**** Zarqawi! Where the hell is Osama!?!

[Drake Tungsten]

Damn, you're right. He's so talented! *swoon*

[Ted Striker]

I already made the point. But I'll repeat for you. More people and more assets looking for him means greater chance for finding him. Duh.


I find it hilarious though that you would actually try and make a judgement about someone doing work though.

[DanS]

I would like to see Dino's question answered.

[Ted Striker]

Here's a good analogy:

Your generals tell you that to secure the peace of the country, you need several hundred thousand soliders to do it.

You send in 150,000 and all hell breaks loose, indefinitley.

If you had listened to them in the first place, maybe chaos wouldn't have broken out in the first place.

More resources focused on the target at hand = better result.

[Drake Tungsten]

Exactly. Let's drop 300,000 troops into Pakistan, double quick!!!

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by DanS


That's not true at all. He can talk about Abu Ghraib too. I've seen him do it!

Thanks for pointing out the link between the two.

You're learning.

Next, you'll need to point out the CIA airplane that flew "suspects" to other nations like Egypt where things like torture are fine and dandy.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Exactly. Let's drop 300,000 troops into Pakistan, double quick!!!

With bullseyes on their back saying "shoot me."

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Exactly. Let's drop 300,000 troops into Pakistan, double quick!!!

That was referring to Iraq.


While dropping a bunch of heavy tanks into Afghanistan won't do much good, having alot of troops there to do things like, ohhh, seal the borders, do searching, and not to mention all the invaluable intelligence assets that could be on the ground searching or undercover looking for the dude instead of chasing down Public Enemy Insurgent of the Week in Iraq.

Not to mention all the money being wasted.

[Drake Tungsten]

I think the resulting nuclear war will be survivable. 10-20 million US dead, tops...

[Ted Striker]

That doesn't even make sense.

[Drake Tungsten]

I wasn't talking to you. Was responding to my fellow reactionary...

[Ted Striker]

You guys should start a club. Call it the Michigan Militia or something.

[Drake Tungsten]

We already have one. It's called the Foreign Policy Establishment.

[DanS]

For just this once, I will make a serious post in this thread.

I don't know why we haven't bagged OBL yet.

Numbers don't seem particularly useful in Afghanistan. Rather, it seems like a good way of getting into a Soviet situation.

While some intelligence assets can only focus on one area, it seems that the methods to catch Saddam, Zarqawi and OBL would be similar. In this sense, each search adds to our experience with methods applicable to all such searches. No search detracts from the others.

Besides, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Having troops in Iraq acts as flypaper so that the Arab sunni jihadists are going to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. While a messy strategy, it makes sense in that the terrain in Iraq should be more hospitable than the terrain in Afghanistan. There is also a side benefit that the Arab sunni jihadists are giving terrorism a bad name in the heart of the Arab ME.

Besides, even if OBL is inaccessible in the Pakistan mountains, we can keep creating al Qaeda enemy #1s in Iraq and defeating them. Seems like a steady diet.

[Ted Striker]

Numbers are useful in Afghanistan and it would not have led to a Soviet style problem because that phase of fighting any kind of standing army, or even any insurgency, is already over. These troops would be used for searching, sealing the border, training the new Afghan army, etc. They would be used mainly away from population areas, which is where they would be most needed anyway.

I think you are grossly underestimating how thin the military is stretched. If they weren't, there would have been 500,000+ guys on the ground as Powell and Shinseki (Chief of Staff of the Army at the time) had asked for. Franks also asked for more troops but he caved in.

Regarding this "drawing terrorists into Iraq" crap, it is wrong on so many levels. There are many foreign fighters coming into Iraq, but the majority of the violence is coming from Sunnis native to Iraq, many who example were out of a job when Bremer disbanded the whole army, and also alienated from the government.

On another level it is completely morally reprehensible to claim that bringing terrorists into Iraq is somehow a "good thing." These people's lives are being ruined. But hey, it's over there and not here, huh? Horrible.