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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (24520)	8/7/2003 1:34:53 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

lurqer: Some folks think 'NeoCONS need a plan B'... Message 19187975 Yet why would they want a plan B when they failed to think through any of the implications of executing on plan A...?

To: lurqer who wrote (24520)	8/7/2003 1:36:50 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

<<... we had a choice in 2000 that I characterized as “Dumb and Dumber”...>> I couldn't agree more...We needed a General Wesley Clark back then and we didn't have one.

To: lurqer who wrote (24520)	8/7/2003 1:45:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

On imperial overstretch: can the USA afford to send its troops here, there and everywhere? janes.com The official view from the Pentagon is that all is going well in Iraq and that the US forces are more than ready to continue the global war against terrorism. And yet, as the army commanders and planners in the Pentagon know only too well, this is a mere diplomatic smokescreen. The reality is that US forces are now severely overstretched and the number of their military commitments worldwide is increasing by the day. The USA remains the biggest military power in the world, but it is beginning to experience the classic symptoms of imperial fatigue. At first sight, the suggestion that US forces are overstretched appears startling. In the last three years, the US military has successfully removed from power no less than three governments that, for one reason or another, Washington did not like: in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, this has been accomplished with a relatively small number of troops and surgical strikes, creating vast destruction to the enemy but leaving US troops more or less unscathed. Even if US reinforcements are now required in Iraq and the country's occupation lasts longer than originally envisaged, the deployment in Southwest Asia will not involve more than a quarter of the USA's total military might. Seen from this perspective, the USA remains more than capable of holding Iraq down, while confronting North Korea and Iran - its next main targets. Washington's declared policy of being ready to fight two major wars around the world at the same time remains, therefore, intact. However, this is only part of the story. Twenty-one of the US Army's 33 regular combat brigades are already on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans, amounting to roughly 250,000 fighting men and women. And this does not include a substantial number of US troops regularly stationed in Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan, or smaller contingents now scattered around the world. A traditional calculation assumes that for every soldier deployed on an active mission, two more are required to be kept in reserve, either in order to rotate those in action or to prepare for that rotation. Under this assumption, the USA has already reached its limit today. But, to the frustration of the Pentagon, neither US diplomatic priorities nor the sheer pace of international developments appears to take this into account. The cost of occupying and rebuilding Iraq now runs at roughly US$4bn a month and is rising. More importantly for US military planners, it also costs, on average, the life of one US soldier a day. Furthermore, Washington has already decided that it will make no further cuts in its presence in Europe and cannot extricate itself from Afghanistan. Given the North Korean situation, no cuts in US troops can be expected in Asia either, notwithstanding the planned redeployment of US forces inside South Korea. And, to cap it all, Washington is now certain to deploy troops in Liberia. Officially, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appears unruffled by these developments, yet behind the scenes he is facing an increasingly strident chorus of disapproval from his military commanders. Crunch time for the administration is still some way off. But a wider political debate about US global military priorities now appears inevitable. (539 of 1050 words. The full version of this article is accessible through our subscription services. Please refer to the box below for details.)

To: lurqer who wrote (24520)	8/7/2003 2:26:24 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

RALL'S RULE OF IDEOLOGICAL BALANCE story.news.yahoo.com <<...When going up against right-wing Republican incumbents, however, Democrats do better with left-wing challengers. John F. Kennedy, an unabashed "Eastern establishment" liberal, won against an incumbent vice president--Richard Nixon--famous as a right-wing McCarthyite. The unabashedly liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt campaigned against the militantly pro-business Herbert Hoover with the mondo-leftie New Deal. In both cases, voters felt that the political pendulum had swung too far right over the previous eight years; only a liberal Democrat president could correct that imbalance...>>

To: lurqer who wrote (24520)	8/7/2003 5:27:57 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 89467

lurqer, Re: . For them 9-11 was not a disaster, but an opportunity to be seized. This seems to be possibly part of a pattern, here's some evidence that there is more to the story of the Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta than first meets the eye..... The tease -- Message 19184621 More background -- Message 18191818 ******* I don't have it at my fingertips, but there's some information on the Center for Cooperative Research site that discusses the fact that the FBI knew of the 1993 WTC bombing plot in advance. And did nothing to stop it. cooperativeresearch.org