Look, the fact of the matter always has been that, in grand-strategic terms, the United States' government has acted toward Iraq as a dope-addicted (in this case, the dope is petroleum)mugger does toward a guy who's holding dope or money:  The other guy's got it, the junkie wants it, let's see who gets to walk away with it.

Once you look at it that way, the irony of Bush's dry-drunk coke-head addict consciousness driving the country into a ditch is all the more charming - sort of like the old Mencken quote in which the Presidency is, year by year, inhabited by someone who ever more closely resembles the average American.  He's dressed up but not comfortable in his clothes, close-minded, petty, small, addicted, and rude.

Just as the gross of Americans are.

Lawyering lesson #27:  never trust a junkie(, regardless of the substance).  Learn to discern when they're high on whatever they use, and don't try to talk sense to them when they are.

The same reasons that would be given for not invading a place like Burma, which has its own competing ethnic groups, are the same reasons one could give for not invading Iraq.  Also, the spectre of oil and other pilfered natural resouces plays very heavily in Myanmar.  As is usually the case, outside powers, from the west and east, are keeping this junta in power through greed for these resources.  Meddling, meddling, always meddling.  Will any of these nations ever have the chance to evolve on their own as we did?

interestingly enough, there hasn't been that much change in the basic wants, in almost 10,000 years: land, raw materials and whatever else was around for the plundering.