Nuke threat most effective deterrent

Jim Riley, Las Vegas

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

John McCain has promised to increase the size of the military if he is elected president. The only rationale for a larger army is if we invade and occupy a small country. Didn’t we learn anything from Vietnam, Iraq or the Soviet Union’s debacle in Afghanistan?

We kept the evil empire at bay for 40 years with the threat of nuclear retaliation. That will also work against Bush’s axis of evil.

The 60,000 troops and the equipment that we have had stationed in South Korea and Germany for the past 50 years are great for the military-industrial complex and the economy in those countries, but they’re a burden on our taxpayers.

President Bush would never have invaded Iraq if he hadn’t been duped, by Ahmad Chalabi, into believing that the fighting would be over in a couple of weeks — “Mission Accomplished.”

Since the invasion, Bush has wanted to station thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq permanently. Why else would he build a $1 billion embassy in a country with only 25 million people?

It is ironic that the GOP is so in love with the military-industrial complex when that is exactly what Republican President Eisenhower, a former general, warned us against in his farewell address.

Iraq will not become World War III because Muslim armies can’t fight, as tiny Israel has proved time and again. They can’t fight our military with suicide bombers.