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Appropriate Punishment For Crackers?
Cally writes "There's a Kevin Poulson article on SecurityFocus reporting that the US Sentencing Commission is seeking opinions about the appropriate punishment for convicted system crackers and other black-hat types. On one hand, it seems absurd to ruin the entire life of a foolish 15 year-old for committing the equivalent of graffiti. Then again, perhaps these people are cyber-terrorists who should be illegally imprisoned, indefinitely, without a trial, charges, or legal representation? You choose."
Hacking a website is much more than graffiti. If you spraypaint the outside of wal-mart, people can still go in and shop. If you hack walmart.com and replace it with "shout outz" then wal-mart will probably lose hundreds of sales per hour to their competitors. That is very real money to these businesses. Hacking (cracking is breaking copy-protection) a website should not have the same punishment as violent crime, but it is definitely a more severe crime than graffiti, and deserves a much harsher punishment.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I wanna know something. If someone (attempts to) breaks into your home (in the USA), you are allowed to shoot that person in self defense. Are you likewise allowed to take out anyone attacking your network?
Stop the brainwash
How about referencing recent hacker cases, and the sentences that were imposed. How about some information on the ages of the black-hatters. No, that would be relevant to the discussion...
I'm not sure why you need new sentencing guidelines for old crimes (theft, extortion, fraud, embezelment, etc...) committed using new technology. Why is a crime different because a computer is involved?
$G
-- $G
Ignoring for the moment the practicalities of killing somebody over the Internet(!?), doesn't the USA already have murder/manslaughter laws? Why does there need to be special legislation depending on the method employed? Do you have special laws for murder with a knife; with a gun; with a mango?
I'm sure I'll never understand this. In the UK recently, there was a big hoo-ha in the tabloids about the need for "special laws" governing journalistic integrity for material published on the Internet. Why? There are already defamation laws.
The Amnesty "illegally imprisoned" link reguards a pare-military group as common burgulars, the Rense.com link invents another class. Both have been addressed by the US courts and neither is addressed in Kevin Poulsen's article.
All that aside, hell no a non-violent criminal should not be locked up. Some other punishment is much more appropriate, like restitution of *real* losses (no making the defendant buy a new security team) and community service, etc.
Jail *should* be for the people that are a physical threat to society, not a theoretical or financial one.
Before the thread runs off the topic, see my website for my position on the death penalty before assigning one to me.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Make them do 1st level phone support for an AOL for a few hundred hours, that will teach them ...
Here's a story about a man who kidnapped, tortured and abused a girl then tried to kill her by injecting her with bleach. His sentence? 10 years - he'll be out in half that time.
Sure, give crackers jail time but make it appropriate for the crime. Maybe 3 months in jail, or probation. When I see someone like Kevin Mitnick get 7 years, and violent criminals who, in my opinion, should never be allowed out of prison get the same sentences, it pisses me off.
What is considered "cracking" under these laws though. As far as I understand, cracking your own cd/dvd/playstation etc... disks falls under this. Now, besides that issue, you have a various degree of things going on out there. Is doing a DDoS against the webs rootservers considered cracking? How about a host of other, non cracking related hacks and script kiddie things that would never EVER fall under the heading of pure cracking? With the laws as broadly written for cyber crimes if i accidenty ftp into the wrong ftp site because of a typo (ftp.netger.com) I could get slammed with all kinds of illegal activity charges that will now be legal to trump up to these unseen levels. I don't mind a law that actually helps to procute known crackers and black hats but we all KNOW that this will be used, like every other law lately, to pretty much put anyone who even thinks of doing something on the gray side of the internet into jail.
Yes, let us think. In addition to the good points made by limekiller4, the following things make online attacks considerably more dangerous than plain theft or vandalism:
You can complain that those are technical problems that should be resolved by technical means -- but I personally would prefer stronger penalties for people who are caught (commensurate with the costs of identifying and prosecuting them) than having arbitrary strangers able to identify me at will over the Internet.
Illegal imprisonment? Nay, for they did pass laws allowing indefinite detainment. It is merely unconstitutional
He's old enough to know better.
He should be held responsible for the real consequences of his actions.
Anything less simply permits the activities to go further. The amount of work involved in recovering from a Cracker is far more extensive than physical graffiti.
Each case must be weighed to determine the proper sentencing. In many of these cases the companies who are the victim provide inflated estimates of potential loss of revenue. In actuality, there is no way to validate if the company actually lost any money at all.
