I accept your premise at face value I would say that any school, in any shape, is better than nothing. The United States will not create a new country, Iraqi’s will. Education is EVERYTHING. You are looking at it through soccer-mom glasses. These schools exist because of “found” money (Saddam’s) and donations from people around the world (supplies). The schools may resemble something Abraham Lincoln went to but they are still schools. 2+2 = 4 no matter how fancy or modest the location. It is telling that the US government believes an educated populace is as important as general infrastructure.
AS for progress, it is close to what I expected and I’m neither an optimist or a pessimist. I expected more oil flow but I didn’t anticipate how vulnerable the Western pipelines are. If the trends continue, they will make up for it on the Eastern port. When you can translate this into jobs you will see a faster swing towards independence. It will become the light at the end of the tunnel. What would help things immensely is the capture of Saddam. It would also help if Shiite/Sunni religious leaders would get together for a hug fest. And I hope the news I heard on ABC (?) is not true. They talked about a defector that said Saddam had tactical WMD’s (shoulder fired chemical weapons). This could really muck up things if civilians are again used as political targets.
Hehe–calm down, man… “violated board protocol?” “Inform a moderator?”
If twisting someone’s words was a reportable offense this whole board would be shut down in no time.
I’m just saying that you took my stated position and “advanced” it, on your own, to a point I never attempted to make. Again-- I bet we largely agree on the reasons “bad news” stories push ahead of “good news” stories. “Airliner lands in one piece at O’Hare” isn’t gonna be the lead story even on a slow news day. I’d even concede that the single biggest reason for the “imbalance” coming out of Iraq is simply the sensational nature of the media… and their desire to always get noticed with a big-impact story. That said, I think we’d be dreaming if we didn’t attribute some share of that imbalance to a bias among much of the major media. My objection to the word “suppressed” was, I guess, simply that I wanted to place most of the blame on the natural sensationalistic nature of ALL media reports, and less on institutional, intentional bias.
Really? Is that why Michael Jackson recently knocked everything to the back page recently, simply by appearing at an arraignment for child molestation charges? I bet that day, something “good” happened in Iraq, but it got bumped for sensationalism-- not “importance.” I think if you replaced “importance” with “sexiness level” in your equation, you’d be closer to the mark.
I guess all I’m saying is that in order to keep a balanced perspective on Iraq, it behooves one to look at both sides. And one of those sides is a little more trouble to dig up-- not neccessarily because it doesn’t exist, but (mostly) because it isn’t very sensational. Sure, we all had the Saddam statue toppling beaten over our heads enough, but that was really a dramatically symbolic moment in the war–that was a money shot if ever there was one. I’d like to hear more about the schools reopening, or the towns in Iraq who are turning security over to their own police forces, or whatever-- but those “dull” stories don’t exactly sell papers.
Oh- and my “apples and oranges” thing just meant that I’m not ready to see any equivalency whatsoever between the US going into Iraq and China going into Africa without defining a LOT more in terms of China’s and Africa’s hypothetical actions in the years leading up to this dust-up…and would think considering it further would be more suitable to a separate thread.
Dude, you’re the one who needs to calm down. Don’t make implications that I misconstrued what you said when you know I didn’t.
I didn’t twist your words; please stop accusing me of doing so.
I did no such thing.
No, I don’t agree at all. American soldiers dying is a more important story than power plants being restored to operation or whatever. The latter story simply doesn’t deserve as big a headline. That’s not sensationalism, it’s just putting the proper story on the proper page. You conceded that it’s the right place for the story, correct? So how is that indicative of any “sensational nature of the media”?
I don’t see how you have demonstrated that any bias exists in regard to reporting on Iraq.
I have no idea what point you are trying to make. Are you asserting that the media deliberately pushes these “good” stories about Iraq out of the way, or aren’t you? You seem to be saying that, but then you get all pissy about it and claim you aren’t saying that, and that I’m putting words in your mouth. Well which is it? And while I agree that the articles about Jackson are generally sensationalist, I do NOT think that articles about the deaths of American servicemen are.
The “bad” news from Iraq is not sensationalist either. Your Micheal Jackson example is simply a red herring.
