© the eyeranian

By any definition, these extremists aren't Muslims...so I wish the press would stop using a term that doesn't apply to them- regardless of what modifier they put in front of the term...extremist Muslims, Wahabbist Muslims, etc. Someone from the Iraqi council referred to them as psychopaths. That fits.

:-)

I’m personally still trying to make any sort of sense out of the insanity going on in Iraq. There’s an excellent article in this week’s New Yorker that drives home a few points. The article can be found at:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040517fa_fact

Here are some excerpts:

“The day I visited, Shaker said that he was reviewing “an interesting case,” unrelated to the Ashura bombings. The body of a woman, forty-one years old and never married, had recently been discovered with six gunshot wounds in the chest. Shaker’s initial examination had found that the woman appeared not to be a virgin, and the number of gunshots suggested that the murder was premeditated. These details cast suspicion on her family: Shaker said that such a crime was called “washing the shame.” Honor killing is an old custom in Iraq, he said, though in this case there was a new element: before the war, the family would have burned or drowned the woman to disguise the murder. “Now you can kill and go,” Shaker said. “No need to cover the crime.””

Next:

“Down the hall from the morgue, which is in a squat, two-story yellow building called the Medico-Legal Institute, is an examination room with a reclining chair and stirrups. This is where virginity exams on living subjects take place—most of them on suspected prostitutes, but also on runaways, kidnapping victims, and girls who have suffered an accident and whose parents, for the sake of marriageability, want a medical certificate establishing their purity.

“An entire subspecialty of forensic medicine in Iraq deals with virginity, Shaker said. In any criminal case involving a woman, it’s the most important piece of information. “It rules our life,” he added. The surprising thing about these details of his profession is their ordinariness. In the West, Iraqis developed a reputation for cosmopolitan modernity that is now decades out of date. In order to win the support of Iraq’s clerics, Saddam obliged people to adopt a harsh form of traditional Islam. In private matters of religion, family, and the treatment of women, the vast majority of Iraqis are far more conservative than most outsiders understand.”

The point overly focuses on sex, granted, but it’s not gratuitous. How in the world did the U.S. ever think it would change a country that is so concerned with hymens and honor killings, and God only knows what other insanities? The failure to understand this country, and the article makes this point very clearly, is incalculable.

And:

“In March, during the standoff over the interim constitution, I went to see Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurd on the Governing Council. A small man with a large nose and an unblinking stare, Othman was for many years the personal doctor of Mustafa Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas who fought the Iraqi central government. Before the American invasion, Othman was living in London, and, like most Kurdish politicians, he shares the Americans’ vision of a relatively secular and liberal Iraq. But, much to the annoyance of the C.P.A., he has proved to be the Governing Council’s in-house critic. When most of its other members were jockeying to perpetuate their positions beyond the June 30th transfer of sovereignty, Othman was calling flatly for the council to be dissolved, saying that it hadn’t worked. He placed the blame for the debacle over Article 61c squarely on Bremer—who, Othman claimed, had coddled the council’s Shiite bloc early on, encouraging its members to become intransigent. “It’s a humiliation to him,” he told me, with faint satisfaction. “He gave them that leverage, coming and going, and it was very bad.”

“I asked Othman if the occupation was a failure. “It’s not a success, either security-wise or media-wise or economic-wise,” he said. “But I can’t say it’s a failure.” He believed that most Iraqis still hoped for a decent life and a better society. In fact, Othman declared, going further than most observers would, “if things are set right, I think liberalism and secularism have the majority in this country always. But are the people now free to express their points of view? They are not. Because the country now is ruled by militias, mullahs, and warlords. The simple citizen is not allowed to have his own rights, to say freely what he wants.” In one way, he added, the Americans were like Saddam: “They are not caring much for a simple Iraqi citizen. They care for a chief of a tribe here, a mullah there, a religious man here, a militiaman here, head of a party there.””

Whether Othman has it right about where things may go if they’re made right is totally unclear to me, and I’m inclined to think he’s wrong. Given the differences that exist in the country now, the fact that a thug like al-Sadr has been allowed to fester into what he’s become, and the fact that we fundamentally don’t seem to understand the Iraqi people, their history or what they truly want, it remains to be seen not how well the U.S. will do but how much of a mess it won’t leave.