Sending someone to jail for 20 years for doing the equivalent of petty larceny is a crime in itself. However, if someone brings a major network down and the loss is quantifiable - then they absolutely should pay the price - both in restitution and jail time if appropriate.
Each case has different circumstances, and each punishment should be allocated accordingly.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
jdreed1024 writes:
" Here's a novel idea - let the punishment be the same as in real life. If you deface a website, you get the same punishment as you would for spray-painting the front of an office building."
On its face, that looks reasonable, but it stops being similar once you scratch the surface.
As others have pointed out in previous replies, graffiti has a very specific threat to the business (eg, virtually none). The relevant question (money) becomes clear when you compare these two questions:
1) If you show up at your local store and find that someone graffiti'd the wall, would you still buy something there, or would you get in your car and leave?
2) If you hit a website for a retailer and find that someone graffiti'd their front page, would you still buy something there, or would you go someplace else?
My
Limekiller
I still don't understand why we need some kind of special legislation for the so called "cyber crime." Don't the states already have laws punishing crimes of trespassing and/or fraud?
Bush Lies Watch
Think about what you're saying!
A shop gets broken into at night and robbed, the thieves used no weapons. The owner of the shop decides to take measures to stop it happening again. Now he could install a metal grill over the windows, or he could go over the top and install video surveillance and hire a three armed security guards in case a gang of thugs with guns try and break in.
Now, ask yourself the question, what does his choice of security precautions have to do with the punishment of those thieves?
Absolutely nothing.
Taking advantage of a security hole is like robbing a house no lock on the door - IT IS WRONG - but noone tries to sue the thief for the cost of buying a lock. Instead, the thief gets punished for stealing.
A crime is a crime is a crime. Aren't there plenty of existing standards to base this on? Tie it to the harm done. Some will be misdemeanors, some will be felonies. If some 'graffiitti' splattered over a commercial site causes a relatively small financial loss, call it a misdemeanor and sentence accordingly. If the financial loss is large enough, call it a felony and give an appropriate sentence. E.g., defacing the brochure page of your local shoe store might cause them little or no measurable loss of revenue and be repairable within a single work day. Doing the same thing to Amazon or Yahoo is a different matter and calls for a much stronger sentence.
The important thing is to prevent and punish people who act criminally, and to counter the popular impression that many "geeks" don't take the issue seriously.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
An international corporate website with a secure ordering component is slightly more complicated than "Insert tape, click Restore". There are distributed database servers that need to be examined, several web servers with load balancers in multiple geographically diverse locations, they need to investigate all involved servers and networking components to determine the possibility of a back door; and on top of all this, they have to leave the 'crime scene' untarnished so that security experts can determine a) how they got in, and b) how to prevent them from doing it again.
We're not just talking about somebody editing index.html here. Restoring from tape/CD-R may work for your home vanity domain website, but it falls slightly short in the real world.
I'd also like to echo the sentiments made by other posters;
As usual, the vast majority of analogies posted are flagrantly off-key, so I'll pose one; Breaking into a web server and defacing the content is like breaking into a webserver and defacing the content. Come on, people, we're a technical group and should be able to talk about these incidents without resorting to brick wall, spray paint, bomb-threats, or other wild analogies.
These crimes should be treated in context, and the lawmakers should be told, repeatedly, that the Internet is not a direct analogy to real life. Servers are not brick and mortar establishments. Components of a website do not have to physically reside in the same country, letalone the same building.
When a person violates a website, they shuold be charged as such. The more intricate and harmful their intrusion, the more harsh the punishment. They should be given rehabilitative sentences including community service if they're young, or prison time if they're age of majority.
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Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
take from them which is most precious... destroy their data from their personal computer and cd's.
On one hand, it seems absurd to ruin the entire life of a foolish 15 year-old for committing the equivalent of graffiti
More like breaking into your office to erase every whiteboard in the place and replace them with poorly spelled tags, changing the locks, or jus took the door off it's hinges, smashing the alarm system, and taking/destroying the gods know what else in the process.
Hacking a website doesn't just mean that the site was changed. Anyone with a lick of sense after an intrusion needs to take a hell of a lot of time and take stock of what they still have, what they might have copied or deleted, and if they left any backdoors so they could get back in and have their little fun. Calling is "just graffiti" shows a complete lack of understanding of information security. There is real damage done when someone "just" defaces a website. It can't just be painted over.
