"Iran has rationed fuel to its population causing riots and discontent."

That's false. Iran has decreased its subsidy of fuel prices. Iran subsidized the cost of fuel for its citizens; it has some of the lowest gas prices in the world as a result. This measure is very costly and the Iranian government couldn't afford to continue. The same amount of fuel is for sale in Iran, it's just more expensive. Iranians feel entitled to the subsidy, hence the riots.

"Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has dramatically escalated his socialist policies."

Hugo Chavez talks a big game, but one of Venezuela's biggest customers is the US. Chavez tweaks the US for publicity and is consolidating his power by nationalizing property, but he knows that his economic power stems from the US buying his fuel.

"The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is full."

It's always full.

"Politicians on all sides of this conflict have a vested political interest in war as a means of political survival. They are all hard-liners."

On all sides? That's crazy. The Iranians don't want a war; they know they can't win. Anyone in Washington who has a passing understanding of the Middle East knows how disastrous a conflict with Iran would be.

Chavez "nationalized" oil reserves by buying them from oil companies, not by expropriation. It's perfectly legitimate, and hardly a sign of a world war.

Turkey's military is financed by the US, they'll repress the curds in their own country with great violence, but an attack on South Kurdistan won't happen without approval of the US.

There's a lot of exaggeration in this article.

America will not invade Iran. It does not have the power to. It's overstretched as it is. If a third world country like Iraq can consistently kick Americas ass (I'm just reversing the logic of Republican rhetoric here), think what a westernized, young, and strongly nationalist (though not fundamentally Islamist) state could do.

Wake up.

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928, Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman.

He served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. He was known for his hawkish foreign policy at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish. He is a foreign policy realist, and considered to be the Democrats' response to Henry Kissinger, also a realist, who served under President Nixon.

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China -- today's Taiwan), the signing of the SALT II arms control treaty, the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran to an anti-Western Islamic state (the "loss" of Iran), encouraging reform in Eastern Europe, emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy, the arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan to fight against a new Soviet-friendly Afghan government and then to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

He is currently a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Helen & Harry

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