So there might be a memo (or is one whatever) of the US Marines ‘losing’ the Anbar province, yet nearly all the tribal leaders of the Anbar province, something like 60-70% of them have joined forces to kick out Al Queda.
And in my own opinion, the polls might be indicative of public sentiment, and that will have to be resolved, but unfortunately, in not to create a bigger mess than the current situation, they’re going to have to wait until viable security forces are able to stand up on their own, now I know I’m going to hear that could be never, however, we’re talking about a 3 year old army taking over security operations. There’s no doubt that both the Army and Police forces of Iraq will need at least triple the amount of time to be considered able to act independently.
Militias are the sticking point though, even Sadr seems to be unable to control parts of his militia forces, which brings the reason of continuing the training and establishment of government forces to be able to control the country, no matter how difficult it is.
OK, my bad there. I noticed that the first sentence in your quote was directly from the PIPA sourse, so I figured the rest of it was, too. And since there was no link to ThinkProgress, I thought you made a typo.
I asked a simple question. You offered no evidence other than the poll numbers themselves. Asking a quesiton is not a strawman. All you need to say is “no”.
If you want an example of a strawman, this is a good one:
I would’ve thought you’d respond to the main argument in my post, instead of getting all tweaked out about the little teasing joke at the end. It wasn’t an accident that I put the winkie smiley there, you know-- that’s what it means.
According to a recent study, there is more torture in Iraq today than there was under Saddam Hussein.
There have been over 100,000 civilian deaths since we invaded Iraq. While this falls below the level of death that occurred during the genocide of the Iraqi Kurds, (about 200,000 deaths), however our average kills per annum is higher than his average kills per annum.
The Kurds still like us, only 35% of Kurds want us out within a year (although 70% want us out within 2 years).
While only about 22% of Iraqis believe that the US is a positive presence in Iraq, the percentage is 56% (41% think its a negative).
While over 60% of Iraqis approve of attacks on US troops only 15% of Kurds do so.
So in generaly, the Kurds still like us but they only represent 15 to 20% of the Iraqi population.
Your abject admission of error is regarded benignly. Go, and sin no more.
Not quite. The part I found objectionable was:
not
Which is where the smiley is located, presumably in reference to the statement immediately preceding, by habit and custom. If it was intended to imply that the entire post should be taken as lighthearted badinage, I missed it. And still rather doubt it. I very much doubt that you truly believe that I hold either of those absurd postions, and that comprises the bulk of your post. What other serious argument did you make?
Saw a spokesman for Turkey on tv last night. His take was whenever we leave there will be war. The oil rich lands are too good to pass up. He also expressed that the terrorist training occuring will continue and neighboring countries will face it. he is not happy about the mess we will have to leave.Kirkuk is much sought after.
Civil war he felt was inevitable. The 3 factions wont be stoppped. He didnt say turkey had designs on the north however.
We should remember that when we talk about torture being more prevalent in Iraq now than before, a lot of that torture is being inflicted by Sunnis on Shiites and shiites on Sunnis etc. Its not like WE are the ones doing it, we just created the environment in which this occurred.
Its not courage, its frustration, its desperation, its anger, its a natural human reaction. I mean what would you have done if 20 years ago Russia had invaded the USA to free us from evil capitalist influences so that a truly democratic government (without the influence of capitalist interests) could be put in place, and then proceeded to screw things up as royally as we did in Iraq?
I know its not a perfect analogy but you get the point.
I remember quite an outpouring of sympathy from around the world (including Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah) condemning the actions of Al Queda. When we invaded Afghanistan for not turning over Osama bin Laden (I believe Afghanistan wanted us to lift economic sanctions in exchange), everyone basically went along with us. Then we pissed away a whole lot of international goodwill and lied to the American people so that we could go to Iraq qand spend 300 billion dollars on a war.
I didn’t realize you were so thin skinned. I’ll keep that in mind, since it seems to be preventing you from responding to perhaps the only person posting in this thread who actually read the whole article.
Tortured is tortured and dead is dead. None of it would be happening if we hadn’t invaded instead Saddam would still be doing his bit. Which as people have said at least gave the populance a chance to keep their heads down and get on with the best life they could in a functioning society where women had rights. Unless they were good looking and crossed his evil son’s path.
But now every bad thing that happened under Saddam is going on still, but on a wider scale.
I have been, for the last 25 years all in favour of international action to remove Saddam. Given my druthers the West would not have supported him in the first place. But we had one chance to do this properly and to do it for the right reasons but instead we decided to do it for trumped up reasons with such a level of disgraceful incompetence that the situation is incomparably worse and getting worse all the time.
Blair, Bush and all their enablers should be tried as war criminals.
I understand but I have been hearing people interpreting the “more torture today than under Saddam” to mean that WE are torturing more people than Saddam used to torture in order to make a case against the torture bill. There are a lot of reasons to be against that bill but this is not one of them. Sorry for the hijack.
You can’t hold us responsible for your personal interpretation but in the wider and very real sense WE are responsible. We opened the gates to chaos. The blood is on Bush and Blair’s hands.
Find me someone to blame other than Bush and his poodle, Blair. Beyond that US troops have done more than their fair share of torturing as well – not exactly Boy Scouts, you know.