How to Get Out of Iraq

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17103

A must read article by Peter Galbraith. He was the US Ambassador to Croatia.

US will need to find a way to get back into Iraq!! What we have now over there is a US occupation force driving humvies on some piece of sand dune. Future of our 401K depends on how we rule the world. This army is doing for all the tax payers that own homes in this country, lets not forget that. If you want to change that then you must change yourselves while fighting the system.

The article provided in the third post is an excellent one. I was immediately taken with the following in the article:

"Except for a relatively small number of Saddam Hussein's fellow Sunni Arabs who worked for his regime, the peoples of Iraq are much better off today than they were under Saddam Hussein. The problems that threaten to tear Iraq apart—Kurdish aspirations for independence, Shiite dreams of dominance, Sunni Arab nostalgia for lost power—are not of America's making (although the failure to act sooner against Saddam made them less solvable). Rather, they are inherent in an artificial state held together for eighty years primarily by brute force."

This sums it up, and very succintly hits the nail on the head as to what we didn't bother to take the time to understand before we went in there.

No matter how any one looks at the situation in Iraq one thing remains as fact:
Occupiers suck.

Occupiers suck --- you know, what sucks is not that there are occuppiers there, it's how they completely botched it. Had they come in with a plan that was endorsed by the UN, taken out what REALLY sucked which was the government that was there, and then protected the country's intellectual assets and its people, provided an opportunity for those concerned to come up with a reasonable plan and then left, then some good would have been done. To be more specific, a government which indulged genocide on a regular basis is far more sucky than occupiers who'll eventually leave. Unfortunately in this case the occupiers went in with a no plan and have created a ridiculous mess that, by and large, would have been avoidable had this been done the right way.

I don't even want to hear about how Sadaam was an American created problem, that somehow the U.S. was responsible for the vicious, genocidal and fundamentally evil actions of Hussein and company. Not a single, SINGLE, country was complaining about what was going on in Iraq under Hussein, to include Iran, at the UN. No one was taking him to task for his actions, no one was making an international case for his removal or even so much as to admonish him. Why? It's easier to ignore the evil than to do something about it --- and I'm not saying that the U.S. going into Iraq was a righteous thing, it wasn't; going in under an international umbrella, for the reason of cleaning out a homicidal maniac, would have been.

Here's an idea for a mural.
Choose a neutral color background, cover wall (use cheap paint).
Buy various sponges, as flat as possible. Those that are all squished up and expand when wet are ideal. Cut out shapes as you like. I use leaves and flowers. Dip the leaves in greens, the flowers in all the colors that please you. Slap them all over your wall. Create a so-called: "herbaceous border" of perennials. Don't bother about accuracy, you are going for the bold strokes, an impressionist effect of blocks of flowers. Don't bother what colors go next to each other, everything looks good in nature, if you want purple next to yellow, do it.
When you have filled in your border, take some ceiling paint and dilute it a little bit, not too much, and use a large fat sponge to sponge over the whole wall, working fast so you don't get drips all over the place. If you keep the whitewash fairly thin, you may have to do it more than once, maybe as much as three times. At some point, it will look like a garden coming out of the mists on a muggy foggy day.
Play all kinds of music as you work, vary your strokes and your moves. Go wild, go peaceful and melancholy, do large fronds, small pointillistic shrubberies, whatever your wild imagination springs to. Don't plan, let the "sap" rise and enjoy yourself.
You will never tire of your house garden, and you will need less furniture than you think. And you will still be able to stick a few pictures up, if you should so wish.
The beauty of this wall is you don't do it all at once, it grows by increments. So you can do the blue flowers when you just have one half hour, etc.
Just an idea. I did one for myself on a water damaged wall that could not be straightened out and after many years I still love it.

James,
So what should the Americans be doing? Not working with various leaders? I suppose the states goal is to establish infrastructures for transport and communication, but so hard when you have to keep stopping to shoot everyone. Are there any successful models of Occupation we could take a look at?
Pedram,
I suggest Burgundy paint, with stamped petroglyphs in beige, then fake-aged with diluted burgundy or brown lightly sponged over them. Make the stamps yourself out of cut foam sheets glued to scrap wood.

