Courting Disaster: Getting into bed with autocratic regimes

[michaelvail]

Great article on the history of the middle east:

A quick check of the history of the relationship between the U.S. government and British Petroleum reveals that it was BP that was booted out of Iran in 1950 (for cheating the Iranians and refusing to negotiate fairly) and cried to the British government to do something about it. It did. It sued Iran in an international court and lost, then it amassed a huge naval armada off the coast of Iran to blockade Iranian transportation of oil … and then asked the U.S. to go to war with them against Iran.

President Harry S. Truman declined two requests by the British to go to war against Iran in 1951 and 1952. But still conceded to a allow a covert CIA operation in conjunction with British Intel.

In 1953, General Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the go-ahead of the
CIA operation known as Project Ajax (led by Kermit Roosevelt, grandson
of Teddy and cousin of FDR) to undermine and overthrow a democratic
Muslim government and install a brutal dictator.

http://www.thought-criminal.org/2006/08/17/courting-disaster-getting-into-bed-with-autocratic-regimes/

[izzie]

1. Maybe one of those silly reasons they hate us?

We did this during the Cold War all over. For all I knew we may have been doing it for 200 years but our 'founders' said we must keep out of other countries. Does seem to get us in trouble and cost a lot of money.