Eating Soup with a Fork

I think even if you had 1 million troops in Iraq, it wouldn't have mattered because the pocking order to shoot the rioters/looters/criminals would still not have been given. Without shoot on sight orders, there ain't gonna be no law or order, restored or not.

Increasing troops is not going to scare Iran. Iran already knows we can destroy them utterly, they just don't think we'll do it. And they are right. Even now we can cripple Iran by ordering our submarines to initiate Unrestricted Submarine Warfare on all Iranian vessels. You don't think it will happen? Congratulations, the Iranians agree with you.

Have we demonstrated our willingness and ability to use a "nuclear gadget" like we did in Japan, to our enemies? Why should they believe us, given that we have not launched a nuclear demonstration bombing of any piece of Iranian or Syrian territory?

Has Iran demonstrated their ability to kill people and take hostages? ya. As for fomenting rebellion in the South, Iran was doing that in day 1. Fomenting attacks, day 1 too. There is no threat to their threats. They can say they are going to unleash guerrila warfare, but what the heck do we care given what we faced in Iraq so far? That's like Al Qaeda saying if we don't release the peeps in GitMo, they'll start chopping American head's off. Hello, people, you've already been doing that. It ain't a credible threat if you're are already doing what you threatened you will do if we don't do what you tell us.

We have half our army, if not more, just sitting in America. Training. You don't need more troops, you just mobilize what you got and get the money from Congress. What we really need to do is increase defense spending to above 10% of our GDP. The troops have been complaining that reconstruction from State Department is like Katrina Relief from FEMA. And they're right, the only people that are competent in the entire government is the FBI and the military. That's about it. Most of our SC judges are toobusy laughing over KELO and property being stolen from the people, to do their jobs. The military, if given enough of a carte blanche, can serve all manners of roles. Reconstruction, disaster relief, etc etc. Bump the Pentagon budget to 10% GDP instead of the measly 3 or 4% we have now. Which is amazing. How do you fight a war with less than 5% of your GDP?
26
United States 4.06 2005 est.
Wow, are we crazy or what?

Iran is piss poor compared to what we can flood the market with. I think we need to raise taxes on Noam Chomsky, George Soros, and all the Hollywood actors... that might help pay for the war effort. I mean, it's not like they're going to pay taxes voluntarily, regardless of their rhetoric.

I tend to agree that Bush is not doing as much as he can, to make himself out to be a little crazy guy with a nuclear football just itching to blow somebody up. Bush tends not to want to seem like a bully, scaring the little Middle Easterners. But that is exactly what he needs to do, to demonstrate his power and to prevent new conflicts.

Btw, counter-insurgency guerrila operations is like eating soup with a fork. It takes willpower and fast reaction forces (Apaches), not "man power". A strong man eating soup with a fork doesn't get anywhere if he grasps the fork stronger. A fast man, with a lot of willpower and patience, will eat the soup faster and actually succede in eating a soup with only a fork.