It's the oil. The oil.

Doug Maconis asks if the people behind the honor killing of Doa Khalil Aswad are the people the U.S. is fighting for. Clearly we live on different planets.

Honor killings, as with Doa Aswad are reprehensible. But let's be clear. The U.S. is not in Iraq to fight for Iraqis. The U.S. is in Iraq for the oil. And for the bases. The U.S. is trying to steal the only assets worth stealing there. It wants to keep giant bases in the country, browbeating the government into signing binding contracts/treaties that will allow those bases to remain even if the Iraqi government were to turn hostile to the U.S. (see Guantanamo). The U.S. is also going to push for oil contracts to go to U.S. and european companies, with huge profits (after inflated expense reports to make profits even larger) going to the foreign companies.

It's a pragmatic approach to the current and coming oil shortages. But let's be clear, there is no virtue here. It's just armed robbery. No one is fighting for democracy over there. Or if there are soldiers who actually believe that, well, they swallowed the propaganda and didn't understand the reality. They're now paying for that mistake. The question is, will the citizens of the U.S. learn their lessons, or will they continue to attack foreign nations and destroy governments, institutions and perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of lives because they have totally bought in to propaganda.