Why in the .... did Bush not invade Iran instead of Iraq!

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Smiley

Originally posted by PLATO
Iraq to the left...Afghanistan to the right...US Navy to the South.

Next question.

Reposting this map, it shows the classic encirclement strategy quite clearly.

You left out Bahrain and Qatar...and to a lesser degree Oman and UAE

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by PLATO
Iraq to the left...Afghanistan to the right...US Navy to the South.

Next question.

Sunnis to the left of me, Hindus to the right,
Here I am...

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by Lonestar



You left out Bahrain and Qatar...and to a lesser degree Oman and UAE

Updated as such.

When the US starts warming up with the Turkmenistan government (to the north), watch out.

[Sandman]

I'm not sure Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan can really be considered 'allies' for an invasion of Iran.

[Winston]

Re: map,

Georgia has the 3rd largest contingent of troops per capita in Iraq, after the U.S. & UK (Denmark is 4th ), and thus should also be added as a strong ally of the U.S. in the area.

[Gangerolf]

I don't think Iran is "invadable". But "bombable" or "nukable" si senor

[Dauphin]

From Odin's article:

It is here noteworthy that for all the rhetoric about the reasons for the surviving British Pound, the British most likely did not adopt the Euro namely because the Americans must have pressured them not to: otherwise the London IPE would have had to switch to Euros,

Funny for so many reasons.

Does the fact that Britain trades in pounds at the moment proclude trade in dollars on the exchange? When the IPE outcry trading floor closed it caused a rival floor to open in Dublin, does that mean that the floor in Dublin had to trade in Euros? Does the entire xenophobia of middle England revolve around the protection of the US dollar based trade in oil?

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Winston
Re: map,

Georgia has the 3rd largest contingent of troops per capita in Iraq, after the U.S. & UK (Denmark is 4th ), and thus should also be added as a strong ally of the U.S. in the area.

Where's Poland and Ukraine, then?

[Spiffor]

Re: Why in the .... did Bush not invade Iran instead of Iraq!

- Iran doesn't look nearly as harmless
- Iran has much less oil that is easily extractable
- There was much less of an international consensus about Iran
- The Iranians weren't going to welcome the US troops by dancing in the streets
- By the same token, they weren't going to happily accept aan America-sponsored democratization.
- There hadn't been years of propaganda in the US to consider Iran as the greatest evil ever.

[Wycoff]

Another factor: it's easier to propagandize against one man than it is against a group of them. Sadaam provided a great target for hatred; propagandizing against the Mullahs is a more diificult task. However, Ahmadinejad is doing Bush a favor... he's giving the public one man against whom we can focus our hate.

[Spiffor]

Indeed.

[Winston]

Originally posted by Heresson
Where's Poland and Ukraine, then?

Not too prominently in the map we're discussing, that's for sure. (granted the Crimea is there.)

Georgia is actually 2nd, not 3rd as I originally claimed.

The full list is as follows (as per September 2005, numbers are in troops per million capita, with actual troop numbers in parenthesis)

01 United States --- 439.6 --- (130,000)
02 Georgia --- 190.1 --- (889)
03 United Kingdom --- 145.0 --- (8,761)
04 Denmark --- 99.4 --- (540)
05 South Korea --- 67.8 ---(3,300)
06 Mongolia --- 64.5 --- (180)
07 Bulgaria --- 60.4 --- (450)
08 Latvia --- 59.4 --- (136)
09 El Salvador --- 56.7 --- (380)
10 Italy --- 52.1 --- (3,030)
11 Australia --- 42.3 --- (850)
12 Poland --- 38.9 --- (1,500)
13 Romania --- 38.5 --- (860)
14 Albania --- 33.7 --- (120)
15 Lithuania --- 32.8 --- (118)
16 Estonia --- 26.3 --- (35)
17 Ukraine --- 20.2 --- (950)
18 Slovakia --- 19.3 --- (105)
19 Azerbaijan --- 19.1 --- (151)
20 Macedonia --- 16.1 --- (33)
21 Bosnia --- 8.1 --- (36)
22 Czech Republic --- 7.8 --- (80)
23 Japan --- 4.3 --- (550)
24 Kazakhstan --- 1.8 --- (27)

Troops total --- 153,081

Other nations are part of the coalition without having committed troops, instead providing other means of support.

I compiled the list myself, using population data from the World Bank, and troop numbers from a (then) recently released Coalition report which was referenced on Wikipedia.

[Zkribbler]

Mongolia?? I'd have lost a ton of money betting against that one.

[Sandman]

What I don't understand is how the UK has about 7% of the American force, but has only spent about $5 billion on the war. Whereas American spending is approaching $1 trillion...

[CrONoS]

@Sandman
Halliburton have to be fair with britain!
but they can overcharged the U.S. government...
====
But surely they have different kind of mission in Iraq.
U.S. try to rebuild, are doing many more different thing than U.K.
Dont really know, but I dont think we can compare these two type of mission they have in Iraq.