Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader opened up his mailbox today and cried out “Great Jeezey Chreezey!” while doing his best James Mason impression. It is time for a Minion Mailbag!

First, allow your Maximum Leader to register his total disgust for certain minions who choose to heap fame and honours on his ministers (or one minister in particular) and not even give a semi-convincing complement to your Maximum Leader as an afterthought. Remember minions, it is the MIKE WORLD ORDER! That is your Maximum Leader’s name you know, Mike. It is not the Smallholder World Order, or the Hominidal World Order… The Mike World Order. Your Maximum Leader now realizes that the early years of the MWO will be characterized by larger Re-education Camps than he first expected. Gonna have to do some housecleaning people… Ah well… Don’t say your Maximum Leader didn’t warn you.

So… On to message one from the Minion Mailbag. “Powermfm” writes:

That guy claiming not to be James Webb was pretty darn good! One little filip to his contribution . . . after being so Euro-centric for so many years and letting things get out of hand in the Middle East this country has lost its bases in Saudia and Turkey isn’t so welcoming any more it was really rather kind of necessary to whup gluteus maximus in Iraq where the Big Bad Guy was actually the weakest murdering despot in the area. WMD was a smokescreen even a blind man could see. The most massively destructive weapons Saddam had consisted of tons and tons and tons of m-o-n-e-y. Shame, utter shame on gwb for the lying. Ditto Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al. That they do it at all is horrendous. That they do it so blatantly badly is super-horrendous.

Your Maximum Leader responds: THAT GUY WAS PRETTY DARN GOOD!!!! What is it about the Minister of Propaganda that just draws people to him?!?! He must have the “Kavorka.” Women want him, and men want to be like him. It is crazy!

NB to other loyal minions: Does no other minister excite you all like the Minister of Propaganda? Do you not love your Maximum Leader? The Minister of Propaganda blogs once or twice over the span of a week or so. And just like that! Fan mail. Your Maximum Leader didn’t get his first fan mail for more than two months after beginning his blog. (He got hate mail shortly thereafter.) Does your Maximum Leader have to hire Zogby or Morris to take a poll to see which of us is most loved? Has the Minister of Propaganda become the Sergey Kirov to your Maximum Leader’s Stalin? Oh Despair! Perhaps the MWO housecleaning will start with our very own Minister of Propaganda! (Unless your Maximum Leader can find his price too… He found the Minister of Agriculture’s…) But I digress…

To address the content of the minion’s message, and by extension the Minister of Propaganda; did we go after the weakest murderous despot in the region? Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure about that. He believes that most of those regimes are houses of cards that will collapse under a little pressure. As your Maximum Leader has said before, and will say again, WMD was not the only reason for invading Iraq. It was the one most easy to understand, and most readily reported. Did Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld lie? When dealing with intelligence matters it is hard to tell. What is clear is that the President and his advisors are going to stick to their guns on this. The intelligence at the time indicated that WMD were there. Intelligence is often unclear, and like any set of information (sometimes without full context) can be interpreted differently by sensible people.

The Minister of Propaganda did mention the UN inspectors were in Iraq, but that they were withdrawn before they could do their job. Your Maximum Leader stated that the Hussein regime did not make a reasonable effort to comply with UN resolutions. Your Maximum Leader admits now that he made a poor choice of words. Hussein let the inspectors in, but started the same song and dance routine that had gone on for decades before. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe this is compliance. To keep this part shorter (and pithier), the UN is a process driven organization. Their inspectors would gladly have fallen into the same routine as before. Hussein would keep this up for as long as he could. Without US pressure, the routine could have gone on for more decades. That was not acceptable policy for the US after 9/11.

And to make a quick address to the very valid point of the M of P about the Army War College report. Your Maximum Leader read over the report. The important missing element is this, no military commander wants to occupy a foreign nation. The Army War College is making a valid and incomplete observation. Occupation doesn’t run among the strengths of our military. Indeed, the US military’s strengths are mobility and superior training and firepower. We are good at the “glory” aspects of war. We excel at making war. But, very importantly, the US has not fought any type of military action in over 100 years where we have not followed up combat by being an occupying power for a significant time. The Army War College should give this a little more thought - as should policy makers. If we fight wars, and then occupy countries; why do we only prepare to fight wars? Why don’t we train for the other half of the war? If we don’t know how to do it, we ought to learn awfully quick.

Now on to our second item in the minion mailbag…

This item comes from “Carpemundi.” And guess what? It too is about the Minister of Propaganda’s most recent post! What the hell is going on here? Two messages from different readers about the same post by the newest Minister! Stop the insanity! At least this one isn’t all praise and support… Carpemundi writes:

Regarding the post 16 March:

America is the only superpower on the planet — the only nation that has the reach and strength to change a government anywhere on the planet.

While thier direct mlitary might does not compare, I think that close examination of the capabilities of the Chinese, especially in their intel, technology, and political weight, will reveal that they are indeed more powerful than anyone else on the planet (except the US) and may be the only country which we cannot defeat.

-carpemundi

Your Maximum Leader responds: This is an excellent point. The last time he gave it much thought he determined that the US military had a significant advantage over the Chinese military in just about every single category, save two. The first was sheer manpower. This is a factor of population more than anything else. The second is political will. Now if you will forgive your Maximum Leader in advance, he is about to have a G. Gordon Liddy moment. The Chinese Communists have got more political willpower than we do. They are relentless in their aims. They are happy to take the time to plot and plan and wait until the moment is right. It is this political will that makes them very powerful indeed. A day will come where China will finally decide to take a stand for something they want. The “something” will likely be Taiwan. And the Chinese will, as John Derbyshire once wrote (and your Maximum Leader paraphrases), say they are annexing Taiwan and are prepared to fight over it. The US will say okay, we’ll fight too if that’s the way you want to be. Then the Chinese will calmly state that they are prepared to lose 6 major cities to win this fight. They will ask the US how many cities we are prepared to lose. And we will not know if they are bluffing. Your Maximum Leader is afraid of the outcome of that day.

But on a more positive note, Chinese society is changing and they are growing more fond of western consumerism. And war generally isn’t good for shopping! So we can hope that the Chinese develop their own variant of the “mall-rat” subculture and lose their political will.

NB to Carpemundi from your Maximum Leader: When you choose to start blogging again regularly, please let your Maximum Leader know. It is always good to read your writings.

For some more pithy comments on the ongoing discussion here, check out the Big Hominid’s recent “le paracours general.”

Well loyal minions… That wraps up this Minion Mailbag. And what does your Maximum Leader have to show for it? Nada. Zip. Zilch. Rien. He thinks he will go and beat some dwarves.

Carry on.