Which country is next on the agenda after Iraq?

um, I just hope there is no other country.

i. after ww1, the net cost of policing the brit empire greatly outweighed any financial return (he specifically mentioned the cost of policing iraq in the 20s, but i can't remember what other — presumably incoming — sum he said it dwarfed)
ii. something the last brit governor of aden said to denis healey: "when the sun finally goes down on the empire, it will have given just two things to the world — soccer, and the phrase FUCK OFF"

A war against North Korea will inevitably be a pyrrhic victory and thus avoided.

policing iraq in the 20s

Probably had something to do with their air control bombing techniques. 80 years later, the U.S. follows the U.K.'s lead (Alexander Cockburn in this week's New York Press - scroll down to "80 Years..." headline).

I think it's more likely that, should the Bush Cadre have their way, Sudan, Syria, and (probably) Lybia are on the list, using the whole "they're terrorists/they sponsor terrorism" argument AND the fact that they're relatively under-developed and therefore (logically) easier to defeat. Makes me sick.

so did Poland ... in 1920 and, um, 1600 (read it in the liner notes to mussorgsky's boris godunov)

anyway, i nominate Tuvalu ... we need those .tv webpages, dammit!

We've had an easy time of it of late.

wasn't there a lot of talk pre 11-9 about how the Americans were going to invade Colombia, on the basis that they did really well last time they launched an open ended war against guerrillas in a jungle country with loads of drugs in it?

Or stop exporting Guinness tack.

Not an invasion, but military assistance and "advisors". Currently the US military has many civilian contractors in Columbia providing various non-combat support services to the Columbian army.

you know, not me personally, that's what I think they'll go after next. But not with invasion forces, just smaller forces designed to knock out specific targets.

Whilst they have N. Korea in their sights, ic an't see it, as it risks being very messy indeed, so there'll be a trade off between ideal wishlist country (who needs to be taken out?)and pragmatic power politics (who can take out easiest?).

he said it dwarfed 2/3 of the domestic healthcare budget i think - potentially a bit misleading as I'm unsure how much the state contributed to healthcare pre-NHS?

surely one rationale for invading pakistan would be that half of al qaeda, and possibly OBL himself are currently sunning themselves in hammocks in the tribal territories?

the underlying argt was that, to be run even vaguely in a way that allowed brits at home to continue to feel they were being more humane and civilised than they were cruel greedy bastards, meant the empire lost money (and all the while the ppl being ruled kept remarking that as far as THEY were concerned, empire rule wz neither humane nor civilised)

you know, not me personally, that's what I think they'll go after next. But not with invasion forces, just smaller forces designed to knock out specific targets.

We've already done this at least once- didn't we use some kind of smart bomb or something to hit a jeep in Yemen that we thought had some Al Qaeda people in it this fall?

Let's take it!

(I originally proposed it cause that's where the 9/11 Al-Qaeda bunch semed to come from)