Atmikha, Stooping to shoot everyone? Well, I guess that would surely apply to everyone who's shooting at them. Please, let's not get simplistic here; the Americans are not watonly shooting everyone. Were they I'm sure that this would far and away overtake the prison mess in the press and the voice of international condemnation.

Yes, indeed there are successful models of occupation to look at. Japan and Germany, I'm sure you're at least vaguely familiar with both. Of course the reasons for their success are open to many questions, and the problem with using them as a model (which far too many of the people sent over there did) is that the circumstances in both cases were after a total defeat of the countries in question and the complete destruction of the infrastructures of both countries. Moreover the fact was that everyone, not least the Japanese and the Germans, were totally fed up with the war at that point and figured that the allies couldn't get it any worse. Lo and behold the allies in fact made it better in the end. Of course getting it better took some 15 to 20 years, but no one would question that today both countries are hardly poster children for occupied nations along the lines of what we're now seeing in Iraq.

In both of those cases the people were completely defeated and had been bludgeoned into the conclusion that what was to come couldn't be as bad as what they were going through, and things went well from there. From a population that was treated far worse than anything seen in Iraq there were no snipers taking out the occupiers, no underground resistance, no IEDs planted in the road to blow up indiscriminate vehicles and no bombings of their own populace by fanatics more interested in seeing things go their way then they were in restoring their country to some semblance of order, expediting the removal of the occupiers from the governance of their country, and then making the best of it from there.

Again, the Galbraith article, posted above but here again for you or anyone else:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17103

makes excellent points about what we should have done, how we've managed to get this wrong, and what we likely need to do to get out of there without having left too much of a total mess.

Atmikha, Looking at your last post, I clearly misread the specific point you were trying to make. It seems we're more in agreement than not, and you were not making the point that the Americans were shooting their way through the country. Mea culpa.

Again, sort of a broken record thing here, the Galbraith article is clearly one of the best on this subject that I've read. He lays out pretty clearly what should have been done and at this point what should be done. It's voices like his that shoud have been listened to way before we ever stepped into this dung pile of a mess.

Purple DOES look good next to yellow!

user id and password for washington post:

user id: zzz123@aa.com
password: zzz123

I don't like the idea that news organizations are trying to track their readers and what they read. It will lead to dumbing down of the news just like it did with TV.

Now here is an article on Washington Post that is also worth reading:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10160-2004May8.html

It's by one of a hand-full of foreing service officers that were principled enough to resign over the war.

The Post article is a good one for food for thought, but I don't think he goes nearly as far in his recommendations as are needed to address the problems, and I don't agree with everything he's saying here. First:

"There was no external enemy -- no Red Army at the gates -- to validate us as the lesser of two evils. Iraq's internal schisms were too deep for quick fixes, and the highly touted Iraqi George Washingtons who trailed behind our tanks were irrelevant or fraudulent."

Two things would have validated our presence there, in spite of there being no Red Army ready to take over, had we had the sense to appreciate them. First, coming into Iraq as part of a coalition, in the company of many other nations (not Fiji, Somoa, etc.) with the explicit sanction of the UN. And second, the internal enemy was sufficient to justify what was done, Sadaam was an evil man, responsible for the deaths of many, many Iraqis, and he likely would have posed a threat on some level to the region and the world given his proclivities. Taking him out on the basis of just that would have been great, but coming into totally unprepared for the predictable chaos that occurred, and not in a position to protect the infrastructure of the nation, totally undermined any good garned by kicking out Hussein.

What Kiesling doesn't adequately address and Galbraith does, and I think Galbraith is totally on the money regarding the importance of this point, is that there are three factions in Iraq now that all want something, and as soon as we're gone they'll not be interested in working together. How this is best addressed I'm not sure, but Galbraith does provide an interesting solution that may quell what would otherwise turn into a bloodbath down the road. The Kurds don't give a fig for being part of Iraq, the Shia want a religious government and as much of the resources under their land as they can have, and the Sunni want what they think they're due and are owed by virtue of just being there. However you look at it, this situation, this tension of forces, concerns and desires, needs to be put to rest. I just don't see one person that we'd defer to as "THE" one and back away for, becoming THE head Kahuna, accepted by everyone.

