"Why Iraq?" I asked Rick Martin, Esquire, Longmont Patent attorney, over a dish of New England clam chowder at the Martini Restaurant. An avalanche of learning poured forth.

Law school for me at age forty consisted of a detailed history of America one court case at a time. Only "white English men (no women) are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. Did you know that?

"No," I said. "Tell me more and "Why Iraq?" He did. He pondered and strayed.

"Women are unfit to be lawyers. (U.S. Supreme Court 1896.) What would Hillary say to that? All black and white schools shall offer the same educational opportunity, ( Brown v. Board of Ed, 1984). So why are 25% of American men jailed at some time in their life? Why are 80% of these men black? One man one vote. But how did Al Gore lose with a majority of votes?"

So now I ponder how President Bush's two theories to invade Iraq will pan out in history. The first theory, weapons of mass destruction, may go down as Abe Lincoln's first lesson, "you can fool all of the people some of the time". Even the honorable Colin Powell resigned after puffing this nonsense to the United Nations. American satellites tracked every marijuana leaf when I was a reserve policeman in 1980. How come they couldn't confirm the absence of city blocks high tech weapons development? I think Abe Lincoln told the truth-governments, like Sheppard's, lie to the flocks, and sometimes the flock is fleeced.

Now the second theory goes like this, continued Martin. If America creates a Democratic government in the Middle East, then the domino theory will topple all the nasty dictatorships in that part of the world. But if Al Gore proved one man one vote doesn't work in America, then what form of a "democracy" will enlighten a billion Arabs to overthrow their legitimate governments? The domino theory starts to fall apart right here in America. Corporate muscle runs America and clearly placed Bush and Cheney in office. The votes that really count in America are the inherited wealth shareholders of Exxon, IBM and Wal-Mart. If America is run by the one tenth of one percent of the population, who became ten times richer since Ronald Reagan, then how can we pretend to export "democracy?" ( Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips?) Cuba fell because we exported a crude form of democracy called the Batista mafia. Venezuela, oil capital of our hemisphere, has thrown out "democracy" with several of their neighbors like Peru and Chile close behind.

Returning now to the "Domino Theory," any kindergarten student of history could see that the one man one vote failed in America and would certainly fail in Iraq.

The American invasion has killed about 3,500 American soldiers, 3,500 American civilians, a million Iraqis, created four million homeless refugees and created 50% unemployment.

I have read that Hussein had about 10% unemployment with an old Soviet style socialist government. This socialist government had a huge army and was a source of pride for all Arabs. Another theory (mine) of why we invaded Iraq was to destroy a socialist government before other Middle East nations copied that form of strong central government. Clearly American super rich shareholders are threatened when national assets like oil are nationalized like in Venezuela and Russia. So to protect the Exxon, Shell, Mobil shareholders we blew up a socialistic model government before it became too popular in the oil rich Middle East. This made sense to me as I watched the oil stocks rocket up in value. Over half the war budget is refined oil, gas and diesel products for our military ( Wall Street Journal).

So the Exxon shareholders not only personally enriched themselves, but quashed a government style that ultimately threatened their strangle hold on the American economy.

But recently an Arab engineer (anonymous) whispered in my ear his theory of why we invaded Iraq. He said we got just what we planned. We planned to create chaos around Israel and destroy one Iraq Army that could pose a threat to Israel. After all Israel is America's military launching pad to dominate the African continent when we have the need to do so. An enemy divided against itself is no enemy at all. So did America knowingly precipitate a civil war and 50% unemployment and all that carnage just to protect Israel?

What you see is what you get. Chaos and record oil stock prices are what we have. Over 40 billion dollars a year are spent by the American military machine on Exxon gasoline in Iraq. Was this the real plan from the beginning?

As a native New Yorker, I know what would happen if the Arabs put the Puerto Ricans in charge of New York City and relegated all the Italians to menial labor. Every red blooded Italian would spend every waking moment planning a killing of one member of the "new Democratic Puerto Rican" government. And so goes Iraq.

When the American public tires of this charade, then partitioning Iraq into their historic religious cultures will bring a cessation to the chaos.

The Exxon boys are already firing up the Russian Bear as a new target on which to spend oil money. These guys are really slick! Come and buy your popcorn as the American oil and media campaign fools "some of the people all of the time.

"Are you one of them?"

Note: Rick Martin, a patent attorney, heads the patent law offices of Rick Martin, 416 Coffman St., Longmont; David Alter is an author and head of GENESIS Public Relations In Longmont.