"... the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider
effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to
the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish
neo-conservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February,
Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after
defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North
Korea. Meanwhile, neo-conservative journalists have been channeling the
administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey
Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the
United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of
such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top
al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves
and countermoves stretching well into the future."
"...to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into
Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new
terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits."
"... a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying
the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of
the region."
"As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file
explains it, the "physical analogy to Saddam Hussein's regime is a steel
beam in compression." Give it one good hit, and you'll get a violent
explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on
all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it's unwise to hand off
power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which
Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have
the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not. "
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html
steve
"War is just a racket ... something that is not what it seems to the
majority of people. Only a small group knows what its about. It is
conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the
masses." --- Major General Smedley Butler, 1933
