Yeah, I heard Rush going on about this this morning.
I was trying to tell you folks that there would be no invasion until the Winter of 2003. The tail just isn't there yet. Especially the JDAM production lines. It will take until the end of June to get them up to 3500 JDAMs produced a month. JDAM's, and plenty of them, have to be plentiful and on hand. Then there's Infantry conditioning to take into account.
If the brass says they need some time to put this together, then I'll go with their recommendations. But when George W. Bush says he has no war plans "on my desk", that tells me everything I need to know.
Some people, Andrew Sullivan included, need to watch how they react to planned leaks.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Chris, I've followed your remarks for some time and you seem to know what you're talking about. I think we and the press wish to see Dub invade Iraq because we want to see Bush Senior's job completed. There's a nice poetic ring to the thought of Dub completing what we now think the old man should have done. And I have no doubt that Dub wants to do it too. But that's no reason to invade. Neither Bush is responsible for Clintoon's 8 years of neglect.
I've been wondering if the administration is backing off because they've decided, measured against what is currently over there, Sadam is not so bad afterall. I've always wondered about Sadam's stupidity in invading Kuwait, and known that he's brutal and cultivated a cultic adherence among his followers etc, but he has survived & he probably wouldn't have had he been nice.
Who would we replace Sadam with? What happens between the Sunni ruling class and the Shiite majority, and how will this effect the possibility of moderate reform in Iran? As to the tribal minorities inhabiting the mountains in that region (I can't remember their names), can we be sure that those societies haven't been subverted by Al Qaeda style Islamists? Some might say give the region to Turkey; my wife is Armenian so you can understand my misgivings there.
In short, seems to me we're considering changing a known evil for a different, unknown and possibly worse evil. What are your thoughts?