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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (26967)	10/4/2004 11:36:51 AM
From: Rarebird	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

< But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords and he outsourced that job too. That's wrong."> The core military problem for the US in its present occupation of Iraq is that it has woefully insufficient troops there to come even close to a successful military occupation. How many troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq? The highly respected International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, before which the President spoke last November, says 500,000. US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress publicly before the war that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed. He was asking for 400,000. He was shown the door after having made that statement.

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (26967)	10/4/2004 11:49:33 AM
From: Don Hurst	Respond to of 173976

>>"No one who has opinions on the subject of al-Qaeda, the Afghan war, the Iraq disaster, or the so-called "war on terrorism" can possibly be taken seriously until and unless they have read Imperial Hubris from cover to cover. Buy this book, read it, and recommend it to your friends."<< Epstein in his Barron's review a couple of weeks ago said about the same thing. I'm reading it (slowly) along with Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars" for more background and watching this Afghan election on Oct 8 with great interest. Peter Bergen just came back from Afghanistan and he had an upbeat picture of what he saw during his visit and he knows something about the territory. Scheuer would say however, that it is just the lull before the storm. Another point...last night on BBC on my local NPR station they had an interview with an "Iraqi policeman" (spoke good english)who seemed to be a native of Fallugah (sp?) and he described the insurgents in the city as very much thousands of foreigners, ie Pakistanis, Saudis, Syrians, Afghans, etc, very well trained and organized. Although the Iraqi said he would fight to get his city back it was easy to get the feeling that this stuff that Scheuer says about "Iraq a gift" >>"The seeds of a worldwide insurgency – nurtured by the arrogance and hubris of American foreign policy – have sprung up in Iraq – a "gift" to al-Qaeda, as Scheuer puts it."<< is very true and the selected one has created one hell of a mess in Iraq just so he could have family revenge. Btw, I would also recommend "Charlie's War" to get a more gossipy but very interesting view of American involvement in Afghanistan.