Next year in Jerusalem.

just think how much better things would be going, around the world, if only gwb had listened to john kerry and implemented the Kerry doctorine. guffaw. everything kerry does reminds me of a zoo monkey pleasuring himself for the amusement of the zoo visitors.

And when children 20 years from now ask me, "What were you doing in the great year 2005?", I'll have to tell them, "Telephone inventories in Massachusetts."

I originally thought it said US will get out of Syria by May and thought what does he know that we don't?

If you buy into the theory that success on the foreign policy front will increase Bush's political capital that he can then spend on domestic issues (like SS reform) improvement in Syria and Iran would definitely help.

Ah, OJ, if only it were true, but I fear not. I suspect the Iraq situation has been tougher than planned, and so we just don't have the extra troops for such things at the moment. We could try decapitation strikes, but would that work in Syria or NK, or would the regimes just promote some other high-level baddies and carry on as before? And a military strike at Iran might well rally the largely pro-American populace around the regime. I think we have to play a diplomacy plus special ops game for the time being.

We may not be able to occupy Syria, but we darn sure can get them out of Lebanon. Surgical strikes may not give Syria a democracy, but the threat of them may make Assad back down.

we can destroy the troop concentrations in the bekka valley, or at least disperse them to the point where they can be picked off by special ops forces (or local militias). we don't have to invade syria and probably never will; we just need to disrupt asswad's hold on power enough that the country falls into chaos or even revolution. my understanding is that the allawite clan could very well be exterminated in such a situation.

hmmmm, i wonder if anyone is proposing that the iraqi sunnis move into syria after the fall of the allawites ? just wondering is all.

Papaya:

Where are the 150,000 guys there going to go now that we're done?

Let's make sure the job is done in Iraq and Afghanistan before we move on elsewhere. If we only need a token force in each country, then we can take action against the Syrians.

The notion that once the Syrians left Lebanon that everyone would start behaving like civilized human beings is laughable. As a prerequisite, the so-called 'Palestinians' should be moved en masse to Gaza or the PLO controlled sections of Judea and Samaria before any action against the Syrians is undertaken in Lebanon.

OJ:

As much as I would like them to leave via Damascus and Beirut, I don't think they'll be leaving Iraq in the next few months, and when they do they'll bring 'em home for a rest. Lots are Guard troops, and it's a lot to ask to keep them away from home for years at a time.

Papaya:

But the lesson of Iraq is that these peoples are ready to rule themselves. Dispose of the dictator and leave.

Mmmmm, maybe. But the good people of Iraq were pretty much disarmed, disorganized, and somewhat cowed. The Baathists could well have regained control without the occupation. Knocking off an entrenched dictatorial regime and then standing back to see what emerges would be an interesting experiment, but the stakes are high, and it'd be bad news for the good guys if it went bad. We don't want a rerun of the aftermath of Iraq War I.

Papaya:

No they aren't. If we don't like the next regime we knock it off too.