That information is all available. I don’t know what paper you read, but I see such progess reports on Iraq all the time. Your only gripe seems to be that it’s not being put on the front page as much as you like, and I think we pretty much covered why it’s not.
All you need to know for the analogy is that China unilaterally invades another sovereign country, and their purpose is to “save” the people there from an oppressive regime. That’s the way you’ve framed the situation regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and I am quite certain that were an analagous situation to occur with China, that the U.S. would never stand for it. What further definitions of hypothetical actions do you need to understand it?
**At the risk of being overly dramatic, this operation was a failure before it began. What else was possible when the stated justifications for it were lies?
**
The two concepts have nothing to do with each other. And the vast majority of justifications turned out to be true anyway, so your statement is irrelevant.
Well I can tell you that at least one of those claims is an absolute crock. Foreign journalists (and everyone else) are not free to come and go. Entire towns have been cordoned off with barbed wire and anyone suspected of not having legitimate reasons for entry, or who are deemed suspect are refused entry. Of course the occupying military forces decide who has a legitimate reason to come and go and who is suspect.
That is not freedom to come and go. It is an iron curtain that dictates the movements of civilians and makes them answerable to the military for their daily activities. This is the type of freedom of movement seen in occupied Berlin and the fortified villages of the Viet Nam war.
That is one outright lie that I noted with only casual observation. I can only assume that the rest of the list is equally untrue.
And please don’t try to argue that freedom to come and go means freedom to come and go into and out of the country. No one is free to do that. Anyone entering or leaving the country is still subject to check by the occupying military ostensibly to ensure they are not a member of the Iraqi administration fleeing, or a foreign terrorist entering. People are free enter and leave the country only after they pass a check by he military, just as was the case under Hussein.
Since this is GD I suppose I should provide a reference: http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/12774.htm
“Those tactics include demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers, imprisoning relatives of suspected guerrillas and ringing towns such as Abu Hishma in barbed or razor wire”
I don’t think that the people imprisoned for potentially sharing the same genes as alleged criminals could be considered free to come and go. These people are not suspected of any crime. At best they are being incarcerated for their political beliefs and are political prisoners. At worst they are being imprisoned for the crimes of others over which they had no control.
And still people wonder why the Iraqis are resisting and why they don’t see this new ‘democratic’ and ‘just’ administration as an improvement over the old one.
There has been a disquieting number of suggestions made that the Bush team is taking pointers from Sharon, possibly even before the invasion. The tactics Blake describes seem pretty familiar. Is “The Butcher of Beirut” telling Bush how those Arabs have to be taught their place?
That is patently false. The weapons of mass destruction were never found, and the supposed links to Al Qaeda found were tenuous at best. And the original “evidence” used to justify the invasion has been found to be based on faulty intelligence if not outright lies.
“Iraq will serve as a good host country for future U.S. military campaigns in the region.”
This is highly questionable at best. What is the guarantee that a future government will allow American troops to stay in Iraq? Even now Shia clerics like Sistani are powerful and the US
has had to change its plans to placate them. After an Iraqi government takes over they will become even more powerful even if they don’t necessarily have full control. In any event I doubt that an Iraq base will be of that much use. Even if an Iraqi government allows US troops to stay it’s extremely unlikely they will allow the US to attack another Muslim country from Iraq.
There are no real geo-political benefits to justify the enormous cost of this war in terms of money, lives, damaged diplomatic relations and resources diverted from the fight against terrorism. It's a textbook example of ideology triumphing over rational policy-making.
To follow up on my earlier post on the state of school renovations, today this article came out about an Army investigation confirming a number of complaints of improperly renovated schools.
It seems I have egg on my face on one point here. I argued with ammo52 that the U.S. would never stand for China unilaterally invading another country. Obviously, I chose the wrong example; based on recent events, it sounds quite possible that Bush would allow such a thing. So I’ll say something I rarely get to say;) - I was wrong.
Well, it’s not clear to me that Taiwan’s a seperate country.
If they were a seperate country, I don’t see the sense on having a referendum on independence.