It's amazing how the corporate security professionals see lazy, bureaucratic server administrators as the problem. With budget cuts, and corporate layoffs becoming a daily occurrence, Directors and Executives are quick to "axe" expensive security solutions, and lax their security posture.
Asking the government to solve our security
problems doesn't seem to be the right solution. It
will only provide a false sense of security, and will cause lazy administrators to get lazier. I think that educating admins, and making them *responsible* would be more effective. Site Administrators should be punished, and punished hard. If an admin chooses to accept the responsibility of maintaining a web server/SQL server/etc., they should be held accountable if the server gets compromised.
As far as dealing with the individuals who compromised the system, I think that punishment/lawsuits from the individual's ISP would be the better solution. "Nothing hits harder than when it hits the pocketbook". Restitution for the time spent resolving the situation should be thrown in as well.
That's my $0.02.
If you're going to punish a 15yo as an adult you should likewise award 15yo's like adults. Are you going to let 15yo's vote, get jobs that pay more than shit, drive, etc? If not then you have no right to punish a 15yo as an adult.
Recovering from a cracker SHOULD be easier than cleaning up graffiti unless you have no idea how to do your job or unless they are really good. If they are that good at 15 then you better hire them. Good security, good backups, good logging will usually keep people from hacking you and if they manage will keep them from causing much damage.
Also I think companies that let their systems be cracked should be charged with nelegence unless they can show proof of having made a reasonable effort. I've never worked anywhere that had decent security before I took over and they certainly didn't want to pay me to do the job right. Not securing your systems endangers the rest of the Internet and you should be held responsible.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Banks have safes and armored cars for pragmatic reasons, not legal ones. It is just as illegal to take $100,000 from a shopping cart as it is from an armored car. On a practical level, it is obviously safer in the armored car.
The responsibility you indicate mention is real, but it is the responsibility to the shareholders. If a bank transports money in a shopping cart and it's stolen, the thieves will go to jail. The directors who authorized the insecure transport will probably be fired, and might be sued by shareholders.
Crackers should go to jail. Incompetent admins should be fired. These are two separate problems.
Why do all the lawyers insist on creating new versions of every law and crime just because they happen to occur in the "digital" realm?
Let's see... hax0r kid defaces web-site.
1. Trespassing.
2. Breaking-and-Entering.
3. (possible) malicious destruction of private property.
If someone logs into your (wide-open, no password root shell) server without your permission, that's trespass.
If someone hacks your server to get in, that's trespass and breaking-and-entering.
If someone changes your web-site, etc., while they're there... that's destruction of property.
There are already well-established laws to deal with these crimes, and those laws have ranges of punishments appropriate for the severity of the offense. Why should special "digital" versions be created when existing laws already work?
This country needs fewer laws, and better enforcement of the ones it already has. More laws simply make more money for lawyers, and more loopholes for the rich and powerful.
"Incompetent admins should be fired."
Would it not be a little more imaginative to offer them some sort of training?
The mildest is the person who breaks into a system, just because he can. He (or she, after all) breaks in, looks around, and leaves before doing any damage, changing anything, or "taking" anything. It doesn't impact any services that the target is providing. True, after any break-in that is discovered, the admins of the site will spend time cleaning it up and making it more secure. And I wouldn't like it if someone broke into my house just to look around. But I don't think that the punishment should be too harsh in this case, perhaps on the same scale as graffiti, maybe a little harsher because of the more expensive "cleanup".
The worst case is the cracker who breaks into a system to destroy or deface it. He changes the way external sites look and destroys information that is vital to those systems and may not be able to be rebuilt. Even a DoS could fall into this category if it leaves the site offline long enough, and is clearly deliberate. These guys should get harsher sentences, both for the public nature of their crime and the potential for data to be lost without hope of recovery.
The middle case is the cracker who breaks into a site and doesn't change anything, but just copies information from the site. In this case, the nature of the information itself and the mindset of the cracker must be taken into account. If the information was something that the cracker would have no way of using, and doesn't pass it on, then that would fall under the "curiosity" end of the spectrum. If the information was something that the hacker could directly use or sell, like credit card numbers or confidential documents sold to competitors, that would fall under the "malicious" end of the spectrum and be punished more harshly. I don't think the cracker should have to actually use the data to qualify for harsher punishment, as long as he had plans to use it. Notice that in this case, it is not necessarily the object that is copied that dictates the severity, it is the cracker's intentions.
