'll tell you a tale
About how we put death on sale

To despots, tyrants, killers and kings
And how we've sold them all these things
That smash and burn and maim and kill
And give the viewers such a thrill.

We've got smart missiles and brilliant bombs
And all for sale on generous terms,
Tanks on HP, guns by the pound,
There's plenty of death to go around.

So, roll up, roll up now, don't be shy,
If you want to watch some raghead die,
Brought to your home by Ted and friends
At BSkyB and CNN.

And when it's all over and they're all dead
And when we've stained the desert red
And when we've finished having our fun,
Well, then we'll say "here, see this gun?

Well, it won't jam, it'll fire all day
While your young men blow theirs away
And this bomb gives more bang for your buck,
What, human rights? Who gives a fuck?"

'Cause we've got the toys with which to play,
If you want to take those rights away
And torture, murder, maim and kill
And bend your subjects to your will.

So, roll up, roll up now, don't be shy;
It's all on sale for you to buy,
All this death's going for a song.
You've seen the war: now buy the bomb!

Bob Maycock

This war, like all wars, has been solely motivated by greed.

The greed of several entities :

1) the british crown, who me thinks owns a majority of shares in Haliburton and other such companies like Blackwater, etc..., besides their huge portfolios in major oil companies.

Is it possible that such nationally sensitive things as the IT of the NHS and the management of the Trident nuclear base and also Aldermaston, the nuclear weapons devellopement center have been given by Blair to Halliburton, a foreign company, if it is not owned at the highest level in Great Britain ?

And it is a fact that all the above quoted companies are registering record profits after record profits since this war has begun.

But stats also curiously show that those record profits, mostly made by US companies, benefit much more british individuals than american ones.

The almost fanatical (and totally indecent and grotesque in my eyes) show of support the Queen gave to Bush recently leaves me no doubt as to how satisfied she his with his performance in Iraq.

2) the judeo-zionists, some of who are above the royals even. Here the main motivation is not money but the long term geostrategical and territorial goals of the state of Israel, an entity created and maintained artificially alive by the Rothschild barons from the very beginning to this very day.

I have no doubt that the recent number of Blair in Jerusalem, when he sang in Hebrew with a kippa on his head along with Ehud Olmert to celebrate the jewish hannukah festival a few days after the murder of Saddam Hussein is the perfect illustration of Blair's total subservience to the zionist entity.

When I saw that, I thought that Saddam had become as big as Jesus-Christ.

It's interesting to note from a "spiritual" point of view that the last two big wars of the New World Order seem to have done the most damage to two very similar religious groups, the christian orthodox church in the balkans and the sunni muslims in iraq.

They are both non pyramidal in structure and reinterpretation of the scriptures is permitted to anyone, breeding very independent minded people who then require brutal force to to be submitted to the diktats of globalization (which is no more than the loss of national sovereignties in many domains to the sole benefit of international financial cartels sympathetic to Israel), whose most visible face is Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, also known as the architect of the Iraq war.

A man who publicly declared while he was US deputy secretary of defense that his commitment to the ultra-orthodox zionist sect Chabad-Lubavich was above all else.

No mystery that an abnormally high number of jewish troops participated in the siege of Fallujah which was apparently directed and supervised by John D. Negroponte and during which probably something like 50.000 iraqis got massacred with illegal weapons such as phosphorus, napalm and very possibly also with some not yet classified weapons such as particle beam weapons and masers (just more powerful than those introduced since some time as non lethal weapons for crowd control in the US)

The city got entirely shut from the eye of the world for an entire year.

During which time they transformed the freer religious city in the world into the first high tech prison city in which everyone is required to carry a biometric identity.

BTW the pyramid with the motto Novus Ordus Seclorum (New Order of the Centuries) that is on the one dollar bill, it is also an actual building of the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem, a building donated to the state of Israel by the Rothschild familly, just like the Knesset.

And everything has apparently been made at the political level both in the US and UK so that the security degradates in Iraq so badly as to reap a maximum of undiscriminate casualties amongst iraqis.

More Iraq bleeds the better it is for Israel.

It could even bleed to it's death considering how fucked-up the situation is, I am afraid.

Blair is leaving but he has done the job, and well.

I have read he aims at juicy employment as "advisor" on the board of some companies he greatly helped to enrich with the Iraq war.

I have also read he aims at creating a foundation to help Africa and also fancies the job of Secretary of the United Nations.

Maybe he'll find some time to collect Black Sabbath CDs, the sole known pop band he is overtly a fan just like Bush who once recitated a list of their albums which included Face In Hell, Bloodbath In Paradise, Speak Of The Devil, etc...

God save us from more crimes against humanity.

Afghanistan appears to be mostly an opium war. Production had fell to nearly 0 under the Talibans. Something had to be done about it urgently. Today Afghanistan supplies again an estimated 97% of the world multibillion illegal market of heroin I have read in a paper. The british army apparently encourages the farmers to grow poppy over there.

A good and old mate of mine from Milton Keynes I hadn't seen for ages did a lethal overdose not too long ago it has been reported to me. It was back, it was cheap and it was too strong. Sad but true like all the rest.

Babcock provide the services at Faslane, and interesting enough they've just bought Devonport. This follows on from recent reports that the MOD would move Trident down south if the SNP won just in case of independence.