This might be a good place to note the story, verified by
Snopes
of a statement by Colin Powell to the World Economic Forum in January of this year:
Not the actions of your typical “conqueror,” are they?
You can read the full text of Mr. Powell’s remarks here.
Yes we conquered an evil regime, and we will restore it to the people of Iraq.
I don’t see what the big deal is about waving a U.S. flag for a few minutes. Did you miss the herds of Iraqis running through the streets waving U.S. flags? Is there some order of operations, like only a non-American is allowed to wave American flags? Or should we have scolded the Iraqis for waving flags, because it will cause mass anti-US sentiment?
About the momentary waving of the American flag…
News media all over the world – especially, it seems, in the United States itself – never miss an opportunity to show film clips of the American flag being burned and stomped on by fanatical, ignorant (and, apparently, unemployed) street people in Gaza, the West Bank, Teheran, France, and so on.
Just this once, let us witness, however briefly, that same flag being raised in triumph and exuberance.
Don’t you people ever get tired of being wrong?
But you can draw conclusions from a few hundred people opposing the war that the “region will rise up”?
I don’t think that’s a tenable position any longer:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/2931475.stm
Cyberpundit said:
I hereby nominate this statement for the “Head in the Sand, 2003” award.
Open your eyes, for God’s sake. People throughout all the liberated areas are cheering wildly. People are kissing pictures of George Bush, chanting, “Bush! Bush! America!”. Families are crying tears of joy as they re-unite with long-imprisoned loved ones.
And it’s not just ‘hundreds of people’. I’m seeing THOUSANDS. TENS of thousands. The streets are jammed with cars full of cheering people. It looks like freaking Mardi-Gras. And it’s everywhere. Sunni regions. Shi’ite regions. Kurdish regions. Now that the people are free to express themselves, they are jubilant. Ecstatic.
Must be tough to know you tried your best to stop this from happening.
But you anti-war guys just HATE this, don’t you? It topples your whole world view. Today at the University of Alberta, anti-war protestors staged a planned ‘die-in’, where some protestors dressed as American soldiers, and the others lay ‘dead’ at their feet. When they were asked what they thought of the days’ events, several of them said, “We’re somewhat confused by it.” They just can’t wrap their world view around what their eyes are seeing. There’s a lot of that going around.
Jane Fonda gave a speech in Vancouver today, saying that now Americans will be hated throughout the world for this. What an incredibly STUPID reading of events.
Winning the war is one thing, winning the peace is another. Not that winning the war isn’t quite an accomplishment – I give the U.S. Army major props for doing a really great job of keeping civiilian casualties so low to date, and for keeping their own asses from being shot up, too.
Still, there are a LOT of ancient hatreds among the people of Iraq, I hope we can do as much for them as we did for the people of German and Japan after WWII. And I hope they are able to profit from our help.
You think they hate that? Wait 'till they find out that a large part of the Arab “backlash” will be a bunch of jubilant Arab-Americans, already mostly Republican, pushing Michigan into the red column in '04.
Amen. On that I think everyone can agree.
The way it seems to be playing on Arab TV was shock when the flag went up, but when they changed it to Iraqi colors, the anchors seemed even handed about it. They said something akin to “the young American seems to have realized his ‘mistake’ and is correcting the situation.”
I hope that is the way it is covered, but I fear that the front page will ignore the statue falling and have THAT visual on the frontpage.
But regardless of how you feel about the war, it HAS to give you a wonderful feeling seeing those people take the first taste of freedom.
I hope that in the aftermath of this war with the U.S., Iraq will fare as well as Japan did after WW2.
I fear that in the aftermath of this war with the U.S., Iraq will fare about as well as the various South and Central American countries we’ve stuck our noses into.
sorry, Manhattan, but Shrub Lite will be helped by this war in 2004 about as much as his dad was helped by Gulf War I in 1992. No, Michigan will not join the failed W election bid in 2004.
About the flag incident- yes it was a small mistake but just what the Arab press needed- something negative to focus on. Let’s say a young Iraqi girl gave a flower to a US Marine, and a gust of wind came up and blew a petal back in her eye, the headlines in Damascus and Cairo would read “US MARINE MAIMS YOUNG MOSLEM GIRL”. The Arab press has never been fair and never will be. The only way for the US to come close to winning the peace is to get a credible Iraqi government in place and get the hell out as quickly as humanly possible.
Yep! I wonder if she meant to say that she will be hated throughout the world?
:smack: 
I’ve read that it was a flag from the pentagon, saved from september year before last. Is that a little inappropriate?
Also, does it put anyone in mind of Russian flags over the Reichstag?
Oh, and newcrasher needs to take a breath…
Cheers.
What does this mean?
HELP! I am being repressed!
Well, now we see the violence inherent in the system…
Cheers.
**
Wow. Self-serving cynicism knows no bounds.
That’s pretty much what I saw on television. I didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about.
Here we have a handful of Iraqis and the US troops pulling down a statue. Considering the population of Baghdad a few hundred is not a lot of people.
The US troops drive their tanks through Baghdad. CNN shows only the pretty side of this. Iraqis running up and kissing the army guy. What the don’t show is the crowd behind the tanks throwing rocks. You don’t see the Army had out bars of soap and then see the Iraqis pelt the Army troops with said soap. Iraqi students yelling at the US troops about blowing up their homes and saying “who’s going to liberate the dead?”
I hated that the US army pulls down this statue and all of a sudden the headlines “Saddam regime falls”. Like hell. That was a statue. Saddams army is still shooting real bullets and rockets at the US army.
Stupid US propaganda.
Shame on you all for falling for it.