If the war was about al Qaeda, and OBL — who had, in fact, initiated violence against the USA, then yes… I’d say that if we haven’t yet lost, we’re in difficult defensive position now.

When intelligence says that an area is a hornets nest, we need to bomb the bat-crap out of that area. Sure, civilian lives will be lost, but isn’t that what happens in all wars? After a while, civilians won’t allow those people to infilitrate.

IMO – If we don’t start now, we’ll end up fighting on a much larger scale in the next 5 years. And then, we won’t have any choice but to use “Shock & Awe”.

As for Captain Ed’s notion that we can be indifferent to Musharraf’s fall, he does have nukes. Real ones. So, no, we’re not going to be careless about Musharraf.

As much as I despise bush for how he screwed up the war on terror, I am left with the fact that I still live in the USA and my fate is linked to his. I keep thinking of the movie “A Bridge Too Farâ€Â?. It’s about Operation Market-Garden during WWII. When we started diverting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq we ended up overextending ourself. Now we are going to loose both conflicts.

The only viable solutions I can think of are :
1)Reinstate the draft and fully mobilize the country for war. (a political non starter)
2)Abandon Iraq and redeploy all forces to Afghanistan. (Something bush’s ego will never allow)
3)Abandon overt military action in both countries then heavily invest in covert operation in both countries. (Also not politically feasible)