What makes her think Sami's in Afghanistan? I thought he's in Iran

He could be in Pakistan which is where a lot of the Talibs are.

And if we can't get them before the winter, doesn't that mean they can't move til spring, either???

I don't think it can be discounted that a lot of this is happening in order to give Iran time and breathing space.

A bloody, but concerted, distraction.

I'm still dubious Osama is alive at all. We haven't had anything but scratch audiotapes from him in over a year...

I agree with Mike, above, that Osama is dead. My only argument would be that now is the perfect time for him to rally the troops, but there is no obvious communication from him yet. But it is a moot point anyway since I'm sure sufficient leadership can rise to the occasion.

Al Qaeda operated with impunity out of Iraq? Where's the evidence for that? I mean, I realize that the Bush administration has trotted out this tattered old claim as if every facet of it hadn't already been debunked, but this is getting ridiculous. One can make a roundabout argument that Iraq provided some ancillary support for anti-Israeli terrorists (money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, shelter for the occasional old-timer Palestinian terrorist, e.g. Abu Nidal, although that story is a bit complicated), but Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with any deaths on American soil. It's a sidebar to the war on terrorism and nothing more--a war was needed, and the pretext was best for Iraq.

This does not, of course, contradict any valid geopolitical/strategic reasons for toppling the Baathist regime, or the moral dimensions of bringing a tyrant like Hussein to justice (I mean, the U.S. practically created him, after all, so in a sense he was our responsibility to begin with.) But among the many good reasons for the Iraq war, antiterrorism was not one of them.

M:

I thought even you didn't deny that al Qaeda operated in Kurdistan?

Yes, they supposedly did. Note, however, that Saddam Hussein has had absolutely no power there since the end of the first Gulf war. He could hardly be held responsible for a terrorist presence in a region that was, for all practical purposes, another nation.

M:

Who said he was responsible? The point is that until we settled the status of Iraq they were going to be able to operate there freely. Now they can't. Saddam was incidental.

And what's all this hype about an Abu-Nidal - Mohammad Atta link, and the former's alleged training of the latter in Iraq, allegedly alleged, by alleged Iraqi documents allegedly seized earlier this month. (Allegedly.)

(That's right, the Abu-Nidal that committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth four times.)

OJ:

Now you're confusing me. Are you sure which one of us is a member of the Stupid Party?

Hopefully you aren't trying to sell me on the idea that the Iraq war was waged even in part to get at a few dozen terrorists in Kurdistan. A Special Forces operation or two would have sufficed for that, and the "status of Iraq" didn't have to come into it at all. As it is, it took an inordinately long period of time before U.S. forces were sent to address any situations in Kurdistan; for that matter, the laxity with which so many presumed Iraqi WMD sites were secured speaks volumes as to how seriously that threat was ever taken by our leadership.

M:

Yes, that's how we're doing it in friendly countries--Colombia and The Philippines--where we're conducting major counter-insurgencies under the radar because the governments support us. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the governments were hostile, we decided to take them out as long as we were there, even though neither was a threat in itself.

That should be "... even though neither was a direct, imminent threat in and of itself."

OJ: Your theories about why the Iraq war was waged could be valid only in hindsight. Iraq has been on the neocon wish list since before Bush ran for office, and it was a neocon war if it was anything. At the same time, terrorism wasn't even on the Bush administration's radar until 9/12; as the leaked Cheney memos have shown, it took about 15 minutes for key Bush administration figures to begin trying to tie 9/11 into Iraq, irrespective of any evidence. Ergo, the argument you are trying to make is something that has been bootstrapped into the original argument, such as it was, and even then it's a weak justification.

I repeat: to get at a few dozen terrorists in Kurdistan, who represent maybe the tenth or eleventh most important concentration of Al-Qaeda resources on the planet (behind Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, upstate New York, etc.), we have to devote more than half the nation's military resources, depose a government (albeit a government worth deposing), sap resources from other, more relevant fronts in the war on terror, and spend $87 billion when domestic coffers are empty? Furthermore, we had to topple an Iraqi regime in order to get at terrorists operating in a region not under that regime's control? Where U.S. advisors have been working with Kurds for a decade? I've avoided the term "laugh test" up until now, but I have my breaking point.

M:

It took three weeks, cost less than 500 American lives and about the budget of the Agriculture Department. We'd have to do it ten more times before it even began to be significant in terms of time, blood, or money.

And have an Army 10 times bigger to handle the occupation duties.

Well, not 10 times. More like 5 times bigger.

We could, at full stretch, produce an army of 25 million or so, but even an army of 2 million ain't gonna happen.

You would also need a whole lot more munitions to do it 10 times. We didn't use up a lot of soldiers in Iraq, and be grateful for that, but army materiel wears out and gets used up very quickly, even in cakewalks.

Harry:

We'd need no occupation forces in places like Cuba--which would be a democracy the next day, or Korea, where we don't care what comes after the Kims. It's easier to rotate troops into Syria than bring them home, so that one would be pretty easy. Venezuela's military would take over once Chavez and a few loyal officers were gone. It's not so tough.

Amateurs talk strategy, professionals logistics.

Amateurs make the wars, professionals fight them.

Not for long without beans and bullets.

We still don't have enough infantry to swing our weight. I'm assuming Bush understands that, even if you don't, and that's why he has not stormed into Syria.

You'd think that people who monthly predict revolution in Iran without ever getting it would be more modest in predicting what other people will do.

There is a revolution in Iran.