The Arab Media is screaming about the Mahmoudiya and Haditha incident. I can watch Arab media via online sources such as Mosaic and from my cable tv provider. There's very little talk of Haditha, and the level of talk about the rape and killings in Mahmoudiya is much higher in the US than it is there.
There is no "civil war" - unless the random senseless murder of civilians constitutes such a war, which would give the phrase a new definition. It's not random, senseless murder that the central government is powerless to control. That would be anarchy. This is targeted sectarian killings and ethnic cleansing of mixed Sunni-Shiite areas. Sunni
Just an up date on the latest atrocity. The group of 4 marines from the 101 Air Borne Division, remember the one that flew over Normandy and played a heroic role, yes from the same Division, changed their uniforms and got into dark clothes barged into a house of a young Iraqi coupe and first killed the father, mother and theitr 5
WHATTTTTT?????Just because I am not screaming "kill them all"? Who said kill them all, Rombios? No one. Look, I dont walk around thinking that just because I am "white"
How did that work out for you? Rhodesia is Zimbabwe and its not going back ... stop living in the past. What was done by the racists then was wrong ... case closed. Got part of my foot blown off driving over a mine, lost most of my hearing in my left ear, suffered some burns on my legs and a graze
Bakerstreet: No, I think we can be QUITE certain that we've ended the Zarqawi's violence. Killing a violent man need not be justified by ending all violence. Ending his is enough. If others decide to become violent, that's their free will, not the blame of people fighting Zarqawi's wrongs. If t
There is also division among the Shiites. Sadrists tend to be the really poor Iraqi Shiites in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City. SCIRI is a Iranian-influenced Iraqi Shiite party with it's own militia, the Badr Corp. From what I read it has been given training and material from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Many Iraqi Shiites do not trust the organization and view it as an Iranian fifth column. Dawa is another Iraqi Shiite organization with links to Iran,
If you two are going to bicker back and forth about Jaish Al-Mahdi, please post some factual information, for your side or agains the other. According to Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq The insurgency is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab, and overwhelmingly native-born. Foreign fighters are perhaps less than 10% of the combatants. The Shiite in
What does the success of our side bring to me? Nothing either way. Your brothers, your fellow Americans not coming home in body bags? Reread my comment ... I clearly
give it time! Of course, the argument ender: Give it time . Not too different from the Administration's line, we've turned the corner . I am personally on t
Is killing someone ever intended to end all violence, or the violence that they are responsible for? Fair point. I don't think anyone expected the former. But the latter isn't the case either.
Bad News/Good News from Iraq The death of Zarqawi has done very little, if anything, to stop the violence in Iraq. A more promising note: attacks on the Iraqi oil pipelines have been non-existent as of late.
Never mind letting the Iraqi's really make the decision, and never mind really letting the Iraqis bring themselves up to speed without regard to artificial time tables and pressures. It'll all be about taking the deal while it's there. Ending hostilities, even with out guarantee that they'll really end.
That's the same kind of elitist jargon that the British said about us a couple of hundred years ago. The peasants need a strong leader because they can't lead themselves. I don't buy it. The only thing they really lack that makes democracy more possible is non-biased education and access to a lot of different perspectives on curr
Not to be overly snide at a time of mourning for them, but if they had been interested in helping make Iraq a safe, democratic place instead of how much money they could make off of a genocidal maniac... Come on. Let's be real here. We're talking about the Russians. They Iraqis don't have it within themselves to be democratic. The Russians ar
Simple solution. Write an exception to the existing laws: One cannot be prosecuted for assault or battery for beating the living daylights out of someone who burns the flag.
Colonel, the Duelfer report noted how Saddam maintained the ability to restart a weapons program the moment the sanctions were lifted, which they very well may have. So either Iraq would be under permanent sanctions (which was a major reason for the hatred against the US and also the UN in Iraq and in the greater Arab world. Yes, Iraqis hated the UN too, hence the lack of sadness for the truck bombing of UN headquarter in Baghdad in August 2003), or
But the problem segments are small, and most of the trouble makers are foreign imports. First a jordanian and now an Egyptian. That hardly smacks of either a cohesive opposition, or a natural born one. Who do you mean by "troublemakers?" Most of the suicide bombers detonating explosives in a Baghdad
by setting up a government that can control their own destiny, this standard will be set by other nations not America. If they have a viable government and blow it, it is on them, not America. Now that reasoning has set us up for disaster. It doesn't seem we as Westerners understand, or even try to understand Arab tribalism, history, and Islam.<
I think the Arab/Moslem sentiments of "victory" (via Hussein) in the first War are very shallow--present, but shallow. However, those from Somalia, and those from Lebanon in 1983 are deeply held. Taking a very legalistic approach with the 1993 WTC bombing and virtually all subsequent attacks, and a very half-assed Cruise Missile attack in Afghanistan (how Clintonian) made the Arabs and the Moslems think we were a bunch of wimps. I am against
We're past the point of pleasant solutions in Iraq. Iraq will almost certainly be self-partitioned via ethnic cleansing, as the process is long underway already. The question is must our troops be caught in the crossfire, while the Iraqis settle sectarian scores? Certainly you think it is prefereable that Iraqis kill other Iraqis rather than Iraqis kill Americans. My question is how do we remove ourselves from Iraq without making the Arabs, Moslem
The main problem with the "declaring victory and leaving" strategy, which I do not necessarily oppose, is how do we go about that without looking like we lost in the eyes of Arabs, the Moslems, and the Jihadists--without making it look like they drove us out of Iraq? That's an important, a very important, thing to consider, and no decision we make as Americans should ignore that question. We're in a serious mess here without any sunny solutions.
This is from Ambassador Khalilzad, not sissy like Markos Moulitsas. Iraq is is a mess not because of the media, but because it is a ill-conceived policy crafted on ill-conceived premises.
Link R 121430Z 06 FM AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD TO SECSTATE WASHDC 5042 INFO IRAQ COLLECTIVE UNCLAS BAGHDAD 001992 E.O. 122956
France's roots, indeed its very name, comes from the Franks, a specific tribe. From what I've been told, France's people descend mostly from Celtic Gauls and Mediterranean people with a touch of Germanic Franks in the North. The Franks would conquer that country and organize it into a political and na
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