----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Goff makes the US military sound grossly overrated here. How credible
> is this? Aren't the Russians & Chinese pretty impressed with it? The
> war game may have been fixed, but Goff conceded the US will walk all
> over iraq anyway. So what gives?
>
> Doug
==================
Although a large, long war -say a Western European size theatre of conflict- involving the US against an opponent with parity seems unlikely in the near-medium future, there's no reason to think the US military would not fight as fiercely as it did when it moved through France on the way to Germany with something as large at stake as securing a happy future for the Fortune 500. Yeah, The Russians had knocked some serious wind out of the Nazis, but that was Hitler's mistake and counterfactualizing a different scenario would be fruitless.
The Pentagon does not seem thrilled with large scale conflict in Jungles-Tropical climates anymore. Massive arsenals of techno-toys aside, the problem is Langley and Burtonsville and the National Paranoia complex that keeps reproducing Rumsfelds and Cheneys etc. with each generation. How to get 'em while they're in their cribs........
Ian