Abject surrender

In message , Cub Driver
writes
This is, in fact, the very error Bush is repeating today. He is
creating today a situation in which the full military might of
the USA is merely sufficient to keep a few thousand terrorists
at bay.

An interesting point, but I'm not sure it's entirely accurate. Iraq
hardly represents the "full military might" of the U.S.

It's serious in that you've got very few forces available for other
crises. If $SOMEWHERE blows up, the US is going to have some seriously
unpalatable choices to make.

We took nearly
as many casualties in the Battle of the Bulge as there are troops
stationed in Iraq,

We lost more troops on the first day of the Somme than are currently in
Iraq, but that doesn't mean our current forces aren't seriously
stretched at the moment. There were a *lot* more men under arms in 1944
or 1916 than we have now.

and the Air Force and Navy are hardly engaged. And
the troops are doing many more jobs than keeping terrorists at bay.
They are, in effect, re-creating the country.

True, but that still means they're committed and unavailable for other
tasks.

And wasn't it you, Emmanuel, who said there was no way back? In
Vietnam and Korea, at least, there was the option of reuniting the
country under the communist north. What is the option in Iraq? Should
we dust off Saddam, apologize, and give him the country back?

That's one option. (Bang goes *his* credibility!) More likely, pull out
with a hasty "national government" that immediately does a Yugoslavia
and fragments explosively into a Kurdistan north (which the Turks may or
may not act against), a Sunni centre and a Shi'ia south which may or may
not unite with Iran (with or without their consent...)

Short of those options, the US has tied a large portion of its strength
into Iraq for some time, and that's a serious impact (because it's not
just the troops the it's the troops recovering from the deployment,
and the troops preparing to go out there, that eat into your available
strength)


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk