I find all this discussion about how “we can’t leave the Iraqis now” laughable. The US is in Iraq To install military bases and to control the economy, particularly the oil. And it does not care about the Iraqis one bit except to kill them by the hundreds for no particular good reason other that they live in Falluja or some other town the Americans cannot control except by bombing them. It is obscene and the US should not prevail in this criminal war.
The Americans are the ones pitting the Iraqis to fight each other and the Iraqis refuse.
The American government keeps talking about democracy in Iraq and about ‘not abandoning them now’ just like it talked about WMD and, while people discuss these things the US is following a policy of consummated facts.
The only way the US would leave Iraq will be if they are defeated militarily and the Iraqis know it.
sailor:
*The US is in Iraq To install military bases and to control the economy, particularly the oil. *
Cite?
You know, we installed a military base in Japan, and gave it a very liberalized economy. It’s the 2nd largest economy in the world, and Iraq has OIL! Just imagine how Iraq could do.
And it does not care about the Iraqis one bit except to kill them by the hundreds for no particular good reason other that they live in Falluja or some other town the Americans cannot control except by bombing them.
Just bombing them? Cite?
It is obscene and the US should not prevail in this criminal war.
If you mean to say that criminals should not prevail, those militias, being criminal, shouldn’t prevail. That means the militias and the US are both equally bad. Root for the team that’ll bring the most good.
Come on, you can do better than that.
The Americans are the ones pitting the Iraqis to fight each other and the Iraqis refuse. *
I don’t think those militias care whether or not other Iraqis are killed. We aren’t telling those millitias to kill other people. Not our fault. We aren’t pitting them against eachother.
*The American government keeps talking about democracy in Iraq and about ‘not abandoning them now’ just like it talked about WMD and, while people discuss these things the US is following a policy of consummated facts. *
I don’t know how you can relate abandonment with WMD. Please explain.
The only way the US would leave Iraq will be if they are defeated militarily and the Iraqis know it.
That’s the way it should be. After all, we aren’t losing.
Necessary? What’s “necessary”? Laying siege to a city and killing and/or wounding 1,500 of its inhabitants because they basically don’t want you there to begin with?
Further, who appointed the US of A as the judge and executioner of the future of the Iraqis?
I recall your own intelligene agencies saying a few months ago that there was a “small window of opportunity” to win the Iraqis hearts and minds, to show them that you’re there in good faith. Do you honestly believe that over 20-30 thousand deaths* later – and counting – that window is still open?
Personally, I think that time is come and gone for Americans to quit playing their transparent “we’re here to help the Iraqi people” sham. As it stands now, the only ones that believe that are the die-hard administration backers, all evidence to the contrary.
IMO, for as long as this occupation maintains the illegitimate American inprint on it, it is only bound to get worse for all parties involved. And yes, hard as it might seem to imagine at the moment, it can get a hell of a lot worse…
Give it up, ask for help. Get the international community in there, forget about your bases, their oil and your greedy coorporations – like I said, it’s all too transparent and has been from the get go. But most of all, let the Iraqis decide what they want to do with their own damn country and whose help they want. If any.
*counting Iraqi conscripts. Amazingly enough, it appears they had familes too. Same families that are now also fighting you tooth and nail.
Well hey, if a bunch of people are trying to kill you, you just sit there and let them?
This has nothing to with law. It’s a war. You don’t judge and try people in a war. Maybe after, but not during. It’s kill or be killed.
Yes.
Personally, I believe we are there to help them and ourselves.
Speculation, not fact.
I agree we should ask for help, but what is there to help if we’ve given up? Personally, I could care less about bases. Now for oil and greedy corporations.
Ok, I don’t know why people are so antagonistic towards corporations. Be antagonistic towards the people running them unethically. Unless if someone can prove me wrong, the people running corporations make up a minority of the actual corporation. It’s like saying all Iraqis are bad, because the George Bush, who is a bad person, runs it. :rolleyes: And then from that you jump to the conclusion that all countries are bad. If I have it all wrong, tell me.
