noteworthy wrote:

] How much does he think the addition of French and German
] soldiers would have improved things?

That, btw, is a very stupid question. Countries like France, Germany, and Canada are not terribly useful in terms of the amount of actual soldiers and military hardware that they provide. The equipment and troops they do provide are not useless, and the sacrifices made by those men and women should be respected as one would respect any soldier's sacrifice. But ultimately, its about money.

Those countries provide significant amounts of financing to cover the operational costs of large U.S. troop deployments that they support. Lack of solid international support for Iraq ][ has significatly increased our national deficit. And an unlikely future scenario (which Al Q certainly hopes for) would be a rift between Europe and the US which was so deep that anti-terror efforts would loose international financial support. The U.S. would have significant difficulty paying for operations without causing major impacts on livelyhood back home. The economy would suffer. Flexibility would be limited.

[ Agreed, but it's not Iraq v2.0 in isolation that boosted the defecit... all those tax cuts we made, concurrent with a vastly expensive war (and much more than projections) that really turned it to 11.

Also, on top of what decius said, I think the involvment of other nations was as important for the issue of credibility as any tangible aid. If the was had been executed under the auspices of NATO, the UN, all of Europe, etc. it'd deflect some of the rampant anti-americanism, even within the region. Just an opinion I have, though, and we'll never know at this stage. -k]

RE: About That Iraq Vote