Bogged down in Iraq, US encounters limits to military power

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030824/wl_afp/iraq_us_military&cid=1512&ncid=1480

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States has turned to the United Nations for help in Iraq, embraced diplomacy with North Korea and only reluctantly sent small numbers of US troops to help a west African peacekeeping mission in Liberia.

For an administration known for a go-it-alone, heavy-handed approach to world affairs, those developments reflect something new, analysts here say: The United States is bumping up against the limits of its military power.

After back-to-back wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and entangling, open-ended occupations in both countries, the United States no longer has the luxury of readily available military options.

"We cannot be everywhere at all times in the world," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told US troops this week at the Soto Cano air base in Honduras when asked whether current US forces were numerous enough to meet commitments overseas.

more

[0007]

1. Ha! Let's see now

"We're not into nation building" - "We'll go-it-alone" - "The U.N. has out lived it's usefulness" - "We cannot be everywhere at all times in the world"

Spin spin spin they can spin both ways at the same time anytime anywhere, hide money to avoid taxes, wave flags, sing songs of praise to god, cook books, lie to the world and then tell us how safe folks are compared to yesterday.

The media is being used like a whore uses a douche bag.

The head of this administration is right out of the head of Herbert Walker Bush and the thugs like James A. Baker III and Henry Kissinger to benefit businesses like Halliburton and the Carlyle Group.

[saigon68]

3. The media is being used like a whore uses a douche bag.

THEY ARE WHORES.

THEY ARE DOUCHE BAGS

THEY ARE WHORES USING DOUCHE BAGS

LOL

[teryang]

2. These limits were readily apparent in Jan. 2001

...to any military analyst who cared to look at the situation. What did that lying bastard Rumsfeld say when questioned about the small size of available American ground forces? He said we could fight three wars at the same time! He then had available the smallest US Armed Forces since before the Vietnam War. This was the legacy of the Bush Cheney downsizing of the armed forces begun before the first war in Iraq even ended.

So the question arose. How do you DOMINATE THE WORLD IN THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY with the smallest US military in forty years? The rumdum answer was "lite ground forces" and "full spectrum dominance." This was the justification for spending trillions of dollars on defense contracts while maintaining inadequate (for world domination) ground and naval forces limited by manpower constraints.

I was writing about this on these boards ONE YEAR before we invaded Iraq. They have severely damaged American national security with their policies. The Pentagon was prepared to fight only 1.4 wars since the Bush Cheney drawdown and that is exactly what we are doing now. We have commited troops to a 1.0 "pre-emptive" theater war which was based on lies on no threat to our country. We have another partial theater conflict going on in Afghanistan.

WE HAVE NO EXCESS MILITARY CAPABILITY LEFT to address a real national security threat to the American people. So we are begging other countries that we have consistently abused and insulted to provide "Hessians" to meet our ill considered commitments (to cover Herr Rumsfeldt's neo con ass.) I don't think they should do it. If substantial American forces are disengaged they will begin threatening another war somewhere else with the increased flexibility allowed by the cooperation of naive countries.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. When can we fire these incompetent assholes

Everything they told us has either turned out to be a lie or just plan wrong.

They have not gotten one single thing right and now 1000's of people are getting killed has a result. How can we stop this madness?