[Barnacle Bill]

Lordy I hate to weigh in on an OT topic, but 3/4 of a bottle of good Spanish wine made me do it....

Iraq: Gulf War I (1991, Bush 41's war) wasn't finished. Rule#1 absolutely has to be that shooting war between dictator & USA = dictator goes down. Went for Santa Anna, went for the Kaiser, went for Der Fuhrer, went for Togo, that it didn't go for Kim's pappy & Uncle Ho was an abomination. Didn't stop at the Rhine in '45, so shouldn't have stopped at the Euphrates in '91. Therefore, correcting that error would have been self-justified in '92, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, '00, '01, or '02. We finally did it in '03 - what took so long? Everything after that falls under Powell's "you break it, you bought it" doctrine, but IMO there wasn't any choice but to break it (it being Saddam).

Tony Blair: The guy's a big-time lefty. Bush 41 sent political operatives to (unsuccessfully) help his opposition keep him out of power. The bulk of his own party loaths his foriegn policy alignment with the eeeevil Bushchimphitler, and he has to rely on the Tories to keep the wheels on re Iraq. Yet, he sticks his head in the meat grinder anyway. Why? Well, the guy clearly ain't STUPID, so clearly the only answer is that he really believes in the mission and has the STRENGTH OF CHARACTOR to put right before politically expediency. Plus, he's really good at speachifying. So, despite the fact that I agree with next to nothing he's done in "domestic policy", I love the guy.

What the Euros think of the US: Not a matter of great concern to me. I love Europe - love the wine, love the food, love the art, love the history, "some of my best friends are European" (including my wife, BTW), and remain majorly impressed with the French contribution to US independence (I have pics of the placs at Yorktown, and scoffed at the C.2003 "boycott"). However, their opinion on US foriegn policy carries about as much weight with me as the opinion of the waiter on the subject of my retirement investments.

North Korea: We won't do anything. The problem for SK is that Seoul is within artillery range of NK, NK has wads of heavy arty stationed in range to pound Seoul to rubble, and most of the SK economy is concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area. Hence, Kim has SK by the short hairs even w/o nukes. If we did do something, though - look, NK is a 3rd World basket case armed with Soviet export model ("monkey model" as the Soviets themselves called it) equipment or Chinese/local clones thereof, and organized/trained per the demonstrated-ineffective Soviet "military science". Any modern Western force would go through them like... Schwarzkopf through the Iraqis. However, it ain't gonna happen. So, Kim will build his "Dongs" and we'll all jaw about it, and maybe the Japanese will go nuclear too, but someday the wheels will come off and Kim ends up like Ceausescu - unless he does someting totally stupid like launch a missile AT Japan/SK/US - in which case the Schwarzkopf thing probably happens and if he's lucky Kim ends up in is silly show trial like Saddam.