[TteFAboB]

Gut feelings aside,

Chavez sent 30 specialists and 3000 soldiers to Bolivia. If 3,000 soldiers are enough to counter the anti-Morales uprisings and crush Santa Cruz if they ever seceded, 20,000 troops, if they're mostly of the hold-a-gun-point-and-shoot type could come in handy, if put to a good use, of course.

It's a bizzare comparison, true, while Bolivia is larger than Iraq (1,098mil km2 vs 438 thousand km2) it has a much smaller population (8,8mil vs 28,8mil in 2005). Adjusting for the different levels of violence, the proportion of soldiers seems about right, question is if they're of any use at all.

What was really remarkable was Bush assuming his own personal responsibility. This is always commendable and really rare in this world of scape-goatism. One cookie for Bush.

Two alternatives are to attempt to create a pluralist government, for the local standards, with the internal forces balancing each other out but with a probably high degree of violence or to allow the return of a brutal dictatorship, this time shi'ite. Brutal but guarantor of order, both by eliminating the unhappy elements more efficiently and by masking the statistics/closing the society.