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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JEB who wrote (45978)	4/19/2004 2:12:04 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Hi JEB; Re: "Do you play chess Carl? ...our leaders do." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LOL!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (1) To win in chess, you have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces. Bush and the neocons failed to do this. They thought that the US military had infinite power. Long before this war started I understood the limits of US military power and posted as such. Our military is the world's best at kicking the butts of other militaries. But an occupation is about either winning hearts and minds, or alternatively, putting the fear of death into the occupied. Our military is fairly lousy at either of these, at least in the context of a society as foreign to ours as Iraq. (see #reply-18215014 or #reply-18743403 ) or see my long argument for keeping the Crusader project which the Bush admin killed a few years ago (see #reply-17579466 ). (2) To win at chess, you have to be able to count up the pieces on the board so that you can tell who has an advantage. Bush failed to exhibit the simple human talent for "counting" when he went into Iraq with enough troops to get rid of Saddam, but not enough to pacify the territory. This was a beginner's mistake. Before the war, I repeatedly published US military documents showing that our occupation force would have to number about 500,000 men, far more than we had. For example, see #reply-18657926 . Shinseki said the same thing to the press and got fired by Bush for it. Bush believed what he wanted to believe, and went in with too few troops. I also repeatedly published that we had enough troops to get rid of Saddam (see #reply-18657990 ), but that the occupation would (eventually grow to) be worse than Vietnam (see #reply-18780150 or #reply-19027926 ). (3) To win at chess, you have to take into account the psychology of your opponent and be able to predict what he will do. Bush went into Iraq thinking that the occupation was going to be so easy that our troop level would be down to 30,000 by the end of summer 2003. I knew that very few Iraqis would risk their lives to help us, while large numbers of them would risk their lives to hurt us. The neocons took their psychological estimates from the postwar occupations of Japan and Germany, which were quite peaceful, but did not predict the situation in Iraq at all. For my prewar notes on the differences between this situation and the occupation of Germany and Japan, see #reply-18743807. For examples of other "wars of maneuver" that were succeeded by bloody occupations, see #reply-18662336 or #reply-18123176 . Yes, I agree that our leaders "play chess". That's the whole f'ing problem. They're playing. Any idiot could beat them. They are so stupid that they bet their political futures that they'd find WMDs, and were so convincing that they had other governments parroting the same nonsense! Meanwhile, I was saying that Iraq's efforts at compliance indicated that there probably weren't any: #reply-18587191 #reply-18593817 #reply-18214558 The basic problem is that Bush is an idiot. That doesn't mean I think that Kerry would do better. I voted for Bush the first time, and I'll probably vote for him again. -- Carl