When the Asia Times can figure out your weaknesses, and do everything but call you "stupid" to your face, it's time to rethink your strategery. No, really.
One of Rumsfeld's pet concerns is that the transformed US military must (and can) do more with less...
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Then there is added concern about what happens if the Korean conflict flares up. Even though the chances of such an eruption are minimal at this time, the contingency planners of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon and the Pacific Command (PACOM) are required by the very nature of their job to be ready for it. The question, then, becomes: What kind of pressure would a Korean contingency put on the already highly stretched US forces all over the globe?.
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...But this option may not be valid for too long in the wake of a study issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. That study states, "If the Pentagon stuck to its plan of rotating active-duty army troops out of Iraq after a year, it would be able to sustain a force of only 67,000 to 106,000 active duty and reserve army and Marine forces." It went on to add, "A large force would put at risk the military's operations elsewhere around the globe."
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Bush is aware that any sharing of authority with the UN or with other nations is likely to jeopardize his own vision of what the post-Saddam Iraq should look like. The element of realism among the Europeans - and I also include the United Kingdom on this point - is such that they will have no objection in seeing the establishment of a moderate Islamic democracy in Iraq. However, there is little doubt that the Bush administration will have a difficult time accepting that proposition, since such an acceptance would come into serious conflict with its other major foreign objective - transformation of Muslim Middle East.
Auntie Donnie would be well advised to remember how well the motto "Faster, Better, Cheaper" has served another massive government bureacracy, NASA.
I think that the Asia Times analysis hits one point straight on... the 1600 Crew obsession with transforming the Middle East towards some as-yet-to-be announced ends. I think that the "end-of-times" folks like DeLay and his ilk are as much or more a part of this as the Neocons. It doesn't take much to influence the weak mind of President Does it For a Buck'n'change...just an expensive suit and a sincere line of bullshit. And he's in.
