90 seconds at 9 am: US growing 'moderately'; IMF worried about taper; US car sales strong, trade deficit up; AU election costings due; NZ$1 = US$0.79.2, TWI = 74.8

If Barack Obama sends America into the Syrian war-zone , will be have to return the Nobel prize for peace he was awarded in 2009 ?

... and the money , aroundabouts $US 1.4 million they gave him too ....

It's a case of an Empire doing what Empires do - extracting resources from their periphery.

And a case of pretender Empires in the wings; we saw it with WW1 AND 2.

playing out in a hornet's nest where there is no chance of a please-all - or even a please-any - solution. Good reads are 'Daughter of the Desert' (about Gertrude Bell) and 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' (Lawrence) - and, if you can get hold of it, 'In Aleppo Once' (Taqui Altounyan).

 Good backgrounders on the places and the peoples.

Nice summarization of the conflict Roger, but its much more nuanced than merely one nation's desire to project its influence in the Middle East and secure control over oil supplys.

To put it into proper perspective one must take into account the wider historical context. 

The conflict in the Middle East isn't merely about geo-politics, oil, power, or wealth (though they all have their influence), but also religion. 

Its my conjecture that the primary player in these events isn't the United States, Iran, or Russia, but Saudi Arabia who has been quietly working behind the scenes formenting turmoil and accumulating power and influence in the region while it allows willing dupes like Great Britain, the United States, Russia, and Iran to bluster and posture thereby holdng the limelight. The foundation of the House of Saud legitamacy and very survival depends upon the revenues from its State Owned Oil Fields. 

Like the rest of the Middle Eastern nations, Saudi Arabia is a culturally divided country, with a Sunni majority and a Shia minority who interestingly enough reside where the majority of Saudi Arabia's oil fields are found. Also the region which has seen the least infrastructural development, is the poorest, and where the population are excluded from access to the State's governing institutions. Sectarian unrest has been a major problem for the regime, to which its responded with brutal crackdowns, coopting accomodating clerics, and media propoganda claiming links between local dissidents and Iran.

http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/06/14/forgotten-uprising-in-eastern-saudi-arabia/ga8o#

The other social group that the Al Sauds have had to deal with and shown itself more wiling to placate are the Salafis or Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam. They known for the ultraorthodox, puritan interpretation of Islam and their animosity to both secular Western culture and other Islamic sects. From 1912 Ibn Saud, who would later become King of the nation of Saudi Arabia, inculcated the Ikhwan, a militant religious brotherhood in its tenets, in an effort to secure them as an elite core of soldiers around which he would build his armies, which he successfully used to unite the Arabian Peninsula under his reign. Later ibn Saud lost control of them and they began to become a security issue in the wider Gulf region, so he was forced with the aid of the British to engage in a series of military campaigns against them, which culminated in the military defeat and execusion of its leaders. The surviving Ikhwan were later absorbed into units of his National Guard. 

Though they lost their independance they were still continued to exert a strong influence on the country. 

http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/wahhabi/ikhwan.htm

One pivotal event that occured in 1979, which few people know about was the Seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by a group of militant fundamentalists who believed that by toppling the Saudi Royal Family that set up what they hoped to be a pan Islamic Caliphate which would rule the Muslim world and be able to challenge the power of the West. Its likely been overshadowed by Islamic Revolution in Iran and the War in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, which the Saudis were able to conveniently employ to cement their legitamacy with its radical Wahabi population and redirect their energies against the Soviet threat. 

http://intelwire.egoplex.com/siege-on-mecca-preview2.html

Other groups that drew the Saudis ire are avowedly secular Arab nationalists like Egypt's Nasser, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Gaddafi and Syria's Assad, hich clhallenged the al Saud's monopoly on power and prestige in the Muslim world and provided fuel to the fire of its own militant fundamentalist population.

The Saudi's were one of the chief supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was established explicitly to reverse the secularism and modernization agenda of Nasser. 

The Saudi's support continued long after Nasser's death, until the Saudi's officially withdrew their approval after feeling betrayed by the Muslim Brotherhoods opposition to the West's intervention against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. 

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/71498/Opinion/The-Muslim-Brotherhood-and-Saudi-Arabia.aspx

The Saudi's were also the chief sponsor of the militant terrorists organization, Hamas, which supplanted the PLO, after its establishment in 1988 and its involvement in the First Infitada.

Unlike Arafat, Hamas did not support Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Instead they called for both Iraqi and  US withdrawal. Consequently,  Gulf States shifted their funding from PLO to Hamas, and may have donated as much as  $28m per month (from Saudi Arabia primarily). Hamas  thus took PLO's welfare role away from it, generating considerable public support due to their greater efficiency. T

http://www.mideastweb.org/hamashistory.htm

Back in the mid 1970s, Saudi Arabia, became involved in a coalition of nations including France then rule by the ultraconservative regime of Charles De Gaulle and various Mid Eastern nations ruled by despotic monarchies called the Safari Club. The Safari Club was established with the explicit purpose of containing the spread of communism and particularly Gaddafi's influence in Africa.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/4/71498/Opinion/The-Muslim-Brotherhood-and-Saudi-Arabia.aspx

This same source underscored the so-called "Safari Club," the group of countries -- France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and the Shah's Iran -- which banded together to fight the spread of Soviet communism, particularly in Africa, as well as halting Gaddafi's adventures in neighboring Chad. The group was formed by intelligence heads in the mid-1970s, with de Marenches its catalyst. They were appalled by the United States' unwillingness to no longer stand up to the Soviets, in a post-Vietnam era marked by a liberal Democratic Congress and president.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/assassinating_gaddafi.html

That's absolute bollocks.

How can George Friedman describe the United States have been "reluctant warriers with a straigt face when it was leaked emails from the very same publication, which revealed notes from a meeting between Pentagon officials that described Western special operation units working with rebels in Syria way back in 2011?

The 2011 uprisings, it would seem - triggered by a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes - came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratforincluding notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines

Attacking Syria fully complies with U.S. geopolitical strategy which was frankly and candidly laid out in a Pentagon funded RAND corporation report.

"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines