You should check out Frontline’s documentary from last week. I can’t decide whether this administration should be prosecuted for war crimes or for criminal incompetence. AFAIC they blew the whole prospect of a unified Iraq just by Abu Ghraib alone. And whatever peace there still is to be had, there’s no way the U.S. can broker it now.
Just a dadgum minute. We invaded a country, deposed their leaders, occupied it, are fighting an insurgency, and this country is an ally? Wow. I can’t wait to see how we treat our enemies.
Obviously, I do not believe Iraq is our ally. Iraq is a nation occupied by us and under our control. An ally is not created at the point of a gun.
I don’t find it at all mind boggling that the TSA people can look in my luggage. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to take an airplane. Iraqis, on the other hand, are going to find it tough to always stay a hundred yards (you’d think they could at least have used metres, seeing as how nobody else in the galaxy uses “yards” anymore) from the nearest American.
You’re right, though, in that the world isn’t a nice place. One thing making it much less nice is the United States invading countries and shooting their civilians.
I just meant that, legally speaking, the current Iraqi government is allied with the USA. Whether it’s a puppet government of some sort, or has no actual power, is debateable. I guess we’ll find out when we do, eventually, leave…
And “allies not being created at the point of a gun” was the point I made posting the original article; this really is not going to endear the Iraqis to us. And, judging by most of the posts in this thread, it’s certainly not made rabid pro-war campaigners out of all us 
Or all of us, anyway :smack:
The more the Iraqis hate us, they harder they’ll try to kill us; the harder the Iraqis try to kill us, the more paranoid and ruthless our soldiers will get; the more paranoid and ruthless our soldiers get, the more the Iraqis will hate us and try to kill us…
Maybe we need to widen those “kill zones” a bit, from 100 yards to 200 yards, or 1,000 yards–how about 6,000 miles or so?
Of course, at this rate, we will need to make the kill zone 6,000 miles wide, because the next group of people to come over here and fly planes into skyscrapers will be from Baghdad.
I hope insurgents have stocked up on RPGs and AK-47s in order not to breach that 100 yards limit… :wally
This whole mission was a bust as soon as George HW Bush sold Saddam chemical and biological weapons in the early 80s.
Erek
The terrorists did squat. The terrorists were a gang of scruffy third-world malcontents with a beef. They had virtually no power, and used the only means at their disposal to kill a bunch of people.
And then we changed everything in response.
If the terrorists acquired the power to change everything, it’s because we gave them the power to do so.
The response of the British after the transit bombings, by contrast, is markedly preferable. “Kill a bunch of us if you must, but we aren’t going to do anything but dust off, clean up, mourn, and move on.”
All the terrorists did was draw blood. Everything else was our doing.
New York is actually safer now than it ever was. The September 11 attacks killed what was it around 3000 people? The murder rate in New York in 2000 is about 35% of what it was in 1991. The murder rate has stayed lower since about 1995. So if we average 9/11 over all the years of this decade we will probably still see a lower murder rate than we saw in the 90s, unless some crazy economic madness causes the rate to shoot up toward the end of this decade.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm
Erek
Any Iraqi standing 100 yards from US troops and throwing ANYTHING, even a boquet of flowers, at them would almost certainly be shot.
And I find it funny that Paul in Saudi is telling an Israeli about how this policy is defensible when your enemies are terrorists. Israel deals with terrorists day in day out without errecting a 100 yard safety zone around their forces. I can’t even imagine the international outcry if Israeli soldiers started shooting anyone who got closer than 100 yards.
Enjoy
Steven
I’m not sure whether to criticise this comment for melodrama or for complacency. Three of the London bombers were British-born…why should America be any safer from similar American-born terrorism? (This is working on the assumption that, had they the ability to learn to fly planes & instigate a multiple hijack, the Tube wouldn’t have been the target on July 7. I think this is a safe assumption.)
To expand on what RickJay said, if the purpose of this is simply to protect American soldiers, we can do that by getting the hell out of Dodge.
If we’re balancing our soldiers’ safety against other concerns, like whatever our ultimate goals are in Iraq, then it would be helpful to know what those goals are.
Make it 8,000, and we can just wipe everybody else off the face of the earth. Then we won’t need a foreign policy anymore.
100 yards. That would make any populated area a free fire zone.
The USA is out of control.
Hey, if you can throw a bouqet of flowers 100 yards, you should be in the US trying to play in the NFL. Heck, they get the NFL in Iran now, do they get it in Iraq?
Also, the sign is yet another sign of American arrogance. By using yards instead of meters they are giving yet another “screw you” to the rest of the world.
[slightly off topic]
What is the record for the longest forward pass anyway?
I found this:
But surely some NFLer’s thrown from one endzone to the other, and had it caught?
[/slightly off topic]
(I hate to interrupt the ranting and posturing with the facts, but …)
This is an old policy. Some posters seemed to think it is a recent innovation, but it is not.
By the way, over on theMIchael Yon Blog there was a comment that the US soldiers are now trying to chase away Iraqi kids from their patrols. The Freedom Fighters (or whoever) have taken to using the kids as shields.
(Darn if I can find the specific comment now though. I need my morning caffeine! Still a darn fine Blog, really. )
Nah, just out of their depth.
It was supposed to be easy, remember? It was going to be essentially free, too.
-Joe
And what’s the literacy rate in Iraq?
Iraq is an ally of the US in the sense that Vichy France and the Italian Social Republic were allies of Nazi Germany (to be clear I’m not trying to compare the US to the Third Reich). Could the present Iraqi government decided to order all foreign troops out of their country and relegalize the Baath Party, and have the US abide by their wishs?