http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=226101&group=webcast
Arrogant yankee bs and feisty response(s).
AND sRATfor analysis...
There are two major crises on the table now, both of which
involve fundamental U.S. interests and neither of which the
United States is in a position to manage effectively because of
its long Iraqi game.
1. North Korea clearly has watched the U.S. fascination with Iraq
and has calculated that a crisis now could extract for it maximum
advantage from Washington. Pyongyang has gone out of its way to
cause Washington to perceive a nuclear threat, with the
perception quite possibly greater than the reality. North Korean
officials know the United States can't afford a two-front war,
regardless of what its doctrine says. They expect Washington to
make political and economic concessions, calculating that it
cannot engage in confrontation. Pyongyang's calculation is
proving correct. This would not be the case if the Iraq matter
were settled.
2. Venezuela is a major supplier of oil to the United States.
With the Iraq war brewing and oil prices rising, a disruption of
Venezuelan oil is the last thing the United States needs. Yet,
because of a crisis between President Hugo Chavez and a large and
diverse opposition, Venezuela has ground to a virtual halt,
actually importing oil to keep itself going. Normally, the United
States would act aggressively to bring the crisis under control;
now the Bush administration feels that it can't. If Chavez were
overthrown in a coup that could be attributed to the United
States, then Europe would hurl charges of overthrowing a
democratically elected government in Latin America -- redolent of
the Allende assassination in Chile -- and use it as a
justification for staying out of the coalition against Iraq.
Maintaining the anti-Iraq coalition compels the United States to
refrain from action, even as Venezuela collapses along with its
oil exports.
Two major crises now confront the United States. Neither emanates
from the Islamic world or from al Qaeda. Neither can be managed
effectively by the United States because of Iraq.
The situation becomes even more difficult when we consider that
the concentration of forces for Iraq has created opportunities
elsewhere within the Islamic theater of operations. In
Afghanistan, for example, there is a perceptible increase in the
tempo of operations of Islamist forces, which continually are
probing U.S. and allied fortifications with apparently growing
effectiveness. Moreover, in the coming months, al Qaeda will find
opportunities to strike at targets within and without the Islamic
world -- as the recent attack on American doctors in Yemen
demonstrated.
Therefore, the United States cannot put off an attack on Iraq
much longer. The peculiarity is not that the United States has
been so eager to attack, but that it has held off for so long
that its flanks are exposed. That exposure cannot end until the
United States defeats Iraq and occupies it. This means not only
that war cannot be put off much longer but also that the war
cannot be allowed to last very long. Therefore, a tension is
building in the U.S. warfighting strategy that will define events
in the coming weeks and months.
The U.S. focus on Iraq has generated
problems outside the Islamic world that are not as critical as
those arising within the Islamic world, but which normally would
be of paramount importance to Washington. There is now a pressing
need to conclude the Iraq military campaign and to move to
follow-on operations, while also bringing order to other areas
outside the primary theater of operations.
U.S. power is enormous, but it is not infinite. Therefore, the
United States has the ability to play a long and deep game. It
does not have to shoot from the hip, because enormous power buys
a great deal of time. But because power is not infinite, time is
also inherently finite. The war will begin sometime in the next
four to six weeks and must conclude quickly; otherwise, things
could get out of control on a global scale.
This is something that Hussein certainly understands. His entire
strategy has been a delaying strategy: First, he delayed
diplomatically; then he delayed on weapons inspections.
Inevitably, his war-fighting strategy, if he chooses war over
exile, will be to delay the United States, to impose time
penalties at every point -- to trade lives for time in the hope
that the United States runs out of time before he runs out of
lives. For him, it all comes down to Baghdad and the ability to
force a drawn-out war of attrition. For the United States, it
comes down to smashing Iraq's ability to resist before U.S.
troops even reach Baghdad. Now, Hussein thinks that time is his
friend, and Washington knows it must deny Hussein time.