The main problem with the way computer crime is punished right now is that whenever an item is copied/stolen, there is the tendency to assign the highest possible value to that item, without taking what the cracker plans on doing with it into account. After all, a confidential document could be worth lots of money to the company it is taken from. But nobody takes the capabilities and intent of the cracker into question; if he doesn't know how to capitalize on the value of the document, how could he be liable for "stealing" that much value?
Yes, I know that someone who steals jewelery in real life and then hocks it for a tenth of its value still stole the jewelery, not 1/10th of it. But when physical objects are stolen, the victim doesn't possess it anymore. When documents are "stolen" but not deleted, the victim still has access to it. Therefore, I think it is proper to assign the "value" of the theft to be how much the value of the document is reduced, not the value of the document itself. And if the cracker doesn't know how to use the document or who to sell it to, how can its value be reduced?
Your entire argument seems to depend on legally defining computers as dangerous weapons as opposed to tools.
Tools are unregulated and the owner is not responsible if someone steals their tool and uses it in a crime. If I leave a shovel leaning against the side of my house and someone takes it and uses it to kill someone, I am not legally responsible. Even if I knew that risk existed when I failed to secure the tool.
Guns are regulated and the owners are (somewhat) responsible for the actions taken with them, even by others and even without the owner's permission or knowledge. However, the owner is never held fully responsible for the actions of the person who took and used their gun. And the level of responsibility is negligible unless bodily injury results and there was a minor who has legitimate access to the premises involved.
Somehow, I don't think anyone is going to agree to classify computers as deadly weapons and make the penalties for their unauthorized use greater than those for the unauthorized use of firearms.
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
It seems that this is going too far. Well I may agree that certains activities related to cracking should be punished. People and comapnies not only loose money but also precious information and reputation. Some cracks may lead to more serious situations when we may have not only material but also personal losses.
But creating an environment where cracking itself is utterly ilegal is the most stupid thing one can think of. First because it will create a situation similar to America in the 20's-30's where nearly all alcohol production was outlawed. By making cracking illegal, one will not stop it but feed the criminal hordes with experienced people and tool experts. What will come out of that is unpredictable. The future cyber-Scarface will not only stop by Chicago and not only restrict his doings in the waters of the Great Lakes.
Besides, making cracking wholly illegal will not give ground to capitalism. It will be the best show of feudalism in modern times, as all "good-netizens" will be utterly dependent of the wills and whishes of a bunch of corporations who will care or discare for the their security and/or privacy.
Also it will be a violation of our freedom. I can check up the engine of my car. I can try to fix my washing machine. I have the right to change a light bulb in my living room. But I have to go to jail because some jerk locked up any interactivity of his program with any other system and I need that for my everyday's needs?
These criteria should be used when deciding what the punishment should be:
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Tne government must simplify its handling of people breaking any rule. For any felonius act, just declare the person to be a 'enemy combatant' and this will negate any possibility of that persons rights for ever. Permanent incarceration or permanent elimination is automatically assured then. After all, we are a democracy and not a dictatorship which can name anyone to be enemy of the state and make them 'disappear'. The idea!
The punishment should be in accordance to the damage they caused, and if they stole or hurt anyone.
I believe that the penalties for merely defacing a website, or cracking into a machine and not actually doing much damage or "stealing" anything should be light. Sure, it is annoying, but it isn't that major.
If someone cracks into a database server and steals credit card information, that is another thing altogether. They should be charged with theft of credit cards (or whatever the actual crime is).
If someone (hypothetically) manages to crack into a computer that controls air traffic radar, and planes end up crashing because of it, they should be locked away for mass murder.
Some of the proposed punishments for computer crimes are quite harsh, treating the perpetrator like a terrorist or violent criminal.
However, someone who simply defaces a web site and writes "I 0wn j00!" on it doesn't deserve to be given more time than a rapist.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Sorry if I am trolling a bit here.
In society we all have an expectation of privacy. That right is supported in common law.
For example if your neighbor puts up 15 ft solid brick fence and then sunbathes nude behind it and you put up a tower with a camera on it you can be arrested/sued for being a "peeping tom". A local TV station had an employee get busted for using the "skycam" weather camera to do just that. The courts held that the woman had a reasonable expectation of privacy and that it was violated by the man using the TV towers camera.
When someone puts up website they have a reasonable expectation that the back office parts of the site are to be private. Just because you CAN peer into the site (on into the backyard) doesn't mean you are allowed too!
