Why They Hate Us, Part 4,686, Section II

In his autobiography being released tomorrow, Alan Greenspan noted that he is:

saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war is largely about oil.

It saddens me as well, particularly since our public servants, people like Greenspan himself, are paid by the American people to "acknowledge what everyone knows." For reasons best known to Mr Greenspan, he failed to share this particular sadness with us at a time when it could have mattered.

Understanding the rational for the war becomes even more difficult, when you realize that a grand total of 5 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians or other "Arabs" this past year. While in Lebanon alone about 30 civilians have been killed by Israeli cluster bombs dropped in Southern Lebanon after the cease fire was announced.

The United Nations anti-mines center, which coordinates clearance work, says 126,000 cluster bombs have been cleared in the past year. Around 30 people have been killed and 180 wounded by them since the end of the war last August.

The center has several times criticized lack of cooperation from Israel, which refuses to provide maps of target areas for the cluster bombs or the numbers dropped, something that considerably slows down the clearance work