James

Americans have always been known for their Yankee Ingenuity. That is, the innate ability to improvise in uncharted territory and come up with fast, effective solutions to tough problems.

In the ongoing battle for stability in Iraq, a handful of brave soldiers have finally taken the initiative necessary to quell the violence and bring about an era of lasting trust, peace and democracy in the entire region.

Tired of coddling their filthy raghead prisoners with "respect" or "professionalism" or "the tiniest shred of human decency that most people are just born with", valiant soldiers like Spc. Jeremy Sivits, SSgt. Ivan Frederick and Pfc. Lynndie England heroically took the initiative to strip their detainees down and torture them for a series of very sexy photographs and videos.

Many Americans have expressed shock and outrage over the acts of abuse but a recent CNN poll shows that as many as 20% of Americans are bothered "not much" or "not at all" by the behavior. The numbers indicate a growing demand for more reality-based Tortutainment™—photos and video segments depicting cruel and sadistic treatment of prisoners—as long as it is done tastefully with genitals blurred out so that children can enjoy them too.

The White House was quick to denounce the acts at first, but as opinion polls continue to change, officials are beginning to take credit for the actions of their underlings.

"The idea wasn't completely theirs," explained Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a Wednesday press conference. "We had originally ordered them to douse the prisoners in gasoline and threaten to set them on fire, but gasoline has just gotten too expensive."

I get it. "Black" humour.

Thanks James, I read the article, and it is a pleasure and a relief to read some positive analysis and specific practical recommendations.

Pedram:
Why did you get mustard coloured furniture? How about hot dog colored walls? You could use that white-washing technique if it is too bright. Or maybe one hot dog coloured wall, and 3 bun-coloured walls, with relish coloured trim.

I get it. "No" humer.

For those who think America was so justified in attacking and occupying Iraq because Sadam MAY have been partially responsible for 911 or MAY have used WMD’s at some time against Americans….

...then it would be equally justifiable for all countries that may have citizens that were killed by American actions directly or indirectly to attack and occupy USA, particularly since USA owns WMD and has shown no fear of using it again.

THAT IS IF THEY COULD AND WHEN THEY CAN.

Now that would be a long list of countries!!!!

Messiah, I'm not sure you're at the right blog. No one here has said, to my knowledge anyway, that taking out Sadaam was justified because he had anything to do with 9/11 --- in fact I'd have to say that at this point there's totally zero evidence that he was even aware of 9/11 before it happened. So you got that one wrong.

As for the U.S. having WMD, it does have nukes, many, many of them, and if it didn't fear using them again I can think of plenty of times when it could have but didn't. So sorry, the historical evidence doesn't support you at all. But it does make for some inflammatory horse manure that gets those conspiracy types all riled up --- what, you their "Messiah"?

No Messiah, Sadaam was a homicidal maniac, who had homicidal sons who liked to rape women and children, and he had working for him many homicidal henchmen who liked to do what they wanted regardless the cost to the citizens or Iraq, and all together some half a million people disappeared because of Sadaam. Frankly he should have been taken out a long, long time ago, but no one seemed to be sufficiently put out by him to quite get together the crowd needed to do it under a U.N. sanction.

So you have some love thing going with Sadaam, do you? Ok, maybe it wasn't quite like that, but are you telling us he should have stayed in power? Let's posit that taking him out of power truly was the wrong thing to do, especially the way it was done in this case, so share with us what you think was the right thing to do here? Give us something to think about.

Sadam and sons killed, raped and tortured for 24 years. Anyone who thinks that America decided to suddenly go in for Iraqis sake is nothing but a fool or who wants to fool others.

Those who attack and rape others for their own gains under deceiving pretexts shall be punished
accordingly as history has shown.

Darn, did I ever say that the reason the US went into Iraq was because Sadaam and company were mega-criminals and evil men? No, I don't think I did. No, in fact Bush offered up many other reasons that didn't quite hit on this particular point except possibly in passing (but admittedly he's playing up on it now). Frankly it seems to me that if there was any possible reason for going into Iraq simply taking out Sadaam would be a good one this one would have been had it been done under a U.N. flag.

