Iraq... What a mess! (1 Viewer)

[KidRocks]

Can civil war be far behind?









http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-02-22-shiite-shrine_x.htm


Bombs severely damage famous Iraqi Shiite shrine

BAGHDAD (AP) — A large explosion heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shiite shrines Wednesday, spawning mass protests and triggering reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets this week and threatened to stoke sectarian tensions.

Shiite leaders called for calm, but militants attacked Sunni mosques and a gunfight broke out between Shiite militiamen and guards at the offices of a Sunni political party in Basra. About 500 soldiers were sent to Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad to prevent clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, Army Capt. Jassim al-Wahash said.

A leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, said 29 Sunni mosques had been attacked nationwide. He urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation "before it spins out of control."

A government statement said "several suspects" had been detained and some of them "might have had been involved in carrying out the crime."

No group claimed responsibility for the 6:55 a.m. attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, but suspicion fell on Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The shrine contains the tombs of two revered Shiite imams, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Interior Ministry said four men, one wearing a military uniform and three clad in black, entered the mosque and detonated two bombs, one of which collapsed the dome into a crumbly mess and damaged part of the shrine's northern wall.

Police said late Wednesday afternoon no casualties had been found.

U.S. and Iraqi forces in Samarra surrounded the shrine and searched nearby houses. Five police officers responsible for protecting the mosque were taken into custody, said Col. Bashar Abdullah, chief of police commandoes.

Demonstrators then gathered near the shrine, waving Iraqi flags, Shiite religious banners and copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

"This criminal act aims at igniting civil strife," said Mahmoud al-Samarie, a 28-year-old builder. "We demand an investigation so that the criminals who did this be punished. If the government fails to do so, then we will take up arms and chase the people behind this attack."...

 

[Mark A Shrider]

You seem a bit surprised by this. This has been their lifestyle and has only been deemed newsworthy since the start of the war. A simple Yahoo search turned up this...

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=105225

"...the death rate is running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year."
"During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year."


http://wheels128.blogspot.com/2005/05/iraq-before-and-after.html

"Deaths: 24,000 Iraqis in first year since 2003 invasion
Saddam's reign has an estimated death toll of 1.26 million with 4.54 million refugees created, according to the State Department's figures. Saddam's rule was from 1979-2003, so in 24 years, his average yearly death toll was 52,500, with over 189,000 refugees."



I'm not suggesting the new government is killing it's own, but that culture is certainly present in these types of attacks.

 

[KidRocks]

You seem a bit surprised by this. This has been their lifestyle and has only been deemed newsworthy since the start of the war. A simple Yahoo search turned up this...

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=105225

"...the death rate is running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year."
"During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year."


http://wheels128.blogspot.com/2005/05/iraq-before-and-after.html

"Deaths: 24,000 Iraqis in first year since 2003 invasion
Saddam's reign has an estimated death toll of 1.26 million with 4.54 million refugees created, according to the State Department's figures. Saddam's rule was from 1979-2003, so in 24 years, his average yearly death toll was 52,500, with over 189,000 refugees."



I'm not suggesting the new government is killing it's own, but that culture is certainly present in these types of attacks.

Surprised? Not in the least!

As a matter of fact this particular reason was one of my objections for Bush invading Iraq. Most of us knew Iraq's past violence history before Bush attacked Saddam. Saddam knew also, else why do you think he kept such a tight grip on his people?

In fact, most of the civilized world knew before what pandora's box could/would be unleashed by Bush's attack on Iraq.

We tried to warn the fool but to no avail!

 

[Navy Pride]

Isn't it ironic how fast one of our friends on the far left can't wait to post something bad that happens in Iraq................

When something good happens they never post it...........

 

[Simon W. Moon]

What criteria would we use to determine if a civil war ahd started or not?

 

[americanwoman]

When something good happens they never post it...........

Name 3 good things that have happened in Iraq over the last week and have given a just reason we should be there. I'll start:

1. We found a huge stockpile of weapons up north and were able to stop many deaths from insurgents.

 

[SixStringHero]

I think it's far too early to tell if a civil war is about to break out.

Give it at least another 5-10 years.

 

[KidRocks]

Isn't it ironic how fast one of our friends on the far left can't wait to post something bad that happens in Iraq................

When something good happens they never post it...........

Ok, name something good coming out of President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Elections? Not much good has it accomplished so far has it?

Schools?: They had schools there before Bush attacked Iraq, probably in better shape too.

Electricity? Dismal failure!

Hospitals? Nope!

 

[KidRocks]

Ok, name something good coming out of President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Elections? Not much good has it accomplished so far has it?

