> Wouldn't it be pretty far-fetched, then, to think that one loose faction
> would be able to slip a little thing like the Iraq invasion past all the
> other factions - unless the other factions liked the idea for their own
> separate reasons?
I dunno, really. They don't invite me to these meetings. I'd expect that you might need to line up some allies for something as preposterous as the Iraq adventure. Maybe some desperate third-tier adventurers like Halliburton and Blackwater? Though the latter is more fourth-tier, of course.
Then of course somebody should really study the internal politics of the military. The generals are usually a lot more cautious than the politicians -- they're already generals, after all, and so they have everything to lose and nothing to gain, personally, from a war. But there are some real nut cases with stars on their shoulders -- the name Wesley Clark comes to mind -- and of course some of them have had political ambitions. The name Wesley Clark comes to mind. And then there are the colonels and Lt-Cols, looking to make their bones and become generals.
As regards Israel in particular, there's been a lot of chumminess over the years between elements of the Israeli military and the US military. Personal bonds and sympathies like this are not entirely inconsequential.
"Factions," I think, is the illuminating concept. Guelphs and Ghibellines. Crips and Bloods. Zionists and Arabists?
-- --
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com
"I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President, and I think I will go along with them."
-- Barack Obama
(Okay, okay, it was really Calvin Coolidge.)