Dowd's excellent point today in "Right Axis. Wrong Evil."

[Hoping4Change]

Maureen Dowd in her column quotes Michael Isikoff and Michael Hersh report (Newsweek) who make the excellent point that with Iraq out of the picture, the US has alot less leverage with Iran.

"Washington seems less able to force Tehran to change its ways, especially since Bush has removed one of the chief threats to the mullah regime, Saddam Hussein, and is now bogged down in Iraq. As one intel official said before the Iraq war: 'The Iranians are tickled by our focus on Iraq.' "


Just as the invasion of Iraq was "a Christmas gift" to Osama, as the C.I.A. official who wrote a book as "Anonymous" put it, in terms of recruiting in the Muslim world and diverting the U.S., so it may be a gift to Iran. U.S. military officials say Iranian agents have been helping Iraqi insurgents as a way to shape Iraq into a Shiite fundamentalist satellite."



http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/opinion/22dowd.html?hp

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Basically we are crippled for any other (i.e. additional) conflict

unless it's all missiles and nukes, those are still available.

[izzie]

2. Trouble with that is it seems the people who fight us are not into it.

How come they do mot use our rules? We seem to win a lot of battles and lose a lot of wars of late. Time to re-think the plan maybe. All those nice costly bombs do not seem to do it. Then who will make the big money if we can not talk these people into fighting our way? I think Europe figured this out years ago.

[Hoping4Change]

4. But Americans are safer says Bush.

:puke:

[faithnotgreed]

3. that is an awesome article today.... she makes you laugh and think

just like michael moore...