[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
You’re obviously familiar with the questions among those threads and seemingly you have the unique need to have them answered further. The onus is on you to just. get. your point. across.
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I see. So now you’re a liar and a coward.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
You are a pompous douchebag.
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Thank you. It’s good to be appreciated. 
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Then robby, from a position of experience, showed you. I didn’t see you refuting his information – is that how you “dissect” one’s inconvenient arguments in GD?
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Why should I? I see no reason to doubt his information. I asked for a nuclear engineer’s opinion on the question and I got it. Ignorance smashed! That’s how we do it, or aspire to do it, in all forums, I should hope. But the fact remains that the Iranian nuclear engineers know perfectly well that the scenario robby described is possible, and they have been preparing for it, which is why the most important potential-target reactors are underground and bomb-hardened.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
You’re there, so I prefer to be here and limit my contact with such unctuousness.
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[yawn] Unctuousness is better than cowardice.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
I ask you to be concise and you pull this. Are you trolling?
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No; but I am not obliged to oblige you.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
And learn to read, because I’m only going to say this one more fucking time: many of these concepts are not my views. I am here to report the facts and opinions of an increasingly-important part of the United States.
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Then you need to be much more clear and explicit about which views you are reporting and which you are merely defending. Otherwise you’ll sound like you’re backtracking and weaseling out of any position you appear to have taken but can’t seriously defend, and you’ll look really pathetic. Oh, wait . . . too late . . .
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The part of the United States to which you refer – by which you mean, obviously, the part that takes seriously the criminally insane world-view of the neocons – is, undoubtedly, important, but you are ignoring the poll trends, election returns, and many other compelling indicators if you think it is increasingly important.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
In place of British soldiers, we will be able to rotate to Basra other forces (read humanitarian/social) more suited to keeping the peace than crushing a conflict. If US troops are placed there, it will lead to more integration and possibly yield a crystal-clear understanding (via the expert Brits) of how to successfully pacify a region.
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That, at least, makes some sense, given that Basra has been relatively quiet, up to now. I.e., we probably can do it. But I don’t see how having to police Basra ourselves makes things better for us than having the Brits continue doing it. You think we can use it as a learning experience – but the Brits have not been successful in Basra because they are better than we are at that sort of thing, but because there were fewer causes of unrest in the first place in that solidly Shi’ite province. And what lessons we learn will be useless in parts of Iraq where peacekeeping efforts would be putting the cart before the horse because there is still so much active conflict to be crushed.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
21,000 does not equal 1,700 or even 7,000.
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No, of course not, but this is only the beginning. I expect the last British troops will be out of Iraq well before the next British general election – which Blair can in theory postpone until 2010, barring a vote of no confidence, but he won’t, it just isn’t done. The UK will have a new PM before the U.S. has a new POTUS.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
If Congress decides to strike Iran’s nuke infrastructure, we will be aided by Israel, no doubt.
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Yes, that was my point. Israel and nobody else. The Brits won’t back us, nor will NATO, nor the EU, nor the UN. Certainly, if U.S. forces bomb Iran, with our without Congressional authorization, the Israelis will back us. So what? What strategic advantage does that give us? We might as well make an alliance with Luxembourg. Israel has a good military, to be sure, probably the best in the world allowing for the country’s size; but it is nothing compared to our military – or Iran’s, for that matter.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Flat wrong. As I said before, this is precisely the war we wanted and we’re getting precisely the New Model Army Mr Rumsfeld wanted. It’s a brutal, effective supremacy.
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The war “we” wanted? OK, who’s “we” here? That is, are you defending, or are you simply attributing to Rumsfeld and his misbegotten ilk and their braindead Fox-News-viewing supporters, the proposition that we should want a war with Iran? If the former, why? What good can possibly come of it? I hope you will not venture to defend, even by deniable implications, the proposition that winning for the U.S. “a brutal, effective supremacy” is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.
And what’s this about a “New Model Army”? Rumsfeld was the guy who pointed out we can’t go to war with the army we wish we had. Restructuring a military establishment is best done in peacetime.
