US Finger In Tibetan Unrest Pie

Opinion: Which country's interests are best served by an uprising in Tibet on the eve of the Beijing Olympics?

The USA's, of course.

The Bush administration has long been frightened of China's burgeoning rival superpower status, and US stoking of the Tibetan fires to provide maximum international embarrassment to China cannot be ruled out.

Tibet is a cause celebre for the Hollywood glitterati, pop stars and celebrity politicians. They imagine it to be some sort of wondrous Shangri-la led by a beacon of peace and light, the Dalai Lama. The vast majority of the Western media is in love with the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet movement. In fact, so blinkered are the Free Tibet and I-love-the-Dalai-Lama types that they will line up with their No. 1 enemy, the Bush administration, to throw darts at China for seeking to restore order in a land that China has occupied since 1951.