As I began reading that I thought it was referring to Kurdish smuggling of weapons from Iraq to Syria and that we ought to be ignoring it...

WMD smuggled to Syria? How could they possibly have had enough time to do that? Oh.

The question is whether Bush has the political will and/or capital to make a move on Syria. Given the huge opposition to Iraq right now I'd say no.

AWW:

Yes and having only gotten into office because of one vote on the Supreme Court there's no way he'll push his tax cuts...

Yes, it did.

He pretty much laid it out that he's out of army.

I reckon he listened to the chief of staff testifying to Congress a couple days ago.

Harry:

Where are we going to move them when the Iraqis tell us to? West seems the best option, keeping Pakistan in reserve until the end of the war.

>Did the President sound to you like he was done
>liberating the Middle East last night?

No, but will the Fifth Column let him carry it through? Or stop him halfway, with the hornet's nest stirred up but not cleaned out?

"Never do an enemy a small hurt"; that's what Bush's father did in '91 leaving Saddam humiliated but still in power. All that does is give your enemy even more reason to kill you: Payback Time.

Ken:

Realistically, how can they stop him if he decides to topple the Ba'athists in Syria?

Then he's going to have to --
1) Do it before he can possibly be defeated in November.
2) Concentrate on winning the November election (against all the Fifth Column celebrities & media), leaving the war on hold or at lower priority until he has another four years and can actually go ahead uninterrupted.

Because if Bush loses the election before he can push the Mideast past the tipping point, we lose the war and everybody can masturbate away the Clinton II years while waiting for the next, worse 9/11.

Kerry's not going to change the policy. No one seeks power in order to not use it.

Not even Carter?

I stiil think a Camp Zinni By the Sea in Syria would be a wonderful location to call in most of our troops in Europe and the Near east, including Korea, to kind of overlook things in the neighborhood, while running an occasional exercise to keep the locals in order, after the Iraqis ask us to leave. The alternative would be in the desert of Saudi Arabia with access to the sea and equidistant to bagdhad, Riyadha(Sp.) and Damascus. Oh yeah! I'd be willing to pay some of my taxes toward that.

Jeff:

Carter used it, including building the military back up by the end of his term, just unwisely.

Methinks Carter didn't do anything with the military until after the Soviets roared into Afghanistan. By then, it was all reaction and almost too late. The Trident and the B-1 were already held up for too long.

Did you ever hear about Carter's test of the emergency evacuation of the White House, right after the inauguration? A Marine officer told him they could get the President out to a safe place in a few minutes, and Carter said: "Do it right now". The officer was pretty flustered. I used to think it was a gutsy thing, but now I think Jimmy was just feeling his oats and snapping back (and probably getting even for some slight 20 years earlier, when he was in the Navy). Pretty immature.

I was in the military at the end of Carter's term. If there was a buildup going on, I sure as heck didn't see it.

Ah, the egoist-disease, if you didn't notice it didn't happen?

http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/documents/speeches/su80jec.phtml

Sorry, I guess I have to apologize for only having first hand knowledge to go on.

Exactly--first hand knowledge is almost always wrong.

That first hand knowledge includes a ramp where half the airplanes had no engines.

Which was just as well, because there weren't any avionics to go around, either.

Those are called Facts, OJ.

Subjectivity, rather