Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: " If the second report was a fantasy, then it was a fantasy shared by Stratfor, who also reported Saudi divisions near the Jordanian border."
(1) I didn't mean to say that it was a fantasy, just that the implication of the report was an Israeli fantasy. The fact is that if you are going to do military exercises in Saudi Arabia one chunk of desert is just about as good as any other. Hell, the US does military exercises near the Mexican border regularly. Does that have any meaning? Of course it doesn't.
(2) That the news was reported by both Stratfor and Debka is an indication that they're feeding off of each other. So their joint reports on significant Iraqi hostilities (that ABC News and Al Jazeera has somehow failed to notice) is also suspect. It's the same incorrect reporting / propaganda / mistake.
Eventually you will have to admit that your hopes and beliefs on this were just wrong. At that point, perhaps you will take a look at the basis of your beliefs regarding the long term prognosis for Israel and revise them.
The difficulty with human prediction is the very very very strong tendency that humans have to believe what they want to believe. It is difficult to fight this tendency. If you repeatedly find yourself with your hopes dashed, you need to take a look at the true reasons for your hopes and beliefs.
Let me try and make a comparison to stocks. People fall in love with stocks, and then end up believing all kinds of fantasies about their true values. It's similar with states. People fall in love with countries and then are blind to all but one side of an argument. In this situation, it becomes impossible to process data that does not fit in with ones belief system. Instead, all such data is simply ignored.
They say that one shouldn't fall in love with a stock because a stock can't love you back. The same is true with a state. States do not have human feelings, and don't give a damn about the people who love them. Clinton's statement that he could "feel your pain", was a simple lie. Look at the Middle East as a sort of chess match and it will become a lot easier to make predictions. Fans tend to exaggerate the chances of their home team in sports. The same applies to stocks and states. It's just universal human nature.
Re: "If Baghdad falls to Special Forces ops, are you going to say that doesn't count?"
That would "count", but it isn't going to happen. That would be a "war", and we simply are not going to start one in the face of world opposition.
By the way, my comment that there would be no attack on Iraq specifically excluded certain types of special operations. Here's a reminder:
Bilow, January 17, 2002
In the absence of a friendly regime asking for US assistance against Iraqi aggression, a US war against Iraq just isn't going to happen.
...
A more realistic scenario, especially given the changes in US policy on assassination, would be for the US secret service to act against Saddam Hussein personally. But even that isn't going to happen unless the US perceives that Saddam remains a threat -- to the US. #reply-16918479
But as to the question of whether special forces could help the Kurds take Baghdad the same way that they helped the Northern Alliance take Kabul, no, I don't think that that is going to happen. It's not as unlikely as a direct US invasion against Iraq (like in 1991), but it still is simply not going to happen.
On the other hand, there are undoubtedly Islamic Fundamentalist terrorist groups operating out of Kurdistan. They are funded by the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, and the US has plenty of reasons for helping the Kurds (or the Iraqis for that matter) stamp them out.
-- Carl |
