From: Gene McAloon 

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 11:02:00 -0500, John Cuccia  wrote:

>I think so too.  I'm beginning to think that the sole reason for the
>invasion was to establish a beachhead in the Middle East from which to
>launch incursions into Iran and Syria.  Hussein's Iraq was the weakest
>(militarily) "unfriendly" nation in the region.
>
>The WMD/ties-to-AQ/for-the-oil/establish-a-democracy rationales were
>all smokescreens.

The genesis of the Iraq war, the paper Wolfowitz and Feith wrote for an
Israeli think tank, named Syria and Iran as the main threats to Israel, but
named Iraq as the country the Americans might most easily be persuaded to
invade.  The US presence in Iraq presumably would be a threatening presence
and possibly curb the two countries' support of Hezbollah and Hamas.

As always with Bush, the plan has failed. He can't even control Iraq, let
alone think of moving into Iran or Syria and his presence in Iraq looks
more humiliating than threatening. At that, he is busily engaged in a rapid
disengagement effort to lessen the political damage the war has caused him.

Bush's war could easily be seen as farce, broad farce at that, except for
the lives that have been lost on all sides.

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