WAVE THE SWORD AND SCREAM:

WAVE THE SWORD AND SCREAM: Steven Den Beste says that Saddam Hussein has been “waving his sword so hard that he’s lopped off his own foot with it”:

Saddam has been trying to get the Arab states to “use oil as a weapon”, a forlorn hope, but about the only one he has. Now he’s cut Iraqi oil production for 30 days or until Israel stops its attacks. He’s trying to shame the other Arab nations into action by being holier-than-thou. And by so doing, he is waving his sword so hard that he’s lopped off his own foot with it.

One of the reasons Turkey has been leery of a US invasion of Iraq is because of their concern that they’d lose access to Iraqi oil. But now they’ve lost it anyway. And this shows that even leaving Saddam in power won’t guarantee continued access to Iraqi oil.

The most important effect of this action will be to make Turkey more likely to permit the US to use Turkish territory to attack Iraq.