Originally posted by: brencat
That's one hell of a chess player in the administration to accomplish all that. On the other hand, it could be just speculation, wild coincidence and more anti-Bush conspiracy crap from the lefties on this forum. My bet is on the latter.
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I think this has much to do with GWB himself, its more Cheney and Rice playing their cold war games at the same time that Russia has, flush will oil money, recovered from their loss of empire and economic reorganization.
To some extent, some of the previous GWB&co actions would have been unthinkable in a two opposing super power world, but the US had almost nothing restraining it in a one super power world.
And IMHO, Rice, Cheney, and various neocons have been all too eager various things without thinking things through, it may be great when it works, but when it fails, they get a hell of a lot of people killed.
Cheney is widely believed to be the hidden hand in the 2006 Israeli incursion into Lebanon, Rice urged Bhutto to come back to Pakistan in the hopes she would grant us permission to put boots on the ground in Pakistan while propping up Musharraf, of course the same people were behind selling the Iraq and Afghan occupations, and oops when 20 20 hindsight shows they were not smart brainfarts, they never learn and are as eager as ever to try something else.
And have public ally stated that having the opportunity to try something is an opportunity not to be squandered.
But at the end of the day, the measure of any administration is often not in what they did, but what they were smart enough not to do.