<<I can conceive of a lot more idealism than you can apparently.>>
I think in this case what you mean is that you are a lot more gullible than I am concerning America's nefarious intentions in Iraq.
<<Iraq needs a hydrocarbon law [WRONG!] but Iraqis are writing it [wrong again]>>
Iraq already has a perfectly good hydrocarbons law. It was written during the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party rule. It prohibited foreigners from owning any of the oil wells or sharing in any of the oil profits. This kept all the profits of the wells in Iraq and ensured the development of a native Iraqi petroleum industry. Needless to say, the law is not favoured by the Americans and the government, which owes its very existence and protection from their own people to the American army, is re-writing the hydrocarbons law to something that the Americans can accept, i.e. to one that will give them partial (up to 90% according to the first draft) ownership of the wells.
<<I can't conceive of them turning down a better deal offered by a Chinese drilling concern , they are in no condition to waste money.>>
You better conceive of it, because by accepting the law the Americans are ramming down their throats, they've already rejected the BEST of all possible deals: they develop their own wells with their own people and their own resources, as they have always been able to do in the past without outside help, AND they get to keep 100% of the profits. So, yeah, I CAN conceive of them turning down some nice Chinese deals in favour of some not-so-nice U.S. deals. If the U.S. invaded them once on a phony pretext to get that oil, they'll do it again, and again and again, if need be. Fortunately none of the Iraqi puppets, er, I mean legislators, are stupid enough to miss that rather basic point.
<<If American drillers want a slice of the business they had best bid competitively.>>
Or tell Dick Cheney that they smell WMD under that sand.
<<You have to qualify that the US has not fostered democracy in the middle east because we have indeed fostered democracy in Europe and Asia , and havet we benefited a lot from the establishment of democracy where it has succeeded?>>
You didn't "foster democracy" in Europe or Japan because they already had democracy of their own. You certainly didn't foster democracy in South Korea or China, in fact you backed the Syngman Rhee and KMT dictatorships. Conditions in Europe are very much different than the middle east, there are large homogeneous populations with long histories of independence and strong cultural identities, not to say well-developed militaries. What happened in Europe is peculiar to Europe. The U.S.A., in conjunction with its allies, Great Britain, France and the U.S.S.R., defeated fascism. At that point, the European powers, France and Britain, would not have tolerated American-backed fascist dictatorships anywhere in western Europe and the U.S.S.R. would not have tolerated them anywhere in eastern Europe. So what you "fostered" in Europe had very little to do with what you wished for and very much to do with what was inevitable anyway.
The fact is that you have never fostered any democracy in the Middle East but have actively worked against them. It is ridiculous to claim that somehow Iraq is different, that THERE and nowhere else America is fostering a democracy. That is such egregious bullshit that I can't think of anyone outside the U.S.A. who would even consider it for a minute. What the U.S. wants in Iraq is a pliable satellite much like Egypt or Jordan, someone to do their bidding and carry their water.
