Disagree that Bush and Cheney are weak. They can do any damned thing they want withOUT Congressional approval for 90 days. If they want to nuke Iran, who’s to stop them? If they want to go toe-to-toe and tank to tank with Putin, are you seriously telling me that Pelosi will be able to call the Pentagon and say, “Stop them!”?

Exactly HOW are they weak, and who in America or elsewhere is going to stop them from implementing whatever they want to do, provided they can scrounge up enough soldiers to do it with? And, as another commenter noted, in this particular instance America doesn’t really need boots on the ground to be a nuisance as long as we have airplanes freed up (we do) and submarines splashing around (also do) and aircraft carriers with nothing else in particular to do. Russia’s got a hundred tanks — big whoop.

As I’ve noted before, Whiskey makes really good comments a lot of the time, but he does have a tendency towards pessimism. And I think because he posts so frequently that has the effect of stampeding the rest of the lemmings over the same cliff. It’s interesting because I don’t see Whiskey’s pessimism as being anti-American but sometimes that’s what it adds up to.

I’m a little stunned that Fred seems to agree with Whiskey, though. That’s unusual and proves that pessimism is catching.

I love the idea of throwing Russia out of the WTO. I think they should be summarily banned from all world organizations and left to flail in the same twilight zone of savagery and barbarism as the Arabs and OPEC inhabit. Give ‘em something to be paranoid about.