I find that Mike argues deeply at the detail level whilst ignoring the macro or high level.

My this I mean he is quite good at talking about trees but too often the others in the debate are discussing forests. If you push him at the macro level, and that involes challenging US policy and behind the scenes US manipulation, he accuses you of being a conspiracy theorist, ie if the topic isn't documented somewhere in detail (barring heated debates about the meaning of words) then you are a conspiratist - doesn't seem able or willing to debate actions and there consequences as evidence of intention & deed.

e.g. If we argue that Bush Snr & his admin *blatantly* manipulated the situation in Iraq/Iran/Kuwait *particularly* from 1980 to 1991
1) 1st to contain Iran - achieved by covertly supplying war materials & loans to Iraq
2) to then contain Iraq - by helping Iran, by encouraging Kuwait & Saudi to demand repayment for war loans at a time when Iraq's oil infrastructure was wreaked
3) by then encouraging Hussien to invake Kuwait so he could be isoltaed & villanized in the Arab world

Why do all these things. One has to do a little bit of deduction & reading ...

(Per FORBES magazine August 2002 page 23) Iraq is believed to have even greater reserves of oil than Saudi Arabia (but after what US did by manipulating Iraq over the Iran war, Iraq had no desire to deal with US companies - DSM). So Russia's Lukoil consortium had signed a deal with Iraq to develop the massive West Quarna field (est 8 billion barrels) & China's China National Petroleum had signed with Iraq to develop a smaller field. No western (US) based companies were making any progress in negotiating further exploration & development with Iraq (for plainly obvious reasons) - Last week (under war threat from US) Iraq cancelled the Russian deal.

To avoid another potentially ugly & sematic war with Mike over the above - I will let the reader draw their *own* conclusions as to why US is really threatening Iraq and demonizing Saddam.

But come back to the original point about describing the trees when often the discussion is about forests.

Doug Marker