Schools?: They had schools there before Bush attacked Iraq, probably in better shape too.

Electricity? Dismal failure!

Hospitals? Nope!

Jobs? No!

Security? Nope!

People united? No way!

 

[tototu]

Iraq is a huge success. What kind of a doofy thread is this? We are in the middle of one the most successfully fought wars in history. We are in the middle of reconstruction and renationlization while under continuing attack by an insurgency who can deliver no more than death and destruction. You want electricity? Show me an insurgent group that will deliver that rather than blow it up. You don't like the pace of setting up a government after elections? It took us 12 years to do it in the US with none of the internal problems or continuing guerrilla warfare that the Iraqis face. Get real littleman. You want to support the troops? Don't give out the Army's phone number, stand up and laud their accomplishments. This is the most sanitary war that has ever been fought. The collateral damage to civilians is as minimal as has ever been experienced in conflict.
And don't separate Iraq from what goes on here. It's either Fallujah in Fallujah or it's Fallujah in Phoenix. The choice was presented to us clearly 4 years ago. I already picked where I want to wage the battles, howboutchoo?

 

[python416]

What criteria would we use to determine if a civil war ahd started or not?

Wikipedia defines is as a war in which the competing parties within the same country or empire struggle for national control of state power. As in any war, the conflict may be over other matters such as religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth.

I'd say it has been a civil war for a while, but with the bombing of the mosques, and the retalitory bombings in Baghdad, the offical civil war may be on now.

What a mess. Gee, how could anyone have forseen this? Oh wait, everyone did - even GHWB.

I hope things work out for the Iraqis, but it is hard when the war was such a bonehead idea in the first place.

 

[Arthur Fonzarelli]

Jobs? No!

Unemployment: 10.5%, or 18.4% when including those who had given up looking
This compares very favourably to pre-war Iraq, where the unemployment rate was 50-60%. However, don't expect the lefties to stop quoting 70% figures any time soon. On another note, at 10.5%, that puts the unemployment below Germany, and only 1.5% higher than the EU average.

Try reading the links people post.

 

[KidRocks]

Iraq is a huge success. What kind of a doofy thread is this? We are in the middle of one the most successfully fought wars in history. We are in the middle of reconstruction and renationlization while under continuing attack by an insurgency who can deliver no more than death and destruction. You want electricity? Show me an insurgent group that will deliver that rather than blow it up. You don't like the pace of setting up a government after elections? It took us 12 years to do it in the US with none of the internal problems or continuing guerrilla warfare that the Iraqis face. Get real littleman. You want to support the troops? Don't give out the Army's phone number, stand up and laud their accomplishments. This is the most sanitary war that has ever been fought. The collateral damage to civilians is as minimal as has ever been experienced in conflict.
And don't separate Iraq from what goes on here. It's either Fallujah in Fallujah or it's Fallujah in Phoenix. The choice was presented to us clearly 4 years ago. I already picked where I want to wage the battles, howboutchoo?

Well, if it was my choice, we would have spared the lives of 3000 or so brave American troops not to mention the multi-thousands of wounded troops.

We would of spared the lives of probably several thousands more of our troops that are going to needlessly die for President Bush's "choice" to attack Iraq.

We definetely would be watching Saddam squirm in Iraq as he never got a decent nights rest in the same bed twice in a row not to mention we had him cornered North and South.

Fallujah in Phoenix? That's one of the Bush's administration's biggest lies today. There would be no fighting insurgents in the streets anywhere in America! Period!

4 years later and 300 billion dollars spent, Iraq is still a big mess! Will be 4 years from now also!

 

[Arthur Fonzarelli]

Ok, name something good coming out of President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Schools?: They had schools there before Bush attacked Iraq, probably in better shape too.

- Women: 47 per cent illiterate
This is down from 55 per cent in 2002. The literacy rate for young people is higher than the literacy rate for any other age group except 25-34, showing good hope for the future but a backwards progression during Saddam's later years.

- Education: 79 per cent enrolment in primary schools
This is an increase of 700,000 since 2000.

Electricity? Dismal failure!

- Electricity: 29 per cent rely on generators
Pre-war electricity production was estimated at 4,400 megawatts per day, a level that was passed by October 2003. Currently, electricity production averages over 5,000 megawatts per day.

Again, try reading the links posted. You might actually learn something.

 

[easyt65]

Both Shiite and Suni Mosques are being bombed. If you don't think Al Qaeda is behind this then you have no understanding of what is going on!

The terrorists/insurgents have tried attacking and killing Americans, and they have failed to stop us from our mission.

The terrorists/insurgents have tried attacking and killing Iraqis - the soldiers who are stepping forward to take over their own country's and new goverment's defense, Muslim women and children - and have failed.

