Antiwar.com Blog

Antiwar Radio: Justin Raimondo

Antiwar Radio for January 11, 2007: Antiwar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo on Bush’s speech and the further disaster it portends.

Mp3 here.

Comments welcome at Stress.

The news is good — for once. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the libertarian congressman whose dedication to principle is one of the wonders of the world, is running for the GOP presidential nomination (hat tip: Lew Rockwell).

At last — a Republican who opposes our interventionist foreign policy (consistently and articulately) and who has this to say about the Iraq war. Rep. Paul opposed this rotten war from the very beginning — and, what’s going to be delightful, is that he is not going to be outdone by any Democrat regarding the Iraq issue.

Better yet, this will exacerbate the split in the GOP over the war and give antiwar activists a banner around which to repair during an election season that would otherwise feature the same rogues gallery of warmongers, fence-straddlers, and all-too-familiar faces.

According to NPR correspondent Ivan Watson, Kurdish forces prevented three American humvees from crossing into another part of town. A Kurdish guard told him that after an hour and a half standoff, weapons cocked, four blackhawks came to evacuate some of the US soldiers. The NPR transcript is pending, but you’ll be able to see it later today on the same page you can find the audio.

I got the tip from my “neighbor” William Hartung of the World Policy Institute in New York.

Antiwar Radio: William Lind

The first guest on Antiwar Radio for January 10th, 2007 is William S. Lind, Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, about his anti-interventionist conservatism, 4th generation warfare, American involvement in Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia and the threat to American troops in Iraq should the U.S. bomb Iran.

Mp3 here.

Comments welcome at Stress.

Antiwar Radio: Larisa Alexandrovna

Larisa Alexandrovna, the managing editor of RawStory.com discusses John Negroponte’s departure from the Director of National Intelligence position to be Deputy Secretary of State, his replacement, John McConnell, and the liars who are pushing for war with Iran.

Mp3 here.

Comments welcome at Stress.

Based on a series of secret 1999 government war simulations called The Desert Crossing games, 70 experts suggested that an occupation of Iraq would require at least 400,000 troops and even that might not be enough. And “Desert Crossing” assumptions didn’t include insurgency or civil war.

For calibration purposes, at the height of the Vietnam “War” (Congress didn’t declare war, so “War” has to go in quotes because, according to the U.S. Constitution, it isn’t a war unless congress declares it — ditto the Korean “War” — “Desert Storm” (Iraq “War” I) and the so-called present Iraq “War”), the U.S. had nearly 550,000 troops “in country.”

So, Bush needs at least 400,000.

Right now, the U.S. has approximately 130,000 troops in Iraq.

Let’s do the math: 130,000 plus 22,000 = 152,000. 400,000 minus 152,000 = 248,000.

So, according to the most optimistic figures, Bush will be “only” 248,000 troops short. That means he’ll have way fewer than half as many as needed. And that’s the rosy scenario.

There simply aren’t enough troops available any time soon — even with a draft.

Thank goodness.

And 22,000 more troops are, to be kind, irrelevant.

Why is he doing it then?

We know someone in his Administration can add and subtract at least as well as we can. Heck Dubya himself is a graduate of both Yale and Harvard. Maybe they gave him a “pass” because he was a cheerleader?

Naaaww.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explain Bush’s reasoning. Should you be caught or captured, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge – – –

P.S. How about this – – –
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