Xah Lee's Unixism

[Morten Reistad]

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.

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.

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.


-- mrr