They have finally started trying to incite Civil War between the 2 groups. THAT is the biggest danger that we face right now. If they can't figure it out, if they can't keep the peace and keep this from developing into a civil War, all will be lost over there. We will be forced to pull out in the wake of a civil War between the 2 sides - we aren't going to pick sides and help 1 knowck off the other.

 

[Navy Pride]

Name 3 good things that have happened in Iraq over the last week and have given a just reason we should be there. I'll start:

1. We found a huge stockpile of weapons up north and were able to stop many deaths from insurgents.

1. Saddam will never attakc any other country and we don't ever have to worry about him using WOMD on any country........

2. There have been 3 national elections with bigger turnouts there under threat of death then we have here.........

3. Saddams 2 sons will never rape and murder 12 year old virgins in front of their parents again.......

 

[Navy Pride]

Ok, name something good coming out of President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Elections? Not much good has it accomplished so far has it?

Schools?: They had schools there before Bush attacked Iraq, probably in better shape too.

Electricity? Dismal failure!

Hospitals? Nope!

Hogwash...........The far left in this country want us to fail in Iraq even if it means the loss of brave Americans...........They know this is the only way they can ever regain political power.............

 

[Navy Pride]

Again, try reading the links posted. You might actually learn something.

Don't bet on it............

 

[cherokee]

I think it's far too early to tell if a civil war is about to break out.

Give it at least another 5-10 years.

It won’t even take that long. I have said this many times before with in months of the US pulling out you will see a civil war.

It wont have anything to do with what the US has or has not done....

 

[scottyz]

We stepped into and stepped up a generations old feud, so I imagine that a civil war will be very hard to avoid in the long run.

 

[tototu]

Well, if it was my choice, we would have spared the lives of 3000 or so brave American troops not to mention the multi-thousands of wounded troops.

We would of spared the lives of probably several thousands more of our troops that are going to needlessly die for President Bush's "choice" to attack Iraq.

We definetely would be watching Saddam squirm in Iraq as he never got a decent nights rest in the same bed twice in a row not to mention we had him cornered North and South.

Fallujah in Phoenix? That's one of the Bush's administration's biggest lies today. There would be no fighting insurgents in the streets anywhere in America! Period!

4 years later and 300 billion dollars spent, Iraq is still a big mess! Will be 4 years from now also!

Do you think that the people we are fighting today were holed up in Afghanistan with BinLaden? The fact that the terror network has been exposed and is brandishing misery worldwide should give you a clue that our battle in Afghaninstan was a battle only and that the war against terror is far broader than we have been seduced to believe. If you think what's happening in Iraq only concerns Iraqis, let me give you a better perspective that a lawyer gave to frame the liberal view I have broken it up into two posts to fit the format here)
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=10276

It will be the deathwatch of liberalism
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us.It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler's Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because none of them could produce all they needed for themselves.

All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could.Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.

Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.
Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

 

[tototu]

The Euros could have done this, but they didn't, and they won't. We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms - we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq. If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?

And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education, for Iraqi children.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war - and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .... a 27 year war.
World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

[The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 1,800 American lives, which is roughly 1/2 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.] But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 60 minute TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

If we do this thing in Iraq successfully, it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya, for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia. If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail, and terrorism from Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future, because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.
The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options -

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:

1. We went to Iraq without enough troops.

We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.

The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice - we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile - but we don't. We're trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient's head. The Jihadis amputate heads.

2. We went to Iraq with too little planning.

This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had "the right plan" the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean.

That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV.

3. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security.

This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq.

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken a little more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.

300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.

 

[tototu]

Credit for above...Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California.

 

[jfuh]

1. Saddam will never attakc any other country and we don't ever have to worry about him using WOMD on any country........

2. There have been 3 national elections with bigger turnouts there under threat of death then we have here.........

3. Saddams 2 sons will never rape and murder 12 year old virgins in front of their parents again.......

1. Saddam won't and never has. Not to mention he was never one that the US ever seriously considered a WMD threat. North Korea, Iran, completely different beast, why not deal with the real threat instead of picking on rediculously obsolete countries.

2. All of which yielded to what exactly. Sure they had great voter turn out to support thier own fractions. All the while Iraq is now steaming towards a religious state similar to that of Iran.

3. 2500+ soldiers and more then 3000 innocent civilians will never see daylight, breath air, eat, nor drink ever again.

 

[jfuh]

Hogwash...........The far left in this country want us to fail in Iraq even if it means the loss of brave Americans...........They know this is the only way they can ever regain political power.............

You couldn't have said it better. Hogwash.