Jeeeezzz Messiah, you're having a problem keeping the flow of the conversation; please, try harder.

Now here's the original question: Should Sadaam still be in power? Should he have been left in Iraq and should we all have just looked the other way given that he's been in there for 24 years doing things that he did so well? I mean does the fact that he was getting away with it for 24 years give him some sort of international squatter's rights to keep the misery flowing? What's your answer to this Messiah?

If there's anything good to come out of the U.S. being in Iraq it's that a homicidal tyrant is out of power. How he was removed was wrong, the U.S. should not have gone in there unilaterally. But that he should have been removed is right. Do you disagree with that, or does this get too close to rubbing some deep held conviction about how anything the U.S. does is just plain old evil?

Come on now, we're trying to get some informed opinion and perspective, and really, truly, you're not quite holding up your end of this. I'm sure you can, just try, you can do it.

Don’t be patronizing.

Patronizing? God, please. Someone gets on here and wants to dole out something, then good, let 'em make good on it. But it seems everyone's got some cop out, in this case "He's being patronizing, I don't have to think". There's not enough thinking that goes on, you know? Really, there's just not enough people that burn any neuronal calories, they somehow lost the art or the natural inclination. Maybe I'm giving people too much credit, maybe people as a rule don't think, they just like to spout knee jerk malarky like:

"Those who attack and rape others for their own gains under deceiving pretexts shall be punished
accordingly as history has shown."

Actually, no, history doesn't show anything like this at all, there are plenty of attackers and rapists that go happily to their graves, like Stalin and Mao, who even put Saddam to shame in their individual feats of evil accomplishment --- but hey, it sounds righteous, really it does.

It's sort of like the religious police in Iran and Saudia Arabia, the ones who go around beating up kids who want to speak their minds or show a little individuality. The God Coppers, or their masters, can't deal with ideas, naw, so they spout slogans with little meaning or connection to reality, and kick the living daylights out of those who try to use their brains for something constructive, who don't buy the slogans and the horse turnds. Or even better, they throw them out a window to their deaths to really show them what thinking gets for them.

Yeah, not enough thinking goes on, but I gotta watch myself, I may be getting patronizing.

Actually, we dont know if sadam was a bad guy. We have heard a lot of bad things about him from the the american governments and their Zionist masters. But so what?

Ahhhh, the wisdom of sixpack. Well, at least he isn't spewing expletives.

Ohhhhhhh ... so it's the Americans and Jews that are making Saddam into the monster that it's claimed he was. God, that's a really clever way of getting around the whole thing. I mean if the US and the Jews just made him out to be so evil, then of course we're that much more guilty of making a total mess of things. Damn, that would support sixpack --- good one ... well, actually it would be with anyone who for one micro second used their brain.

If your argument is that the evil of Saddam Hussein and company, and the 100's of thousands of his own people he killed and plowed into the ground (but it's only Americans and Jews that are excavating those bodies from the ground --- damn we're so friggin' cleverly devious like that) is all an American/Jewish fiction, then you're far more out of touch with reality than I'd have ever given you credit for, and I was willing to give you LOTs of credit before this. But I love the tactic, I mean coming off with "Hey, he's not the devil everything I read tells me he is, that's just some cockeyed bs from the Americans and Jews. He was really a humanitarian who had the best interests of his people and the region in mind", it's so original, so delusional, so refereshing. Thanks sixpack, you're always good for a chuckle or two.

And let me touch but once again on my original point, which is that what Saddam was did not justify going in there and doing, alone, what the U.S. did. But it's done, and what good there is to be had for it is exactly that he's gone. Now the idea is to try and figure out what's the best way of getting that country back to a semblance of normalcy and giving its people the best chance to shape a future that they want, not what some 24 year dictator told them they'd have.

blah blah blah,,yada yada yada
what kind of drugs are you on jimbo.?
boy you could beat around the bush!!
here is my question again. How do you know sadam was a bad guy ?
Who told you that?

