He has convinced Tony Blair to go ahead with it, even to the extent of not giving Parliament a vote on the matter. (There you have it, a Westminster PM with Presidential powers.) And Australia will be more than happy to do whatever Uncle George asks.
Together the three nations will send 300,000 troops, possibly overthrow Saddam and replace him with an oil-company-appointed despot (the two reasonably popular alternatives, Shiite Islamists and Communists, are unacceptable), and undoubtedly fuck up relations with the Islamic world even more severely, priming the pump for new waves of populist terrorism, meaning that the next Osama will have many angry young men willing to kill and die on his command.
You say that 300,000 troops are out there chomping at the bit, but how are they going to get into Iraq in the first place? Any Arab government that supported the invasion would immediately be swept from power by its outraged citizens, which means that Dubya, Blair, and Major would have to fly every piece of equipment straight to the front lines. Doable, I suppose, but remember that Gulf War I started only after Daddy Bush spent a few months stockpiling supplies right on the border. Also keep in mind that the US is already dropping a billion dollars a month to fight the war on terror, and that attacking Iraq for the second time would make for one of the most expensive and complicated wars ever. Barring a second terrorist attack that shoots Dubya's approval rating to 100%, the whole Saddam Hussein Smackdown thing just isn't going to fly.
GWB: "There's been another one? Wait a minute, this goat story I'm reading to the kids is really fascinating."
Can someone reassure me that "Le Monde Diplomatique" is some kind of LaRouchean hotbed of paranoid delusion, so I can go back to Celebrity Big Brother?
"After the failure of the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles in April 1961, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff devised a prescient plan. The covert strategy, uncovered by Bamford, involved a terror campaign against Americans, to be blamed on Cuba, to justify a US invasion. The casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation, a secret report argued. Codenamed Operation Northwood, the plan included hijacked planes, and bombs in Miami and Washington. The plans called for developing the international image of the Cuban government as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western hemisphere."
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:ou-vmPF6B3IC:mondediplo.com/2001/11/18nsa+Operation+N
arses.
I think it's real. Mind you, a lot of things were planned but never carried out. I.e., in the 1960s, the US had a plan of detonating a nuclear device on the Moon for all the earth to see, just to show those Russkies who's boss. And then there were CIA-associated neurologist Jose Delgado's plans to implant soldiers and the like with mind-control devices based on Skinnerian conditioning. (Though one could argue that why should they bother if they already have TV.)
As far as massive invasions go, I won't exactly be holding my breath waiting for this one. Bush's sheer stupidity has screwed up his foreign policy to the point where a coherent campaign of any sort is out of the question. His unquestioning knee-jerk support of Israel sent the entire Arab world into such a rage that not even Kuwait will allow an invasion to take place within its borders. Bush is not a big picture kind of a guy, so the chances of him convincing any other country to follow his "vision" are slim at best. His two-fisted cowboy metaphors sure are quaint and entertaining, but they remain insufficient for navigating complex issues.