[RawAlex]

Mike, the war isn't about oil on the surface - but the difference in approaches between someone who might be re-armed one day (Saddam) and someone who is (permed haired leader of North Korea) shows that there is a difference here.

North Korea doesn't have anything about it that is interesting to the US... so no war to remove a dictator with a nuclear bomb. Containment is good for this one.

Because the US (and most western countries) are Oil dependant to the max (including for the plastic that made your keyboard), the west ends up at the feet of these countries too often. Most economies would go to shit if a couple of the OPEC members decided to take a week off of producing oil. Already you can see that higher oil prices are having a negative effect (although not as bad as some people predicted when I suggested a small increase in gas taxes a few months back!).

There are MAJOR economic reasons to get rid of Saddam and replace him with a UN friendly government. The huge oil reserves could finally be tapped at a reasonable level, maybe bringing Iraq back past 4 million barrels per day, and with development, maybe up to 8 million barrels per day. Considering that OPEC members are currently capped at 24.5 million barrels per day, that would be a HUGE increase in the amount of oil available, which would push down the price and bring good things to the economies of the west.

If you think oil isn't the reason all this is going on, try to explain it in North Korean terms... then suddenly it becomes way more obvious.

Boycotting France isn't going to change the economics of the situation, it is just going to put up ANOTHER wall.

Alex