Sixpack --- ahhhhh, there ya go, showing your colors. What, you don't do no reading boy? Ya ain't up on your history? Well, of course not, more likely than not that sixpack is tightening up your rectus abdominus to the point where it's likely cutting the flow of blood through the ol' brain stem --- I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not talking about a standard six pack.

Again, your rhetorical sleight of hand is startling --- how out of it can you possibly be? Yeah, yada, yada, yada --- that's about what I expect from ya. You come on here and blow smoke, and yada, yada, yada --- you been hanging out with Cletus and the gang far too much.

jimbo
you are filty stupid bastard. I asked you a question and you cant answer me. so shut a hell up.

The former heads of OPEC told me Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. When the oil embargo of 1973 was on, it was largely in protest of American patronage of Israel. Who should come to America's rescue enabling us to weather most of the energy crisis but the Shah of Iran, and Saddam Hussein defying the solidarity of OPEC and their righteous stance (economic sanctions rather than military show of force as an instrument of diplomatic will! What a novel idea!). Saddam was a most useful whore in some fanaglings of U.S. realpolitik, always looking out for himself in any situation, his people or ideology be damned. This is a working definition of a "bad man" for me, plus its 100% American and Zionist free. Do you agree six-pack? Gotta hand it to you, you know how to bait James...

Gee sixie, it never occured to me that you actually were asking a question, I just assumed you were actually showing your ignorance. You needed little ol' ME to tell you what anyone with a sixth grade reading level already knows? Gosh, now you're actually owning up to being ignorant with that last post as you seem to be telling us that you honestly, actually, true to blue didn't know. Check those abs and deltoids dudereeno, I'm sure they're cutting the flow into the occipital region and up from there. In the meantime put the name "Sadaam Hussein" into your web browser, shuffle through some odd number of hits and remove the ones that you figure are American or from Jews, and do some reading (I'm assuming you can handle the reading); don't thank me for the epiphany I'm sure you'll experience, I'm happy to help you shed your ignorance.

Now Tagdeermachen is at least slightly more clever, but uses the old ruse that Sadaam was an American stooge. Yes, I understand, and that kept the rest of the world from complaining about him and doing something, or at least suggesting doing something, about him while he was committing genocide. What I find even more refreshing, though, is that Tagdeermachen agrees with me, Sadaam was a nasty ol' coot, evil, evil, evil (I embellish a bit, but the kind readers get the idea) based on his discussions with some OPEC buddy about Sadaam being a stooge do to undermining OPEC (which is a spectator sport with OPEC members, but Tagdeermachen likely didn't hear that from his OPEC buddy)
--- of course it strikes me as odd that Iraq and Iran would have worked at common purposes on anything, even for the U.S., but hey, so what?

Ok, some questions for you Tagdeermachen:

1. So he's an American stooge, therefore he should have stayed in power killing his people?
2. So he's an American stooge, that meant he wasn't killing his people, but that somehow we Americans were the ones doing it all along, and now we're in there to fix things because we lost control over him and ... well, actually, this is getting too complicated for even me to follow.

When, when are you guys going to come up with something new? What's worse, I warned you about this very thing somewhere at the beginning of all of this. What really astounds me is there are two people following this blog who don't want to own up to one of the most evil SOBs that part of the world has ever seen; instead they they want to play coy about what's what. Like there's a major "Duh!" moment there, but that doesn't surprise me either. More of the mullah bs, but now we have Mullah Tagdeermachen blaming the U.S. for stoogery and how that somehow justifies not admitting that in fact an embodiment of evil was removed and now there's an opportunity for Iraqis to make a new country for themselves.

Oh, hey, haven't you heard? Iranians at home are so sick of what they do have that they'd actually prefer having the old Shah back --- well, it's more a nostaglia thing that an actual "We'd love to have him" thing. That's what you get with the Mullahs, history repeating itself because they can't think past what was or what they think it is.

James,
point blank.... Are you a Jew?
Yes or No. that will do!

Oh dear ... no, no, not a Jew, or a Jew lover, or a Jew anything. Born a Roman Catholic, in the Bronx, Irish lineage, and as near as I know no Jews in the family tree anywhere. I dated a few Jews, and actually had a good time with them all in all; does that count? I'm also pretty darn sure that James is NOT a Jewish name, it's one of those like John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, Thomas ... getting the trend? ... that Jews tend to avoid.

