Xah Lee's Unixism

[jmfbahciv at aol.com]

In article <1ctshc.kd52.ln at via.reistad.priv.no>,
   Morten Reistad <firstname at lastname.pr1v.n0> wrote:
>In article <1oh3k01cieht04nmfo27pvihg8teme0mdt at 4ax.com>,
>Alan Balmer  <albalmer at spamcop.net> wrote:
>>On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 00:13:56 +0200, Morten Reistad
>><firstname at lastname.pr1v.n0> wrote:
>>
>>>>However Bush is demonstrably poor.  He ignored the warnings from
>>>>the CIA, FBI, outgoing Clinton administration about imminent
>>>>attacks.  He was focused on attacking Saddam and Iraq from the
>>>>first, and perverted 9/11 into that at the earliest opportunity. 
>>>>He has offended many more than most of his predecessors.  I will
>>>>say that he seems to have learned the names of some foreign
>>>>leaders since being elected.
>>>
>>>Bush has had an agenda all right; but I don't quite get what it is. 
>>>
>>And, of course, entertaining the possibility that his agenda is just
>>what he says it is, is completely out of the question.
>
>I just cannot understand what he wanted to do with Iraq, so fast and
>with such a limited expedition corps. 
>
>If we for a moment give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that
>Iraq WAS a hotbed of terrorists buiding WMD's. There may after all be
>some information they cannot tell us. This would explain the
>hurry and the go-it-alone tactic. In that case , why wasn't the place
>hit a lot harder; int the Nixon/Pinochet style? Why a PHB like Bremer?
>Why not a real tough army goy the first couple of months? I just cannot
>make sense of this scenario.

I had assumed this was to placate France, Germany and Russia.
IMO, there was too much politics and not enough military.
>
>On the other hand, it may be a wish to liberate Iraq from the ravages
>of Saddam, and a final round of being pissed at Saddam repeatedly 
>flouting the ceasefire agreement. This is a perfectly legitimate 
>reason to escalate the war again (it is the same war, there was never
>a peace agreement, only a cease-fire). In that case a few rounds of
>UN song and dance could be done while a new coalition was built; with 
>the US taking around a fourth of the cost and manpower, like last time.
>This could be convincingly sold to the Iraqi populace as a liberation.

But France, Germany and Russia would have nothing to do with that.
It would stop their cash flows with Saddam if we had tried to build
a coalition.  They were farting around using all kinds of delay
tactics and were more than willing to allow Saddam to flaunt
the cease fire.  With nobody watching the bad boy, he could
do anything he damned well wanted to, including allow transport
across his country from east to west.
>
>So, I don't get it if the agenda is just what is spoken. If the agenda
>is to make way for Israel scenario #2 would still be a better one.
>
>Contrast this with Afghanistan, where there was a pretty high urgency
>to get the al-Quaeda and the Taliban before they moved with another 
>terrorist monstrosity. Yet, a large alliance was built, NATO was used
>as far as it could be stretched. the UN was in on it; and the US ended
>taking around half the cost and supplying a fifth of the manpower. 
>With a similar strategy in Iraq the US could have resources left over
>to handle North Korea, Sudan, Sierra Leone with less expenditure than
>what you ended up with. 
>
>I just don't get it. The stated agenda is either misstated, or grossly
>misimplemented.

Or the agenda changed in midstream.

/BAH

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