The bigger picture is that Iran has oil. The nuclear talking point seems to be just that - a talking point.

Yes people, it's WMDs all over again.

As for Migeru's looting point - that's pretty much how I see it. They want to make sure they're top of the heap as everything unravels. This also explains Blair's fascination with 'terrorists' and attempts to set up universal monitoring of location, movement, communications and ID in the UK. It's not the terrorists they're worried about. It's what the rest of us are going to do when we (collectively) work out what's been going on.

Unfortunately with proper government, a soft landing could easily be possible and the current looming train wreck could at least have been mitigated - perhaps even avoided.

For all anyone knows they're all members of a Satanic Cult that thrives off death, fear, lies and torture. Of course that's paranoid, but if you look at the facts and try to find evidence that this isn't a reliable MO - just a small counterexample demonstrating truth, integrity, emapthy or honesty would do - it really is depressingly hard to do that.