[mburbank]

I don't think it's all about oil for a lot of the Neocons, although it's critical.

It goes like this.

A.) Our friends are all as rich as hell from the oil bidness.
Therefore
B.) America is never getting off the oil tit if we can help it.
C.) Democracies are a good place to do bidness. Even better than friendly dictatorships (see saudi arabia) on account of they can go south very suddenly (see Iran) and even the ugly fanatical people you prop up can chage sides (see afghanistan)
D.) Democracy is the bestest most natural form of government, especially if a totally unregulated free market (see haliburton) can run it. All people want this form of democrcay and if they're current governments are toppled it will happen because that's the way things naturally go, especially if our military and opur bidness is there to make it happen.
E.) This process is infallible.
So
F.) The Iraq fuck up is just a temporary aboration, not really that bad, going to be fine as soon as they have elections and certainly not the fault of the above process, because as we said, it's infallible.
So
G.) On to Iran and then Syria.

Now it's also true that Iran may well be working really hard on a nuclear weapons program. If I was Iran, I'd sure as hell be working on it, because we'd be coming even if they didn't. It's part of the plan, and just about the only thing Iran can do to stop it is get some Nuckear weapons. Ironic, huh?