Tim Blair

Reads like a bad episode of Fear Factor. Is there any hope for a country in which people believe a nice snack of raw private parts works better than Viagra?

Sure there is. They only beleive that because they haven't been inundated with spam for Viagra.

that is one scary article, and sadly, i fear, exceedingly accurate.

Why don't we just give them all light blue helmets, armbands that read "U.N." and call them peacekeepers. It works everywhere else, right?

What do you expect of a country thast appoints a gym boot president?

Mark Steyn....WITTIEST WRITER EVER!

Why doesn't Bush follow the same policy of benign neglect towards Africa that every other president has done? Let them eat each other : it's no skin off our nose (or ear).

All the people who opposed our campaign to take out Saddam and attempt to reform the political culture of the Arab world that gives rise to terrorism are after Bush to intervene in Liberia. There are powerful political groups in the US slavering to send US troops there. An argument can be made that, although there is no direct US interest in Liberia, there may be an indirect one. If intervention in Liberia at the behest of the UN and other countries pays diplomatic dividends in other areas then it may be justified. I frankly doubt it will. They had better be big dividends too, for we are contemplating getting into a guerilla war in the jungle. Here is a real quagmire for the liberals to contemplate, and it's one they want us to get into. Plus we don't have the extra troops to make a long-term committment, the only kind that will actually bear fruit.

This is also an enormous can of worms, as Steyn points out. It is no in-and-out affair, as that twit Howard Dean professes to think. The best scenario I can think of, if we actually want to do some good and not just posture, is something like the USMC occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. I doubt anybody calling for intervention is willing to see that. That's the best scenario, they get worse from there.

"Ivory Coast is on balance better off with the French on the ground."

But it was all about coooooca!

heh. cocoa and coffee, andjam, to keep all those left-bank baristas in business...

Sheesh. Mark Steyn seems to be predicting a quagmire.