Most countries have numerous skeletons in their closet, if you go back far enough you'll reach a period when pretty much anything goes. As a Brit I can lay claim an exceptionally long history of colonial ills - its not something they teach in school either, its more a deeply entrenched part of the British psyche. We know we did wrong in India, in Africa, in... well pretty much everywhere we invaded and added to the British Empire.

As for America's prior indescretions overseas, well I guess I'm just slow to catch up on those - they certainly aren't on the tip of people's tongues. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to learn that the CIA colluded with the Brits in 1953 to overthrow the elected leader of Iran and replace him with their own stooge. I've heard something about this, but never the full story. So here it is as signed off by Eisenhower himself and all driven by the lust for, get this... oil. Yes the Brits didn't want the elected leader Mohammad Mosaddeq to nationalize the British run oil business in Iran so they worked together with the USA who wanted to stop communists from being elected in Iran. Together they worked to "take care" of that little problem. The coup was recently acknowledge by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, and was also written about in the New York Times along with a handy time-line of the whole sordid affair.

And you wonder why people march today in the streets with "No blood for oil" signs? Is it time for me to say again "History repeats"? Nah, why bother, no one even learns history these days, let alone learns from it.

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