Security in the region is important to the USA, because of the oil reserves and how insecurity of those reserves would impact on the world economy, however the USA does not get a significant amount of oil from the region. The USA largest supplier of oil is Canada, but also receives significant amount from Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria and Saudi Arabia. Europe is much more relient on the Arabian Gulf oil. There is a big difference in my opinion between the security of the region because of the oil reserves and doing a quick grab of the country to get your hands on it's oil.
IMO the reasons for the current Gulf War is multifacitated, a false belief in WMD, a distorted belief between Iraq and terrorism, regional security and probably the most important, finishing off the job his father started and was so heavily criticised for stopping short (ie Gulf War 1), which left the USA and other countries like Australia being a policeman for the country ever since. People forget that Australia has had continuous navy operations in the Gulf ever since GW1.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
The biggest thing with elections is that opositions do not win elections, governments lose elections. If the population wants a change in government it will occur almost without any input on policy. At the last election, the voting population saw very little difference between the parties as per usual, but did not want Latham as PM. Forget Tampa, children over board etc, they are just meerly excuses trotted out by Labor to explain the loss publically. Did anyone really adjust their vote because of the those reasons? The real reason was the same was the same as Labor was so quick to dump Latham after the election, everyone saw that he was a goose, the Labor party only realised it after the election. Rudd is likely to win the next election because he comes across as being semi intelligent and the country wants a change in government, as long as Rudd doesn't do anything stupid between now and the election, he can't lose.
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