WASHINGTON – (AP) There's more than meets the eye to the frantic U.S. efforts Friday to talk Russia and U.S. ally Georgia out of war over an obscure mountain tract most Americans have never heard of.

A look at the map and your gas credit card bill shows why. A U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran. END

Paybacks are hell. The CIA, under the Republican leadership of Ronald Alzheimer Regan and George Oil Bush Sr., covertly gave Russia their Vietnam War in Afghanistan in hopes of killing a million or so Russians and bankrupting the country. The Russians fell for it; but now, thanks to George W. Bush, Russia has two things that's scaring the living hell out of those in the know in the U.S. and U.K., -- OIL, lots of OIL and Mr. Vladimir Putin. You see, Mr. Putin knows about the trick the U.S. played, and he knows we are tired of war and are in debt to Red China and everyone else who'll loan us money. How ironic it will be if this time Russia, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan, just to mention a few oil rich Middle East countries, team up like the U.S., U.K. and Israel and start doing a lot of covert bullshit like giving religious nuts some really dependable and powerful bombs instead of these homemade ones.

I keep going back to what George W. Bush said in 2003 about the location of the U.S. being like a suit of armor. That no matter how pissed off the Islamic world gets at us, it'll be the Europeans who they will take it out on. With a friend like that, and a U.S. butt boy like Tony Blair speaking for you, what else could you lads and lassies want in the U.K.? I don't really know what it could be other than maybe a personal bomb detector, bunkers in your communities, or like Tony, a nice home here in the U.S.?

Frankly, I'm jealous. Hell, George and Tony have given you Europeans a seat on the fifty yard line of a championship game between the Christian American team and the Islamic Middle East team. All I can do is watch it unfold on the Christian, facts only, Fox News Network.

As we used to say in Vietnam, "Kill them all and let God sort them out." If the Iraq War can be used as a benchmark, you'll have to agree that we American Christians are consistent if nothing else.

Bobby Miller