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

To: Sig who wrote (127309)	3/24/2004 3:24:27 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Sig; Re: "The terrorists are often well armed with rockets, mortars, and missiles. 70000 Pakistani troops have been locked in a battle with OBL's supporters." That's a problem for the Pakistani military, not for the US military. In case you didn't notice, there are no US troops involved in the fight. Who did we, in fact, send over there? Intelligence officers. That's right, policemen. When we had state sponsored terrorism in Afghanistan, we had a military problem. But individual terrorists in Pakistan is a police problem, as far as we are concerned. That the Pakistanis can't send police into their border zone makes it a military problem, but it is their military problem, a sort of a civil war. A US entrance into their civil war is unlikely to help our side much. If it did, they'd be asking for our help. Re: "About your plan to "get out of Iraq"-we need more details. Kerry needs more details." Kerry doesn't have a clue as to how to get out of Iraq any more than Nixon had a clue as to how to get out of Vietnam. No matter who wins the election, our actions in Iraq, at least from this point on, will be pretty much the same. Until the American public knuckles under to admitting that the war is unwinnable, we're stuck there. After we're ready to pull out, it's fairly simple. We announce to the Iraqis that we're pulling out, beginning with the more nasty parts of the country, and then begin running convoys out to Kuwait. It's the inverse of an invasion, and it's a lot easier because there are fewer time pressures and considerably less shooting. When the time comes that it is politically feasible to pull out of Iraq we will do so. The stupidity of our public (not our leaders who mostly just follow the public around, Bush is an exception) will require many more of our soldiers to die. When the inevitable memoirs are published on this years from now, you will see a lot of insiders admitting that they knew we were doomed in Iraq, but didn't speak up because they didn't want to get the public pissed off with them. Just like Vietnam, the truth is out there, but many of the people who know it are afraid to say it publicly. Today, an explosive device was discovered on a French railway. Was it the US military that thwarted the terrorist act? The French military? A couple of disgruntled neonazi skinhead paramilitary types? No, it was a French railway worker, a worker who had been sent out to look for bombs. This is how terrorism is thwarted, simple police work. -- Carl