Absolutely. It’s what we baby-killing redneck bloodthirsty neocon Zionists do for fun. Don’t like it? Please be bored and bothered somewhere else.

08/12/06 AP: Bomb Kills 2 U.S. Soldiers in Baghdad

08/12/06 ChadDally: Camden High School grad Jagger killed in Iraq war
First Sgt. Aaron Jagger, 43

08/12/06 thejournalnews: Severely wounded Marine heads for home
Marine Sgt. Eddie Ryan

08/12/06 AFP: Gunman kill two in Amara

08/12/06 AFP: Gunmen kill clan chieftain in Hilla and grocer in Iskandiriyah

08/12/06 Reuters: Two bodies found in Balad

08/12/06 dpa: Iraqi policeman killed, seven persons wounded in attacks

08/12/06 Reuters: Gunmen kill member of Iraqi intelligence

08/12/06 Reuters: Sniper kills policeman in Mosul

08/12/06 Reuters: Gunmen kill two civilians in Mosul

08/12/06 AFP: Two civilians killed in drive by shooting in Baquba

08/12/06 Reuters: US says kills 26 in Ramadi

08/12/06 AFP: Police captain killed in Baquba

08/12/06 AP: Bomb kills 2 in Basra

08/12/06 NYT: Ex-Iraqi Electricity Chief Named in Graft Inquiry

In July there were approximately 100 Iraq deaths per day due to the chaos
we ignited. Iraq has a population of around 26 million. The US has a population of around 300 million. So to put this in perspective that would be equivalent to 1150 violent deaths per day in the USA or 420,000 per year. The USA has around 17000
homicides per year. So now what do you have to say for yourslef?

You made the bed. You will lay in it.

Typical. Just bitch and moan about what we’re doing while freely admitting that you have no idea how to make things better. Maybe if you do some more headline cutting-and-pasting we’ll win the war.

The only remote chance for a solution probably escaped us in 2004. At that point, with a different US government, we could have gone to the UN and said America has made a terrible mistake and now we need the world to help right this wrong before the situation in Iraq moves irretrivebaly beyond control. Sadly that did not happen.

Now all we are left with is slogans like “cut and run” or “doubling down on a bad bet”. There are many problems that can not be solved. Wisdom tells us when this is so. Not recognizing our limitations is a sign of intellectual immaturity. Thankfully mainstreams America’s collective wisdom is now shifting. Rightly so.

I will continue to remind you on the costs of your thoughtlessness until
we are out of Iraq or neo cuts me
off. Free speech? Free exchange of information? We will see.

You know damned well that Neo takes the weekends off and that your dropping will hang around here stinking up the place until she gets around to deleting them and zapping you.

I can’t speak for Pete, of course. But here’s my idea of what should be done:

1) Get US troops out and get a multinational force in, with the soldiers consisting of troops contributed from Arab countries (but paid for by the US). It will make a huge difference to have Arabic-speaking troops who can actually communicate in the language of the Iraqi people. These troops should operate under the UN flag.

2) Under the aegis of these troops, hold local municipal elections in every Iraqi city and village. Hand over the task of reconstruction to the local officials thus elected, instead of trying to do that in the heavy-handed, top-down manner.

3) Constitute a Marshall Plan for Iraq, as was done for Europe after World War II.

4) We should not create permanent miliraty bases in Iraq, nor should we try to control Iraqi oil. Let’s give the Arab world a proof that we (US) is not being driven by selfish, mercenary interests, by dismantling US military bases from Iraq and promising not to control Iraqi oil.

Other than the fact you and pete forget we had asked the UN to help keep the peace in Iraq back in ‘04 and were refused, I can think of no worse idea than what you have suggested.

Which Arab states? Saudi Arabia? Syria? If you’re going to have us pay for this, can I get a vote? And what will the Iraqi Shiite population think?

All this under the competent command of Koffi Anan huh?

Tell you what. How ’bout we train up an Iraqi Army and Police force. People who live right there and speak the language and know the people? Why dont we work on that for a while?

You and pete can go ahead and support our efforts and make this country united in our efforts to back the Iraqi government while they sort it out. How ’bout trying that for a while?

That way you can save the list compiling and actually do something helpful and constructive for a change.

How about Israeli Arabs? 20% of Israeli citizens are arabs, after all. And Israel keeps getting billed as the only democracy in the Middle East. So why not deploy Israeli Arabs for this?

Harry Mallory wrote: If you’re going to have us pay for this, can I get a vote?

Obviously I am not in a position to “make us” pay for this. I’m not a dictator running the USA! I am putting out an idea in response to someone here who had written, “Just bitch and moan about what we’re doing while freely admitting that you have no idea how to make things better.” Citizens in a democracy have the free-speech right to put ideas out in the public arena, don’t they? These ideas then get debated and discussed in society (what we’re doing here is part of that), and then those ideas that muster support gets debated in the legislature and eventually some of them are voted on.

(At least, that is what ought to happen in a democracy in which citizens, rather than Big Oil and Big Haliburton and other Big Corporations, are calling the shots.)

