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...
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:20:42 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:19:56 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

I think we'd both be surprised by how quickly the military can deploy in
great numbers.

We sure have not seen them do it, ever in my life, unless you count
Granada.
It took 6 months to get into Kuwait and the "surges" take about that
long
They did rush into Somalia without proper support and got their ass
kicked by a street gang. The mountains of Afghanistan is infinitely
harder that Iraq, Kuwait or Somalia. Just keeping 5000 men in food and
ammo takes a significant effort in a place with no airports and not
much flat ground to create drop zone.


We had plenty of time in Afg. There was a fairly long run up to that war.
We
started bombing in October.


We did not have any time. Where are you getting that? They didn't
start until October and that was not in the area around Tora Bora. We
started in the areas where we had local support and we did pretty well
there with our covert forces. We lost OBL in Tora Bora about 2 months
later and that is only 6 miles from Pakistan. There was no way we
could bring in the number of troops to secure that area from half way
around the world before he could run 6 miiles.We dod bounce the rubble
for a couple weeks and hoped we would get lucky. They may have been
able to get the air strikes in faster but that was about all we could
do.
Right now we should be trying to bribe as many of these tribal leaders
with stuff they want and ratchet back the combat mission. We have
reached the point of diminishing returns. They are spending
$300,000,000 a month there according to NBC Sunday morning and that is
ridiculous. You can buy those guys a lot of goats for $300,000,000.
What are we going to do if the next attack comes from Somalia or
Yemen? Dump $300,000,000 a month in there too?
Just to put this in perspective, that $300,000,000 would buy health
care for 300,000 families. (at the Obama care max of $1,000 a month)

We could have brought in many more troops if Rumsfeld had set up the
invasion that way. He didn't.

Honestly, I'm getting more and more disillusioned with the Afg. war. Either
Petraeus turns it around or we should get the heck out, and keep a health
supply of drones and special forces available.