[Cowperson]

that America will spend billions of dollars chasing the terrorist threat around the globe until the United States is left with no allies,

They're more likely to gain allies than lose them in that scenario.

We know Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were only paying lip service to fighting terrorism until recently when Al-Quada tried to assassinate President Mushariff in Pakistan and a series of deadly bombings occurred in Saudi, threatening the rule of the royal family. Now those two countries appear to be genuinely hunting the evil in their midst and have had success.

Similarily, an American foe on the Iraqi question, Russia, is definitely in the anti-terror groove after Beslan and a few other attacks.

As well, while Iraq might be a one-country show (sorry Brits, just making a point), Afghanistan is a genuine multi-national effort with a UN mandate.

And NATO is now training soldiers and police in Iraq I believe.

Working for your theory Lanny is the observation that al-Queda is attempting to open places like Africa and Indonesia as fronts and I saw an article the other day indicating that a target may be global oil production with places like Nigeria and obviously Arabia as targets for insurgency and sabotage.

The latter makes some sense to me in terms of a credible strategy.

Just my observations.

As to Afghanistan, the Soviets were effectively winning until the Americans supplied Stinger missiles to the insurgents which negated the advantage of Russian air power, particularly assault helicopters.

Our military experts on the board might disagree, and I will bow to their judgement, buts that the way it looked to me.

The insurgents in Iraq seemed to have something going in that regard about a year ago but their surface to air capability has disappeared.

Cowperson