I thought that neocons think that it is not Iraqis, but the foreign jihadists (who have infiltrated Iraq after we invaded and created chaos there), who are doing all the killing.

As for “re-installing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen”: the way you speak of “re-installing” betrays how little regard you really have for democracy in Iraq. It is not for us to “install” anyone. It is the choice of the Iraqi people. If Saddam Hussein wishes to contest the elections (and if that’s allowed by the new Iraqi Constitution) then of course he should be allowed to contest the elections. And if Iraqis want to elect him, they should be able to. The bottom line is that the Iraqis get to decide, not us. It is their country, not ours. I thought self-determination was a core value that all who believe in democracy share, but maybe I was mistaken!

–

We’ve been trying that for three years now and we’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful so far. Why? The reason isn’t difficult to see. As long as we’re an occupying power, an army or a police will be seen to lack legitimacy because they would be seen as our tools. Only when we withdraw can an Iraqi army or police have legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis.

I loved the time when my “carrier branch” was infantry and I could hang out with the people who do the heavy lifting. Eventually we became a branch and those days ended.

Intell is fun and important but being an Infantry O3 Co. Cmdr. has got to be one of the best jobs in the Army.

You think you have trouble now - go ahead and try that one and see what happens.

Elections carried out under the auspices of an invading/occupying power will always be seen as illegitimate, unfortunately. That’s the way it is. The only solution is for us to leave, and hold elections under a neutral (possibly UN) force.

Screw what you feel what somebody elses perception of legitimacy exists. From what Im able to tell, the current violence isnt about how people perceive the US or US trained Iraqi’s at all. Its seems to have settled into ethnic/tribal/religious conflict with outsiders stirring the mix.

Your all Arab force isnt going to fix that for reasons already stated above.

Certainly not led by Koffi.

Boy, talk about your lack of legitimacy! If Lebanese current events arent able to persuade you that the UN is just not a serious organization, I dont know what will.

Face it Adam. We and our willing allies are the best hope they have.

http://www.currentviewpoint.com/cgibin/news.cgi?id=11&command=shownews&newsid=866

The ineffectual, corrupt UN is the opposite of neutral. UN fecklessness, allowing Saddam to give the finger to the UN for thirteen long years, only encouraged the despots who(like Saddam) support, sponsor and use terrorism. There are no “neutral” entities in this game, to believe there are only reveals the naiveté of the writer.

It is not for us to “install” anyone. It is the choice of the Iraqi people. If Saddam Hussein wishes to contest the elections (and if that’s allowed by the new Iraqi Constitution) then of course he should be allowed to contest the elections. And if Iraqis want to elect him, they should be able to. The bottom line is that the Iraqis get to decide, not us. It is their country, not ours.

Iraq just lost a war. Losers get to decide nothing. Let Saddam contest the elections? We just fought a war in order to assure that Saddam contests nothing. I wonder if the writer ever read anything about WW2. I wonder what would have happened had Hitler lived and was allowed to run for elections after Germany’s defeat. I hope the anti-war crowd puts forth this ‘plan’ during the upcoming elections.
 

The left says fighting terrorism only creates more terrorists. In reality, morally bankrupt multiculturalism, moral relativism and appeasement does.

Time to speak truth to moonbat.

It’s very interesting (and revealing) to see that you are describing ordinary Iraqis as the “losers” in the war. I thought the war was meant to be to liberate them from Saddam (isn’t that the official rhetoric?) and that it was Saddam, and not ordinary Iraqis, who lost the war?

Fighting terrorism does not necessarily create more terrorists. But the war in Iraq was not “fighting terrorism”, because at that time there were no terrorists in Iraq.

{Shakes his head}

By the terrorists, at any rate. And you.

Great, Im all for that.

As for why Repubs pulled funding for the new screening machines, I dont know. Why dont you tell us your theory?

I’ll give you the same response I give to everyone who makes that asinine comment:

Please be bored somewhere else or STFU.

Victims of a “religion” that glorifies hatred and death, internecine violence down to the clan and family level is standard practice and has been for centuries.

On the whole, it is preferable that they kill each other, directing their aggression inwardly.

Left to their own devices, Muslims will never evolve a civil society recognizable to westerners. Order in Islamic societies has always had to be imposed and has never bubbled up from institutions such as “town hall meetings”. It is an inevitable product of male dominated, “honor” based cultures.

Given enough time, the only answer is a radical culling of the more virulent carriers of what appears to be more a disease than anything else.

Trying to instill democracy in these societies is futile and would require that the amoral familial origins of the “honor” based family/clan structure be eradicated as was done in the northern British Isles. The Middle East is a rather more daunting task than that was.

I say this as a member by lineage of those UK cultures and someone at odds with a tradition that views the Battle of Culloden as a “tragedy” rather than a necessary step in the inevitable process of making modern citizens.

