Derb: You write that you don’t see why you should care who controls it. You say that if radical anti-American types refuse to sell it to others, there are “things” we can do about it and we have shown we have the will to do those things. I am not quite sure what you mean by this. Anyway, I think it does make a difference whether radical anti-American regimes are rich or poor, it does make a difference whether other countries in the region and then the world feel they should kowtow to those regimes, and it does make a difference whether those regimes can throw the world economy into a tailspin. If you wish to deny that any of these things should matter to Americans, then it’s hard to see why you’d be concerned (as you suggested you were) about American dependence on Mideast oil either.