chinton, I do not know much about Mr. Berlusconi. Luck of the draw, my friends and knowledge are in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In fact, I had dinner with some Kurdish folks from Baltimore last night. The Kurds are most anxious to join battle against their long-time Arab oppressors.
The war in Iraq has three major strategic aims, all of which I support. As I noted here back on September 13, 2001 or so, if the war of terror keeps casualties lower percentile-wise than WWII, then we have had an excellent result considering the exposure.
We lost about 0.9% of our population in WWII. Nowadays that would equate to about 2.7mm deaths from the current war in modern numbers. So far we have done really well. And I consider the Iraq campaign as part of the war on terror.
If Mr. Berlusconi supports Mr. Bush's efforts, then bravo for him, unlike his French and German counterparts.
Also we might want to talk about adding a 20% renewable energy mandate to the current Senate energy bill, a goal which I believe to be quite achievable now. Every barrel of Middle Eastern oil that we can back out of the United States markets, the better for us.
By the way- For those of you not familiar with Iraq, the area south of Baghdad where the heavy bombing is occurring is a military-only, no civilians allowed area. Also why do the Iraqis leave the Reublican Guard Units outside of Baghdad? Remember that in the last ten years, at least twice troop commanders in the Republican Guard have tried to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
My guess is that the Guard is being left outside of Baghdad because of those historical issues... |
