Re Klare---says Bush "cdn't fight a Cold War if he wanted to". The reason he is short of troops for Iraq is because he is doing just that.  The USA has 50 to 200 soldier in about 110 countries throughout the world : training, guarding, laying the ground for support of USA as a great power in a COLD War. Mr Klare treats the phrase Cold War as if it's not-----not a cold war. That is stupid. Why doesn't he just lay out carefully what a Cold War is and how it's fought.

It is a war of ideology, of newspapers, of diplomacy, of foreign aide, of spying, of training, of sending sizable military missions to various countries, of military aide. The war in Iraq is suffering because Bush is beginning a new Cold War. Klare just wants coverage and readers so badly that he is arguing as if the USA has 450,000 in its military. Why doesn't he do the math?

He's right about some things but so blinded by hatred of Bush that he doesn't bother with numbers of minor deployments---Romania to Columbia to Macedonia to Bosnia to major deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama can't admit the surge is successful and it will probably cost him the election.  Were the core of Bush people Cold Warriors? Probably.   But does that include Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice?

And they didn't come into office in 2000. It was 2001.

Bush's cabinet was designed to avoid conflict : to get approved quietly and quickly : Powell, whom everybody in the Senate loved and admired; Ashcroft, who had been a member of the Senate for about 10 years; Rumsfeld who had held the job before; Rice, a black woman and maybe the smartest of the lot (at Nat Sec Ad). Is is accurate to call Rice a Cold Warrior? I don't think so.

OK, then there are another set Amb to UN : Vacant for 1 1/2 yrs; CIA, the Clinton appointee; Dpt of Ag, a woman from the most populous state; Sec of Trans, another Clinton holdover, who was clearly left there as an impotent space filler for the status quo on energy; Sec of Energy : I don't even recall who that was. An Arab from Detroit Ebrahim, I think, another guy guy to fill the chair and not bring change (former member of the Senate from Michigan).

Global grand master? Who is that?

Well the USA went into Iraq for 5 reasons, one of which was to guarantee  Saudi oil for Japan. Now one cd argue that is an illegitimate use or a legitimate unwise use of Am soldiers and I respect that. But to argue that Bush and Cheney are amateurs and Bush is stupid is childish. Really, just childish. The geo=political situation looks like this : Japan has wealth but no oil and doesn't want and army (more or less).  The USA needs Japanese capital and Japanese trade. It needs Japanese banks to buy its bonds. Now if Klare wants to argue that  it is sending troops to the  gulf to keep the engines of the bond market running, I won't argue. But to always retreat to the point where Bush is dumb and backward and Cheney is greedy and evil and Rumsfeld is power hungry and arrogant;  well, that is very immature. Just take things as they are : the USA operates a larger army than Russia and spends more on its military than Russia and has military missions in several countries which are old Russian allies. That is realty. REALTY> Go with that. Just for one goddamned day! Realty.


Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania : they are all more anti-Russian than Aschcroft and Cheney. Cheney may be a calculating opportunist. Cheney maybe an elitist. Cheney may be serving oil companies while on the job, but Cheney is not an amateur , not a child emotionally. He is what he is and he is not going to be defeated by being portrayed as less than he is----OK, maybe 20% less , maybe as 80% of what he is-----but not 5%.
Not 15%
The war in Iraq is working out well for the USA. The conflict in Georgia playing to American hands----in Vilnius, in Rega, in Bucharest, in Kiev. But Putin is the grand master?  Hey, I like Putin. I even find him amusing. But let's recognize that the USA is moving into Poland and Ukraine while Russia is not moving into Mexico and Haiti.

For Christ's sake, I think the USA shd develop alternative fuels. I want people to spend one week contemplating the effects of a USA which imports 14 barrels of petro each year. The reason I say 14 and not zero ; because in some equations we might want to divide by the amt of barrels imported and you can't divide by zero! Just take that one week and do the math : commodities brokers do that----that's why they can make us much as a relief pitcher still have an arm like a waitress : because they calculate not fulminate. Klare has no sense of this. Klare needs to look at the issue from various perspectives.


Klare needs to look at the numbers for fuel consumption.

Bush and Cheney will be amateurs at best when Russian schools replace English schools in Mexico City. Spanish is growing in the poor schools in Colorado but losing in the rich schools in Mx City. Again : REALTY.