posted on January 29, 2002 04:14:28 PM new
The Viet-nam war lasted only a mere fourteen years (1960-1974). With the MA$$IVE PROFITS that were made by that war by the millitary-industrial complex, oil companies, and other multinational firms by getting TAXPAYER DOLLAR$ for that war, you can only imagine that we'll all die of old age before this one is through! What a Gold Rush for arms makers!!
The Phillipines will be so much more different. Even reguar Phillipinos are not happy about seeing us there with combat troops, unlike Afganies, who were glad to see foreign mullahs and troops get smashed by our bombs! The body bags will begin to run into short supply before America begins to wake up and see what the hell is going on!
Borillar
"Friends don't let friends vote republican"
posted on January 31, 2002 12:51:52 PM new
As I've undertood it, the so called terrorist faction in the Philippines numbers only some 200 beligerents. The opposing Philippine government forces are about 7000 strong in that area in which these evildoers operate.
posted on January 31, 2002 01:03:22 PM new
US encircling china?
EXCERPT
Andrew Murray
Guardian
Wednesday January 30, 2002
Ancient Chinese maps invariably placed the celestial kingdom at the centre of the known world. Viewed from Beijing today, the horizon of the map is studded with stars and stripes, fluttering over newly acquired US military bases. Every twist in the war on terrorism seems to leave a new Pentagon outpost in the Asia-Pacific region, from the former USSR to the Philippines. One of the lasting consequences of the war could be what amounts to a military encirclement of China.
First there are the new bases being set up in haste by the US military in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzystan and elsewhere in once-Soviet central Asia. It is curious that, while the Bush administration has repeatedly made it clear that it has little interest in establishing an enduring presence in Afghanistan, and derides any notion of investment in nation-building there, it is at the same time talking of these new bases in the central Asian "Stans" as being semi-permanent.
The US interest in the oil and gas reserves of that part of the world has been well-canvassed, and let no one accuse this Enron administration in Washington of neglecting the interests of Big Oil for a second. But the significance of the new US presence goes well beyond even the signal importance of Exxon Mobil's share price.
Who, for example, would have anticipated that the second military front in the war would be opened in the jungles of the Philippines, to which 600 US troops - with promised British support to come - were dispatched yesterday? The Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrilla movement there numbers only about 500 fighters. It has no prospect of overthrowing the government of the Philippines, a former US colony which has twice required Washington's arms to defeat radical domestic insurgencies since the second world war. Nor is there any suggestion that it has the capacity to organise terrorist attacks on the US mainland (or, indeed, the slightest intention of even trying).
