Cobb

Yep, it's shady all around.

I don't know what crushing the rebellion with more troops is likely to mean in practical terms. That's what we tried in Vietnam and it didn't work. But then, maybe we didn't use enough troops and ordinance in Vietnam -- and our current ordinance is a lot better.

So, how many troops will it take? I'm not a military guy, so I don't know jack. Still . . . One question is whether or not the situation is now better or worse than it was on the eve of the invasion. The argument for it being worse is that there is no strong central force to defeat like there was under Hussein. Now the tribes are fighting substantially under local leadership for local ends. So we now face a loosely interlinked network of 5, 10, 20, whatever, guerilla wars with many of the enemy fighting this as a holy war.

What if the "crush" formula is a half to 3/4 of a mllion troops for a year or two and a decade-long occupation force of a quarter-million plus? Where's that going to come from, even with help from the Weasels?

My current guess is that, no matter who wins the election, we'll be out of Iraq in a year. If Bush wins the administration will figure out a way to declare success and stability and pull out. If Kerry wins, maybe the lie won't be quite so big. Either way, Iraq will be left to civil war.

Ah but no, we will stay in Iraq just like we stayed in Germany, and I think it is the Weasels' dissent which is both an reaction to the idea that we would and an enabler so we can. Having military basing rights in a friendly Iraq is, as Gerard notes, much more important strategically to the future of the Middle East.

So there's a drop dead Kerry question right there. American Military basing rights in Iraq or not? Word it any way you like, but watch him squirm. Would a Kerry presidency take geopolitical advantage of the fact that there are a hundred thousand American troops in Iraq or not?

This is the kind of long-term strategy which clearly makes sense from the PNAC angle, and really doesn't have any greater bearing on sovereignty that Subic Bay did on the Phillipines. Again, I much prefer this old school spoils of war strategy than that of subversion through puppet governments which lost us Iran.

Unless and until Osama Bin Laden makes an alliance with drug lords in South America, the US wins all global conflict. Iraq is a nice big fat footprint. Who is going to boot us out? Well... Kerry.

But more specifically, I think crushing the rebellion may be more of a starving out.

Allawi is going to have his elections one way or another. So the question may become whether Syrians or Saudis start respecting the official Iraqi government sooner than the current rebels.

Here the US has taken all the steps and invited everybody in to help establish the provisional government. Sooner or later people are going to have to either recognize Iraq or not. Callously said, so what if it's not a democracy? It's certainly no longer a regional threat, a genocidal dictatorship, a sponsor of state terror or a WMD producer or transit point. If Iraq becomes a puppet state it is by the default of the Weasels. If they choose not to recognize the new Iraqi government what is the point? To let it languish?

The worse case scenario I can see is that the Sunnis feel completely unwelcome in Iraq, and end up treated like the minority they are. That's a religious civil war. If American bases are there, we'll have to take sides - then crushing is a real evil. But I think that most everything short of that point is a low level conflict that we'll simply have to tolerate for the geopolitical benefit.

Are educated Sunnis going to be that stupid? If so, then we retreat to an augmented 'no-fly zone' stance for 3 years and see if they get tired of shooting each other. But we keep the bases, and we stay tight with the central government until they can build a regular army.

The phrase "this is shady" is a sentence fragment. It IS shady...if you are a prospective voter. That is, if you are basing your decision on what the new guy will do.

As a retrospective voter--as one who has already seen what the old guy has done--ANYTHING CAN BE BETTER. Kerry doesn't NEED a plan, because I'm pretty sure what he won't do.

If anything can be better, then nothing could be worse, and I simply don't see it that way. Kerry gives me the impression as one who would have kept up sanctions ad infinitum and let this whole thing pass by - one who would rather avoid conflict rather than confront a threat.

I heard Richard Clarke say something interesting yesterday. AQ, pre-9/11 had only killed 50 Americans in all of the Clinton years. There were plenty of things that people wouldn't do.

"I think crushing the rebellion may be more of a starving out."

Great minds think alike. Containment is teh answer. They're still doing bad things, but nothing like what they want to because we've got a clamp on Faluja. The more stable parts become, the more Iraqi boots on the ground, the more things start looking normal in most of Iraq (Like Alawi said, 15 of 18 provinces are ready today for elections) the tighter that hold becomes until they come out to fight (like in Najaf) or collapse under their own weight.

"Would a Kerry presidency take geopolitical advantage of the fact that there are a hundred thousand American troops in Iraq or not?"

This is the point I keep meaking that just seems lost on the "Iraq was a diversion from the War on Terror" gang. Hell, Iraq is smack-dab in the middle of the three biggest sources of terrorists in the world (Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia). As legendary Marine Chesty Puller said at the Chosin Resevoir, "They've got us surrounded. The bastards won't get away this time."

Kerry gives me the impression as one who would have kept up sanctions ad infinitum and let this whole thing pass by.

and you say this is WORSE?

It's worse from the perspective of one who is philosophically inclined to have America intervene internationally in the interest of global markets & representative government. Even aside from that proactive stance is the fact of Saddam's own cruelty which I and others have called genocide.

Doing nothing in the face of genocide and displacement is worse than doing something and facing rebellion which is less costly in terms of life and property.

Everybody can pretend that the few narrow political issues which play domestically are all the reasons anyone need consider in their judgements on Iraq. Certainly the Imperialists/Globaalists/PNAC cadre with which I stand have our narrow interests, but nobody can deny the larger set of facts. The larger set of facts justify the intervention whether or not American partisans acknowledge them or not, and I believe those who stand against the war keep focusing on the smallest set of facts possible, particularly those which have to do with the personal motivations of GWBush himself.

All Kerry can say ultimately is that Bush moved first for reasons that didn't pan out, and for those contested reasons he, and every who supports him, would deny a holocaust.

Kerry is only doing a George B. McClellan.

McClellan was the Democratic candidate for President in 1864. He tried to capitalize on the nation's tiredness with the Civil War; he accused Lincoln (just as Kerry did Bush) of fighting a disastrous war for no perceptable gain. He ran as a decorated veteran (after all, he had been overall commander of the Union Armies during the 1862 campaigns), frequently reminding everyone of the toll the war was currently taking, and promising to immediately end it if he was elected, after a consensus building effort with the current Confederate States of America. Amazingly, he got 1.8 million votes; luckily, Lincoln got 2.2 million, and 212 electoral votes to McClellan's 21.

Interestingly also, this election, due to an ongoing insurrection, had areas totalling 80 electoral votes in which no ballots could be cast. Nobody today says that this "partial election" was invalid or illegal.

There are interventions and there are interventions. It is not clear to me that giving Iraq the ability to hold free elections while at the same time altering their economy in ways they cannot change through government is a positive thing. Particularly if their economy is now for all intents and purposes owned and run by Americans.

It also isn't clear to me that the numbers work in this case--that is, that the costs currently paid are outweighed by the previous costs incurred by the Hussein regime. And this is before we even expand to consider the impact of this particular operation on terrorist recruiting.