Reply #8: Which means that the US

[cliss]

has learned nothing from the incident. I would have thought that the Turks saying 'no' to the US the last time around would have sat up and taken notice that there ARE a few countries which can actually stand up to the mighty US and say 'no' every once in a while.

But alas, that was not the case.

This sort of thing really seems over the top to me. It leads me to believe that foreign policy is being run by a small handful of people, maybe as few as 1 or 2. And those two must be Old Rum and Wolfowitz. Really off the deep end.

Patrick: your post echoes my sentiments exactly. I just got done reading a long article about Paul Wolfowitz and his career. It appears that this man, who is now running the show along with his supervisor, has spent a career buried in books. He got his PhD, and spent most of his career doing analyses and vector diagrams, and extrapolating possible outcomes. He's an analyst, in the final recknoning. He has no business planning wars.

What does this man know about human nature? Probably nothing. It seems as though he believes he can push people around like little chess pieces, like you wrote. When they don't cooperate, he can't understand it.