Hello Rene,

>RL>There would have been no invasion, but an all-out war.

>LL>Same difference, given an all-out war would have been short-lived.

RL>The problem is that if the Americans attacked Cuba during the missile crises
RL>chances are that the Russians would have attacked Western Europe, thus
RL>creating a 3rd world war.

There is some controversy as to whether the missiles were armed and
primed, or merely missiles with no warheads.

>LL>American military forces could wipe out Cuban forces within two days.

RL>Sure. Back then, Cuba and their advisors could have 'cleansed' the South of
RL>the US with nukes.

Only if the missiles had warheads, with the Cubans having the codes to
arm/prime/launch them.  But then, maybe the Russians would have done it
for them?  Nah.  Probably not.  Kruschev liked to bang his shoe on the
table at the United Nations, not lob nuclear missiles at the USA.

>LL>The British did nothing to help the Afghan people a century ago.
>LL>The Russians did nothing to help the Afghan people two decades ago.
>LL>The Americans are doing very little to help the Afghan people today.

RL>Depends. If there are oil pipelines which are beneficial to US petroleum
RL>companies, one can guess they'll take care of that country in their own way.

Afghanistan is getting very little help in terms of humanitarian aid.
Not from America or from any other part of the world.  But countries are
more than happy to steal whatever goods Afghanistan might have...

>LL>everybody cares about Iraq.  Or is it the oil in Iraq that people care
>LL>about?

RL>Probably. But they also want to avoid that Iraq becomes a second Iran, which
RL>would destabilize the fragile equilibrium in the Gulf region. We still
RL>remember the petroleum crisis in 1973, do we?

The so-called "oil crisis" was all scam, designed to allow oil companies
to significantly raise their prices.  Especially American oil companies.
That is why there was never any real "oil embargo".  It was all scam.
And that was only the beginning.  In 1979, all price controls were then
taken off, allowing oil companies to set their own prices.  American
consumers continued to buy, and oil companies made a huge fortune.

--Lee


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