-----Original Message-----
From: Luke
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 8:55 PM
To: Subject: syriasly


ok - so syria is still getting blamed for having porous borders. how on earth do they say this with a straight face?

bremer was on the teeve earlier this week saying (spluttering) that he needed to move troops to the borders - which is fine, except that a) the 'foreign insurgence' thing is complete bollox and they know that it is rubbish b) they cant block the borders c) ineffective troops along the border means fewer troops in the cities.

180 dead at a religious festival and they want more troops along the borders... 'as big as california' hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. if u have any questions about the validity of that stupid '17 page memo', then the 180 dead this week looks suspicious, and the 'therefore lets seal the borders with troops' thing looks totally spurious. if the memo was indeed the roadmap for iraq, then things are really outta control. i wonder if chalabi wrote the roadmap. or perle. ya see, if u question the legitimacy of the memo (and i reckon i made a reasonable case at the time), then sending troops to the borders is much stupider than appears at first glance - and it appears stupid at first glance anyway. if melbourne was under seige, i dont think id be comforted by troops in wangaratta... even if i was 100% confident that the terrorists were furreners. i can only assume that the reason that they make up such stories (and waste an *enormous* amount of resources) is to continue to build the story/justification that they can go invade others at a moments notice. another possibility is that they are just moving troops outta harms way, and unable to help. we've seen this a bit - the shia explosions this week happened while the troops were outta the zone 'out of religious respect', and the bases are consolidating in baghdad, 'in a ring in the outskirts of the city' - and now moving troops to the borders - i hope that the apparent similarity with sharon removing the settlers is a bit of a stretch. i also hope that im wrong about sharon.

speaking of hoping about being wrong - i still dont understand why the sabre-ratlling continues when it appears that the us troops are apparently capacity constrained. on a good day i hope that im over-reacting to the sabre rattling, and hope that they actually believe the hilarious story about libya being a good example which will domino-dance around the world. on the same good day, i hope that, if nothing else, the us will somehow be constrained by the idea that its bad to invade a country if u arent sure about your intelligence. on a less good day, i remember that they knew the 'intelligence' about iraq was wrong and invaded anyway, so theres no point hoping that will be a constraint. and on the same bad day, i notice that they dont seem too concerned about troop constraints - simultaneously sending troops (whether internal or franchise) to the borders, and to haiti, and pakghanistan 'to catch osama now that the winters over' - so that constraint doesnt seem to be very effective.

it seems to me that 'speak softly and carry a big stick' is mostly useful when u have a big stick. if the US has a headcount constraint, then they dont have a big stick unless a) they can massively expand the headcount by either i) drafting everyone ii) drafting other armies (perhaps h8i was an initiation hazing for france and canada)
b) headcount is irrelevant cos they can bomb the shit out of anyone they want - but there still has to be some 'nation building' (morewell) presumably, which requires headcount - unless u just nuke it and kill everyone.

the daily reports that 'obl was captured', 'obl just escaped', 'obl is in the hood', 'obl is working a 711' are lots of fun. the taliban must have some awesome dialysis facilities. im struggling with the future timeline - i dunno when all these things are going to happen - but negotiation theory suggests that the more noise & the closer the increments, the closer u r to an outcome. given that it took only a month or wotever for the memo to fabulously manifest (or two months if u include the info capture-2-release delay) then one might conclude that the cycle time has been reduced. noise-event. noise-event. proximity to both the us election and the iraq 'handover' would also normally reduce the cycle lag.

speaking of the handover - im not sure if ive mentioned before but ive always had the sense that something would happen to disrupt it, despite the apparent rovian determination to get out for electoral reasons, and my position was reinforced by the bombongs, and then the stories about the 'we'll sign after the mourning period' and now this latest. i havent the slightest clue as to how itll play out - i cant read the tv leaves properly - its obvious that something is being planned - i just havent been able to ascertain wot it is. bremer has been demanding (too loudly?) that they'll be out be jun30 (which of course is not the same as having troops there for decades)

as an aside, i still struggle with the idea that there are men with cigars who orchestrate all this shit. im currently of the position that it doesnt really matter whether its a bunch of cigar-toters or that its somehow an systemic outcome. id like to know what the cause is, but it seems as tho the outcomes are predictable anyway.