It is ironic that the echoes of the values of those extinct Anglo-Celt cultures now provide the US with its spine stiffening core resolve. It is also ironic that those values have been embraced by so many American Citizens leading to such seeming anomalies as a friend of mine, a self described Viet-American Redneck.

BTW, the term “Redneck” comes from the Scots border and is a very old descriptive usage.

_______ * 11 July 2006 - 200 die and 700 injured in the bombing of rush-hour trains in Mumbai (Bombay), India.
_______ * 2 May 2006 - 35 Hindus die in attacks by Pakistan based Islamic rebels in Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
______* 7 March 2006 - 15 Hindus were killed in Hindu holy city of Varanasi attack by Islamic terrorists.
_______* 9 November 2005 - 2005 Amman bombings, over 60 killed and 115 injured, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks on Hotels in Amman, Jordan. Four attackers including a husband and wife team were involved.
_______* 23 July 2005 - Bomb attacks at Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian resort city, kill at least 64 people.
_______* 7 July 2005 - Multiple bombings in London Underground, 53 dead killed by four suicide bombers, 200 injured.
_______* 4 February 2005 - Muslim militants attacked the Christian community in Demsa, Nigeria, killing 36 people, destroying property and displacing an additional 3000 people.
_______* 11 March 2004 - Multiple bombings on trains near Madrid, Spain. 191 killed, 1460 injured. (alleged link to Al-Qaeda)
_______* 16 May 2004- Casablanca Attacks - 4 simultaneous attacks in Casablanca killing 33 civilians (mostly Moroccans) carried by Salafaia Jihadia.
_______ * 12 October 2002 - Bombing in Bali nightclub. 202 killed, 300 injured.
_______ * 24 September 2002 - Machine Gun attack on Hindu temple in Ahmedabad, India. 31 dead, 86 injured.
_______* 7 May 2002 - Bombing in al-Arbaa, Algeria. 49 dead, 117 injured
_______* 9 March 2002 - Café suicide bombing in Jerusalem; 11 killed, 54 injured
_______* 3 March 2002 - Suicide bomb attack on a Passover Seder in a Hotel in Netanya, Israel. 29 dead, 133 injured
_______* 11 September 2001 - 4 planes hijacked and crashed into World Trade Center and The Pentagon by 19 hijackers. Nearly 3000 dead.
_______* 13 October 2000 - USS Cole bombing from a small boat by suicide bombers. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured.
_______* 7 August 1998 - Embassy bombing in Tanzania and Kenya. 225 dead. 4000+ injured
_______* 25 June 1996 - Khobar Towers bombing, 20 killed, 372 wounded.
_______* 26 February 1993 - First World Trade Center bombing. 6 killed.
_______* 18 April 1983 - Embassy in Lebanon bombed. 63 killed.

Sure, just like they were “seen as illegitimate” in Germany, Italy and Japan after WW2, right? It would be nice if the anti-war crowd would crack a history text every once in awhile, then they could more accurately regale us sweeping statements.
 

_Absolutely. It’s what we baby-killing redneck bloodthirsty neocon Zionists do for fun. Don’t like it? Please be bored and bothered somewhere else._

Oh well, whatever bakes your cake I guess. It beats the hell out of having a reality based argument or a position that can be defended in some quarters.

That’s what I get for posing questions that don’t make your heros look like intellectual giants I guess.

The search continues….

…and YOUR heroes would be, who, exactly? The corrupt Kofi Annan? Sheik Nasrallah? The dear departed Yassir? George Galloway? Cindy (I never had a child I couldn’t pimp politcally) Sheehan?

Vaclav Havel
Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Fr. Maximilian Kolbe
Oscar Schindler

People of conscience who did the right thing in difficult times. And yes, sometimes had to go to war to do it. It remains to be seen what our latest crop of politicians will wind up as, but I’m betting that history will show GWB as something a little more than a “freezer rat.” (Interesting analogy, by the way.) He won’t be remembered as a “hero”, but certainly won’t be categorized as poorly as you seem to think. And the years definitely won’t be kind at all to Kerry, Clinton, Murtha and their ilk…scumbags all.

The force of WILL displayed is incredible. The belief that Bush is bad-evil-theworstever existed before he ever took the oath of office. The sore feelings that Bush was better at stealing an election than Gore was taken up by people who are professionals when it comes to the ultimate moral authority… outrage. Gore started out by displaying a petulant attitude and it’s never let up.

And this was in 2000. When there was a limit to the damage that any president could do. The difference between a Dem status quo and a Rep status quo resembled the libertarian refrain “The Democrats and their clones the Republicans.”

Before 9-11. Before the invasion of Afghanistan. Before the build up to the invasion of Iraq. Before any cowboy manners could offend any sophisticated Euro. Before all that.

When it comes to the belief that Bush (and anyone close to him) is the WORST PRESIDENT EVER, cause and effect are backwards. Since the belief existed before any possibility of evidence… I have to, logically, rationally, MUST question the belief.

And here’s a clue… popularity != reputation.

Getting to be prom queen of the world is lame if everyone knows you’re a slut.