Giday James O'Neill

Your incessant, bloody-minded, Putin foreign policy outlook hereby qualifies you for Pilger's Svakom Alice award http://youtu.be/CTAzu4rq360 .

Enjoy

Six weeks ago I looked up ISIS on the CIA website. Said there were about 3000-4000 fighters; a loose coalition, disaggregated. Last week the same website stated there were 40,000 well trained ISIS fighters. Next week?

Pete, as I regard Putin as head and shoulders above most so-called western leaders I suppose I should take your reference as a compliment. However, to actually focus on the issues Bruce raise and the points I made, where exactly can you point to error on my part (as opposed to having a different view from you.)

As for your link, you are sinking to ever lower depths of juvenile conduct. Pathetic in a grown man really.

[Deleted for abuse.]

Au contraire, individual,

Most of the "decent folk on OLO" make allowances for the fact that you are so utterly bereft of articulate debating skills that you can rarely ever post anything more sophisticated than calling fellow OLOers "morons".

Pathetic!

Im with Bruce and James O'Neil. It seems like a well reasoned assessment of the situation to me and I liked the reference to Shakespeare too. Shakespeare was/is perhaps the most astute observer/analyst of the perennial follies of the human condition. Remember too that there was no "God" on Shakespeare's stage - just human beings dramatizing their naked malevolence on to the world stage.

The comparison to Vietnam has some use but we now live in a completely different world wherein, via the internet etc everyone and everything is instantaneously inter-connected. Furthermore the entire world is now saturated with deadly weapons (conventional, chemical, biological and even potentially nuclear) and they are in the hands of every group that has a real of imagined grievance, some/many of which have murderously "reasonable" intentions - the psychotic thugs in Iraq for instance.
But then the Bush/Blair/Howard coalition of the killing had shock and awe murderously "reasonable" intentions too - the lying rodent was awarded the USA "freedom" medal by the village idiot from Texas for services rendered. The mission to completely destroy the culture and infrastructure of Iraq was well and truly accomplished.

Anyone for Blow Back!

Nobody has the remotest clue as to how things will fan out. We can be sure that whatever is done (or not done) there will be all sorts of unintended consequences for the millions of human beings in the various countries of the Middle East, and for humankind altogether.
The possibility of a global conflagration (WWIII) is very much on the cards.