The amount of effort required to circumvent them is irrelevant. The expectations still exist and are legally protected.
I don't consider break-ins, especially to insecure machines or business computers (but maybe I just value individuals more than businesses?), to be a very high crime.
That was the most stupid of your statements. Well I don't consider your dead-bolted door to be adequate security for your home. So by that logic I am free to break in and clean out the house. By God, you should have had a steel vaulted door.
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Actually, we are a Democracy, only in reverse. Take the war on Iraq, for example. In a real Democracy, the people of the US give a mandate to it's government to go to war with Iraq, sign petitions, start grass roots movements, and the politicians listen to the people and go to war with Iraq.
In the US version of democracy, the US government gives a mandate to the American people that they are going to war with Iraq. Over shouts of protest, the media begins the assault on the public mind to convince people that this is what they want to do and that the country of Iraq is of primary importance in their lives. After informing the American people, as well as Saddam Hussein, that he has weapons of mass destruction, a furious effort is made to find a pretext for invasion. Eventually, after months of campaigning, petitions start to circulate around the internet, so that the people of America can ratify the decision of their betters. So, it's a grass roots campaign, in reverse, of course.
The government gives it's mandate to the American people, and the American people automatically start discussing this issue. Granted, before the president gave his mandate, nobody was really concerned about Iraq, outside of a few oil companies, but that doesn't matter, and doesn't raise any doubts in our un-biased media about the president's honesty, despite the fact that several of his advisors are ex oil company executives.
The same thing happened with the War on Drugs that was increased by Bush I in 1989. Before the media campaign, the concern about drugs was only 4% in the gallup polls, and people were more concerned about the economy. Then Bush I gave a mandate to the American people, and immediately the "free" media started pumping out dramas about families being torn apart by drugs, despite the statiscally declining drug use in America. So, in spite of the fact that I nor anyone that I knew was on drugs, it was an important issue in my life because George Bush told me so. Another mandate by the government, and another assault on our freedoms. Yeh Bush!!
If you think that a woman deserves to be raped because she is wearing a low-cut top or her pants are little too tight, then you have some serious problems and should be taken out of society immediately.
No, I don't think anyone should be assaulted for what they wear. I don't think someone should be mugged either, just because their wallet or cellphone is in their hand. Hell, I've seen on the news people getting mugged for their shoes!
But I am aware, as you should be too, that that viewpoint isn't universal. There are streets in London I won't walk down while talking on my phone. In some parts of town, I'm careful not to show a wallet full of cash. These are just basic precautions that everyone should take. But it's taboo to say that dressing so as not to draw attention is one of the basic precautions, and that is a double standard.
If he/she is a minor, however, I think state of mind should have some sway over the consequences. You'd be surprised just how effective a simple visit by law enforcement personnel can be in "adjusting" the cracker's attitude.
In 1997 I was caught dorking around in school district systems. In my adolescent mind I thought it was all fun and games. Until I was hauled into a room by several very serious looking detectives and interrogated. Bad-cop-good-cop games, the whole works. This was quite possibly the fastest attitude readjustment I've ever experienced.
The detectives, I think, had some sympathy for my plight. His boss wanted to bust me hard and basically ruin my life. I was hauled before the head honcho (don't know exactly who he was or what his title was) and was given a stern lecture. I was asked if I'd ever used drugs or done anything violent. In the end, I was let go with 40 hours of community service to the school district and a warning to not get caught "so much as pinging" the district machines.
When my computer was returned to me from evidence, an entire year later, I found that the detective had upgraded the CPU and put 16 megs of RAM into it. I guess I made an impact on him, as well.
Now, on the other hand, if you've got a script kiddie, and he's whining and bitching and making life hard for investigators, and basically has a "fuck you copper" attitude, then I say... Bust him, throw him in the lockup, and let him think about how much of an asshole he is for a few months. Let him out, and if he does it again, hit him with the full force of adult penalties. Breaking-and-entering, defacement of property, theft of property, the whole works. Fuck up his life and let him figure out why it happened.
I was given a wonderful second chance, and I haven't wasted it. I was just being a stupid kid. People who scoff at the opportunities that law enforcement is trying to give them deserve prison.
