The US has been shooting and bribing its way around the world for hundreds of years: didn’t they shoot and bribe the native American “Indians” with Whisky, guns and trinkets and then went on to wipe them out.. I don’t know why they should have stopped doing it after the invasion of Iraq, and, after billions of dollars of cash were made available to the military on the ground from Day 1.

The imperialist strategy of the US has been to sponsor a coup or an opposition group to gain power in a target country that isn’t an "ally", to get a compliant or puppet government in place so the US can base its military there and so it’s business interests are given the freedom to dominate in return for large bribes.

After that, once the country is relatively secure and safe the US world network of financial institutions such as investment banks can be let in to set up a base. Then corporations can move in get established and also native businesses can be bought up, government contracts for services and supplying military hardware and military advisors can be obtained by blackmail and bribery. This is all part of the day to day business of capitalism. It’s dirty, bloody and costly.

If neoliberalism had been fully legalized by now there would be less of need for predatory capitalist to use the bullet, although bribery and blackmail would still be used, I am sure, to gain competitive advantage,

However neoliberal capitalism has been having problems, both structurally, and in its process of being legalised led by the US and its allies. Oposition to it has been growing around the world, and has been particularly strong in some South American for many years, led by Venezuela, which have been opposing neoliberal legalisation for many years.

So because conversion to open door neoliberal capitalism is being stalled in some quarter and is failing in other, the US sometimes still has to actually invade the country itself, like in Iraq, when they are unable to get a puppet government in place by indirect means. They will do this without legal sanction if necessary, as they have always done. .

So why haven’t they followed this model with Iraq? Well, Because it has been the biggest and most expensive military disaster in US history, and will probably mark the beginning of the end of the US military and financial empire, especially now that countries like China and India Zones like the EU and South America are together now more dominant than the US, and more importantly less dependent on the US economy, and in a general sense and, practically these days, they are more politically and economically independent from it.

I think that if the US military runs out of hard cash and the bribes stop flowing, which is possible since the US really is on a permanent economic downslide, the Iraqi opposition will break from ceasefire and brutally expel US forces from Iraq, maybe in as little as a year or two.

Although I feel that this presents a problem. Bush is still pouring tons of cash into Iraq, despites threats of the Democrat dominated house saying they want the budget curbed. If the democrats are elected in 2008 they can not be seen to have had their military’s arse kicked out of Iraq under their watch, that is, to be responsible for a huge national humiliation.

What is worrying though is that, out of sheer desperation the US will attack Iran, not for economic gain, but just to flatten the country as an act of revenge, or just to appease the right wing religious fanatics in the US who see Islam as the enemy as communism was the fictitious enemy of their parents.

The US and Israel bombing Iran is something like what the psychotic does, when he is trapped and surrounded by the police and has taken stages. He goes on killing hoping to get away. Bush seems to be taking the US down that route, to a dead end when in what ever outcome they are going to lose.

So, it seems probable, that when the bribe money runs out in Iraq, the US will be brutally kicked out, and when their economy further declines they will have to begin withdrawing the 100 hundred or more countries in which they are based militarily.
raw

...and the inital energy of the Iraq attack was along the lines of "we're sore - these guys (mooslims) hurt us and we gonna hurt them back -right?" Money and bribery wasn't the trip back then..but military might wasn't pacifiying the natives, the war was going on and on, so out came the checkbook.
I really do think that the Iraq attack was a blind lashing out - a 'respect war' thing by Bush etc...and not even an on-centre respect war...nothing in reality to do with oil. (there was in fact no Al Qa'ida in Iraq, or to any great extent, in the UK, before the Iraqi war).