Oct. 13, 2002 - 20:45 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Doubts

Quoting a lady, Gail Schoettler, well known here in Colorado in her column in the Denver Post - Sunday, October 13 briefly.

Her title, "Bush's war a political gamble." Her first paragraph, "President Bush swooped into Colorado recently, raising big bucks for Republican candidates and rattling his saber against Iraq. The skeptic in me says this rush to war is a cynical attempt to divert voters from the country's dire economic condition just before an election."

There I will leave her for a while and say a few words on the subject putting forth a few thoughts of my own. Where's The Beef ? Better put, Where's the Money ? Are the newspapers fooling us ? I doubt it, can't hardly fake the stock quotations, the layoffs, the scandals. In our country this year it seems like what isn't flooded out, blown out has been pretty well scorched by wild fires because of the drought.

After the November election is over -- will the saber rest in its scabbard and the word get out that our dauntless diplomats have persuaded Saddam to be a good boy ? In a way I hope so. The alternative is to wage a Bush War with worse results than Korea or Viet Nam it seems. At least then there was money in the till to back our military. Will there be any if we go to war now ? Can we go deeper into deficit spending ? That I doubt too.

Are we going to stablize the situation in Afghanistan or eventually pull out of a losing game as we did in Viet Nam, and what effect will that have ? I sincerely doubt that our Pres. can keep all the plates spinning now, let alone fighting Iraq. His Daddy carefully took the time to build an international coalition and a careful military strategy against Iraq. On the other hand the Shrub seems to be proposing to go in and "Kick Ass," seemingly without some sturdy boots to do the job.

Our leadership over the years, whatever the party, seems to have a unique method you might say, of picking the wrong guy to aid in the fighting anywhere. Seems to me that once we aided Iraq with arms and money when Saddam's war with Iran was on. We were instrumental, I think, in seeing that Batista was put out of Cuba in order to put in a man our leadership thought was a fair haired boy - Castro. How many South American military people have we trained in such a way that they could keep a country in fear and under a dictator ?

So it seems to me that our diplomatic folk have been pushed aside while Mr. Pres. says, "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead." So our captain will set the sails, man the helm, run the galley and interpret the charts while keeping an eye on the compass ? Will that work ? I sincerely have my Doubts . . . . . . . . .

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