Anyway, oil and corporations are important for the reconstruction effort. Corporations worked very well in Japan and Germany.
You know we’re trying to hold elections around the new year for them?
Yes, count them, but they can’t go to the ballot box shooting people up along the way. I’m confused about the families part.
I don’t believe any so-called poll out of Iraq either. However, 2700 is so close to just as good as 100,000 that there isn’t any real difference in those two numbers as far as results go.
But, and it is a big but, the 2700 have to be a legimate sample of the 25,000,000 and the questions have to be properly framed. I question whether either of those two criteria are met in any poll in Iraq.
Wasn’t there some kind of prize on offer for the first person to resort to the above?
I need a cite.
Looking forward to this one. Especially as to how you are going to seperate who are the ‘good guys’ and who are the ‘bad guys’ amongst those killed :rolleyes:
So you think that the US is at war with the Iraqi people?
Lets try to explain it simply. If you kill people’s relatives they tend to get pissed. Amazingly, they may not even consider you the ‘good guys’. Sometimes they will fight back. The fact that they may be allowed to vote for a uitably pro-American politician at some indefinate point in the future is not a bit consolation to them.
Looking forward to this one. Especially as to how you are going to seperate who are the ‘good guys’ and who are the ‘bad guys’ amongst those killed :rolleyes:
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It’s true–you don’t understand statistical methodology very well.
2500 or 2700 or whatever it was is actually about double the number of respondents needed for a poll to be accurate to plus or minus 4 or 5 percentage points (95% of the time) *if * the sample was truly randomly selected.
Yes, I know the theory. Although you’ll have to excuse me for not immediately trusting in anything that comes out of Comical Bremer’s office. Wasn’t really the point I was making though.
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Yes, I know the theory. Although you’ll have to excuse me for not immediately trusting in anything that comes out of Comical Bremer’s office. Wasn’t really the point I was making though.
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Huh? Bremer is lying about what the constitution says?
skarf has a link to, and the text of, the methodology used by Oxford Research International in the poll on page 1 of this thread. Now, it’s entirely possible they could be making the methodology up out of whole cloth - we need a Doper versed in statistics in here - but I do not find it likely. I’ve also posted a link to the ABC News story on the poll, which in itself has a link to the poll as conducted by ORI. In other words, the info is here - go take a look for yourself and decide.
I’ve posted cites that show the Iraqis, under their own volition, aren’t fighting each other - the relief of the siege of Fallujah, in which both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims broke through the US roadblocks to bring food and supplies to the city, and the March 19th demonstration which united both Sunni and Shi’a in one common march and included calls for Sunni and Shi’a unity from the front; sailor has linked to a Washington Post article describing how units of the new Iraqi army (i.e. the one the US put together) have refused to go into Fallujah to assist the US in smashing the city.
If there’s solid evidence the Iraqi people aren’t fighting each other now, even when ordered to do so, what makes you think they’re going to change their minds once the US troops are kicked out?
Absolutely. Although the polls seem to indicate Iraqis do want US help - but since they want the troops out, more than likely the help they’d want would be in the form of reparations, as well as financial and social aid. Which they (rightly so, IMO) deserve.
GWB is just like Pyle in the novel…a blundering fool who can’t see the forest for the trees! The Iraqis DON"T WANT HELP, they DON"T WANT OCCUPATION. THEY DON’T WANT AMERICAN TROOPS.
Let’s get out while our casualties are still pretty low…what is this administration going to tell the bereaved parents and wives when there are 3,000, 5,000 or 15,000 dead american soldiers?
The sad part is, GWB actually thinks he is doing the right thing!
(Substitute “Iraqi insurgents” for “young black men”, Iraq for US):
Sometimes increasing the sample size is not enough, if the subgroup you are examining is rare or particularly hard to find. Young black men, for example, make up only a small percentage of the U.S. population. In a standard random sample, you would have to interview an enormous number of people before you had a large enough subgroup of young black men. In this instance, you would take an “oversample,” purposely seeking out members of the particular group you are interested in, and comparing the results to the main sample.
