42 is "The answer to all the secrets of the universe" in Douglas Adam's books.

In the thinktank world of 2002, 42 became Iraq.

Let me refresh everyone's memory:

We were striking at Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Our sole routes of supply for this conflict were the kindly northern neighboring airbase of Karshi-Khanabad, K2, in Uzbekistan and a carrier fleet based out of the tiny island of Diego Garcia. The Diego Garcia airbase lease, expires in 2016.

As the link illustrates, the K2 airbase access was a temporary solution. We desperately needed something that could connect our forces/craft stationed in Europe with the Middle East. After the first gulf war conflict, logisticians were all too familiar with the Diego Garcia problem. Diego Garcia was fine when all we needed was a base of operations for submarines packed with nuclear missiles pointed at Russia and other Red nations, or launching Sea-Bees to prowl and monitor Russian subs in the Indian Ocean. as a staging zone for Middle East conflicts, it simply was not up to the task.

Nothing demonstrates this inability to deal with the Middle East militarily as well as Carter's botched military rescue of the hostages in Iran.

We recently were evicted from Saudi Arabia, due to tensions with the fanatical Islamists in this nation and because of the aftermath of the gulf conflict. In 1996 one of the locations US military personnel were housed in the Khobar Towers was blown up:

This was during the Clinton Administration. What's not common knowledge is that only a month earlier UNSCOM supervised the destruction of the Iraqi biological weapons facility Al-Hakam. The Khobar Towers bombing, was determined by a number of intelligence analysts to be a retaliatory attack for the destruction of Iraq's ability to create biological WMD. Since Osama Bin Laden was seen being congratulated on the very day the attacks occurred, it was taken by these same analysts that Osama was being used by Saddam to conduct terror attacks on US interests. This is the first time Al Qaeda and Saddam were linked. It made sense, because Osama had been evicted from Saudi Arabia and therefore "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario was quite plausible.

Further speculation considered the possibility that Al Qaeda was interested in purchasing biological weapons from Saddam, and that when UNSCOM destroyed Al-Hakamin May, Al Qaeda was out of luck and retaliated in June with a project that had been planned as a potential strike against US forces in the region for several years. The eye-for-an-eye mentality is very strong in this region and the timing made perfect sense. A number of the men involved were believed to be affiliated with the Iranian Islamic sect Party of God. and this further confirmed that Al Qaeda had access to, and was able to pull human support from the fanatical elements in nations surrounding Saudi Arabia, including Iraq and Iran.

So fast forward to 2002. Al Qaeda is on the run. Osama has presumably escaped from the assault onTora Bora. Where will they go? The analysts are again tasked to answer the question. Since Pakistan was being used as a staging area for US forces and fleeing to Pakistan would be risky, the answer was relatively obvious: Al Qaeda elements would flee to extremist Islamic sects in remote parts Iran & Iraq.

So Bush has on his plate many intelligence analysts report and one of the major ones that emerged was that Saddam, now in bed with the Euros and the UN, was indirectly or directly also in bed with Al Qaeda - both Al Qaeda and Saddam were doing business with the same Euro registered companies, many out of Luxembourg, used to mask the illegal oil shipments and Euro money flowing to Saddam.

So Iraq and AL Qaeda were in bed together via a Euro/UN connection.

This, after 9/11 was enough for Bush to act on. The puzzle started making sense. Saddam, with large explosives and weapons to spare, was in the business of selling WMD to Al Qaeda for cash and all of it would be shipped via the UN/Euro umbrella of "Oil for Food". All "legal" and with the knowledge of a good number of Europeans, whose only god is money.

Iraq=42.

Now Iraq is 42. A primary component of the Axis of Evil alongside Iran and North Korea. Unspoken, were the Euro nations who were part of this axis of evil. Naturally, Bush had to bite his tongue. But it was telling who immediately defended Saddam: France, Belgium, Russian & Germany. (aka FoBuRGers) These nations never contribute a single man to to the effort to oust Saddam or secure the peace and, in fact, have only spent money on the insurgency via Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

As US forces uncover Saddam's files we learn the true extent of the Euro/UN/Saddam connection and the US has a whole new understanding of who our friends and enemies are. Simultaneously the FoBuRGers start a huge campaign to discredit the effort in Iraq and start funding and organizing a viable insurgency.

Fast forward to today. The FoBuRGers, via the almighty media, and a steady expenditure on the insurgency, have successfully brainwashed large numbers of people in the world into thinking George Bush is a Villain, that America falsely invaded Iraq and that everything was hunky-dory under Saddam. For folks who still have some neurons firing and want to learn just a lot more, although incomplete in providing the overall picture, this book is very instructive.

So Iraq continues to cost us blood and Iraqis pay with even more blood as their former exploiters seek to put the yoke back around their necks. For those who are informed the picture is crystal clear as to who the real bad guy is, and it's not the guy in the Oval Office or Rumsfeld, Cheney or Condi - those are still the guys wearing the off-white hats.

And the Democrat politicians who have often gotten into office via political contributions of FoBuRGer proxies/holdings in the US are beholden to these same interests and in getting the US out of Iraq.

The Fifth Column here, now has popular support of the chronically uninformed global illiterates and not surprisingly the large class of pseudo-intellectuals who think they know it all - and part of that "all" is that the simple-minded conservatives are just a bunch of baby-killing, oil-slurping, war-mongers.

It's a totally different conflict than the media portrays daily. I've done my part in raising the curtain. What you choose to do with this information is up to you.