"Gould 0738" wrote in message

When the game started, it was all about preventing an imminent attack on
the US

.......This has
been about fighting terrorists all along.

Suddenly it's about gaining a
strategic base in the middle east, so we can militarily secure an oil
supply?

Chuck, there's nothing sudden about it, and the three stated elements of
strategy listed in your post are not mutually exclusive; nor were they
difficult to see right from the start by those who cared to look. This has
always been about the strategic securing of the mid-east and preventing
attacks, and doing so by killing or thwarting terrorists, the historically
chosen mo of the Arab/Muslim world. This has always been about western
representative governments, led by the US, telling the other large group of
world populace that, NO, we are not going to stand idly by while a medieval
people with primitive theocratic notions of law and society destroys every
legal, social, and economic human betterment that western civilization has
generated in the last thousand years.