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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bela_ghoulashi who wrote (25219)	4/15/2002 6:19:53 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

the blame rests squarely on Bush for either acting or not acting. in SF we were taught that men make 2 kinds of mistakes...sins of omission and sins of commission. when the situation needs action and you do nothing, it is a sin of omission. these are not forgiven. when the situation needs action and you take action but do the wrong thing, you can adjust on the fly. these are the actions of winners...if you do that, you are always forgiven. it all rests on Bush. A nice, neat little package. No loose ends. fortunately we finally have a president who is not intimidated by the task. he has assembled a world class team. they are taking action. they are adjusting on the fly. as screwed up as the situation is, i believe most of it will get fixed for several reasons. much has been written here about oil money and oil interests...the one point that has not been widely discussed is the impact of the post 9/11 low oil prices on the Arabs. continued attacks on the US will result again in very low travel and oil demand. the Arabs will figure that out. their folks are not happy about the pay cuts they took after 9/11 caused by lower American oil consumption. today, Powell will make it abundantly clear to syria and lebanon...that we will defend israel. they will not want to diminish their armed forces by a confrontation with American airpower. i believe they already got that message. it has been reported that syria withdrew some 20,000 troops that were moving towards the golan heights about 2 weeks ago. i believe that is a sign of intimidation and fear. syria played chicken and chickened out. i believe iran will be quiet because we now have them surrounded on 3 sides with allies and our troops...from turkey in the W and NW to turkministan, afghanistan and pakistan in the E and SE. iran has much to lose and surrounded as they are...they will lose it quickly if they screw up. the pakistani/indian flare-up has cooled off. we are pretty much letting the south Americans own their own problems. korea and china will be checkmated diplomatically by pointing out to them that our only defense against attacks by them will be launching our nukes. the unmanageable problem is africa. you could prepare an overlay depicting hatred of America, extreme poverty, sickness and pestilence, heavily armed and lawless, ruthless and bloody...this overlay will fit on the map of nearly every african nation. the problem in most of africa is they have little to lose and no real govt to attack. they are organized more like gangs of bandits than national armies. africa is a huge continent with dozens of countries...nearly everyone one of those countries represents some threat to us. yet as difficult as africa is...action is needed and we are taking action in many locations. i believe we will see expansion of operations in africa before an invasion of iraq. we are rearranging our naval forces in large way...keep an eye on fleet movements for clues to future ops. current moves are classified. port calls are always reported, but the roosevelt just completed over 6 months at sea without a port call. we just reduced carrier groups to afghan by one... that allowed the kitty hawk to return to japan probably to support pacific ops like the phillipines. the constellation is reportedly conducting sea trials...but where??? the enterprise is fresh from norfolk and in the arabian sea. the JFK is fresh and in the red sea having gone through the suez a few weeks ago. the nimitz is scheduled to complete an upfit this month and is believed to be deployed to westpac or the gulf very soon. the eisenhower and vinson are being upgraded and not presently available. the roosevelt just got back to norfolk...i am not aware of any major upfit plans...so i presume it can deploy again shortly. the lincoln is deployed...i do not know where. the washington left norfolk a few weeks ago and was conducting live fire excercises in puerto rico...where is it now? the stennis is still in the arabian sea. the truman left port a few weeks ago for sea trials...where is it? unclewest