1. There is no evidence linking Hussein to Al Queada or Bin Laden. Hussein and Bin Laden are bitter enemies, they absolutely despise each other. That hasn't stopped Bush and gang from trying in vain to link Iraq to 9-11. However, any insinuation that is made, upon further scrutiny falls apart, because that's all it is, is insinuation. Our government knows that Iraq had nothing to do with it.
So, if someone kills people, seeks NBC weaponry for use against an undefined threat, denies any form of rule by the people, and consistently acts as a violator of human rights...then it's fine with you as long as he wasn't involved with 9/11? You mean to say that the only reason to stop evil is if it was tied to a single incident? EVERYTHING IN OUR LIVES MUST REVOLVE AROUND THAT ONE INCIDENT?! Holy shit. I can't brush my teeth, because there's no connection between plaque and 9/11. We can't prosecute criminals, because they aren't tied to 9/11. We can't fight the DMCA, because it's not tied to 9/11. Thanks for telling me. I was going to be for all that behavior. But I didn't know they were not tied to 9/11.
2. The country that did participate quite a bit in the funding of Al Queada is Saudi Arabia. So, why doesn't our government attack them? Because they are our allies of course. They give us all the oil we want.
Here's why: If we say we want to attack Saudi Arabia, various European countries will scream like they are now over Iraw. Even if we provide proof that they are tied to terror, they all have their own deals with Saudi Arabia in regards to oil (yeah, it may surprise you, but the US isn't the only buyer of Middle-East Oil).
3. Our government put Hussein in power. Our government also looked the other way when Hussein "gassed his own people". Three words are missing, "with our support". Before 1991, 10 US corporations participated in the sale of arms to Iraq, even after he gassed his own people. That's part of why the dossier is kept out of the mainstream media.
So...if we try to stem radicalism in another country by supporting someone and that someone commences doing bad stuff, we shouldn't stop him? Oh year, we can't. He's not tied to 9/11.
4. Our government talks about creating democracy in Iraq, and we are to understand that the first step towards democracy is having a military dictatorship, much in the same way that we are to understand that "right to trial" means rounding up hundreds of "suspected terrorists" into concentration camps where they will eventually be tried by a military tribunal
Well, those in the US who were taken away, most have been returned (watch the news closely. The liberal news media loves to avoid reporting things that make the military look decent, so they bury it below the fold on page A32), except the ones with shady backgrounds and connections (like traveling back and forth between the US and Iran several times a year on a $10,000 a year job while going to college without parental funding). And most of the people going on the "military tribunal" trials are guys who were found in the field with other fighters wielding AK's and shooting at US troops. I know, you hate the US military, even if the guys you join are people just like you, they have less of a right to live, because they decided to take a different path to achieve financial security and a strong educational background.
5. This war is about oil. That's all it is about. If we were out to have a "just war", there would be many other countries that have far worse human rights violations than Iraq.
It is? I'd think that if we were only after oil, we'd go take over Kuwait, which has more oil, and no military to speak of. In addition, you seem to have a laspe of intellegence here. If we were after oil (because having Bush in your name automagically makes you a war-mongering, oil-chugging beast), why would we put out the fires that Saddam set to the oil wells in Kuwait, then rebuild the oil fields...and turn them over to the Kuwaiti government. We were under no requirement to do so. We could've occupied those oil wells. Technically, they still belong to American companies, but they were stolen from those companies when these Middle-East monarchies nationalized all oil-related property. In addition, if Bush was going after helping his oil buddies, why would we want MORE oil? Technically, they'd want less oil, because in the US, texas oil fields are still a major part. We actually get alot more oil from Russia, Mexico, and a few other non-Middle East countries, in addition to our own oil supply (which, while not filling 100% of our oil needs, is nothing to balk at).
Logically, if Bush was looking to satisfy his American oil friends, what he'd do is lower the amount of imports, so the Texas Oil guys could jack up prices and increase profits.
NOTE: I AM AGAINST THE WAR IN IRAQ. I am simply tired of stupid reasons against the war, rather than the one simple reason why not: We shouldn't have one single soldier in the Middle East, unless he or she is on vacation. We have no business meddling in their affairs. End of story. It's not about oil, it's not about 9/11 (and noone has ever linked it to 9/11, except scattered media reports about Mohammed Atta), and it's not about democracy.
It is about the globalism that the UN started. This is the road that the UN paved, interventionism at any cost. A future where national sovereignty and elections are a thing of the past. Just think about it. Have you ever voted on your UN Delegate? Didn't think so. Odd they have the power to do a ton of things to people's countries.
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