Gotta love some of you people on here --- like being a Jew, or anything else, should matter. Grow up, really; but that'd be pretty hard, you're too busy hating people to quite figure out how.

James makes an ideal candidate for interrogators in Iraq now that physical torture is officially banned there. Having seen his posts, I am sure he can bore the Iraqi fighters to death with his long and repetitive arguments, make them go dizzy with his absurd logic and force them to talk with threats of one more round of lesson on how the Earth needs America filled with his self-superiority complex.

Now if he applies and with a little luck, there will be no internet access in Iraq for him to continue filling blogs with his mind manure.

I thinh james should go to iraq wearing an orange jumpsuit with a star of david on it.

Sixpack, you really don't seem to follow how you're so out of place in any venue where a substantive discussion could ever be expected. Which makes me even more astounded that you're here at all. What's the point? You spew your nastiness, you make your off the wall claims, blatantly demonstrate your ignorance and inability to grasp anything without an expletive attached to it, and when you cut through it all you're fundamentally a hateful person --- before I was invisible James, then a filthy stupid b_______, and now I'm a Jew who should be shot at in Iraq. Were you beaten as a child Sixie, does that explain your online vindictive and pitiful state of cyber presence? Actually, more likely than not, you're still a child (I have it from a good source that you are), and you're still going through a tortuous life --- my pity to you young lad, and that one day you'll grow into someone who knows how to have a conversation vice spew foulness that does little more than foul yourself is a hope of all of us, or at least those not like presently you, I'm sure.

And Messiah, the absurd logic is only absurd to you dear traveler, because you don't like it (well, of course, there's always the possibility that you don't understand it, but I'll defer to the benefit of the doubt on that) --- it makes you grapple with things you don't like, that show how specious your own logic is, how the world's more complicated and difficult to understand than your simplistic proclamations would make it. SO here we have another Mullah trick, trick #24, which goes,

"I don't like what you have to say, I have to think, which makes my head hurt, curls my beard hair and makes me want to beat my wife; therefore you must be absurd."

I mean this is getting to read like a play from Samuel Beckett --- I'd call it "Waiting for Diogenes". It's sort of cool in its way, were you guys not so representative of too many others like you. Take a few aspirins Messiah, get over the headache, and then try to think --- but then you and your ilk don't like to think, instead prefering to label those you don't care for as Jews, having superiority complexes and otherwise dumpers of mind manure. No discussion, no points raised to make the case for anything, nada. You just don't like the guy, what he has to say, and so ya just attack him because you don't know how to use your brain otherwise.

Gee, I'm sorry, this likely got too, too ... "something" for a few of you. Why I find this entertaining I'm not quite sure --- actually I have an idea that's it tied to just flat out not liking rude, unthinking people who've nothing better to do than be nasty with those trying not to be rude and exercise a neuron or two. The question then becomes how much this effort is worth, and we all know I've been down this path before. Oh well ... I'll see.

I have read James for a while here now and this guy loves to disagree. I think he is one of those guys that needs to win all the time, and that more reflection of how he was raised perhaps and not how much brain cells he uses. He definitely should join the army, he will be much happier there.

James - I hope you are not having any kids, because you just can't say you are ever wrong and that is not a good thing when raising a child.

Saddam, Amin, King Abdullah, Sadat, Castro, etc. are all in the same league, a two bit criminals. The larger question is why there seems to be such a disproportionate numbers of these dudes in middle east. John, so you think Arabs in particular lack universal moral values to be ruled by these yahoos??

What I get from James and others with similar view is that they truly believe Middle Easterners lack mental capacity and therefore a benevolent power has to civilize them.

Actually James, I never said Saddam was an "American Stooge," at least not at all points of his career. At some, he definitely was, during the oil embargo for instance. Look that up again. It may seem unlikely to you that Iran and Iraq would both simultaneously assist the U.S., but they did, and OPEC's demands for the U.S. to curb assistance to Israel were not met. Sometime after the list Saddam was classified as assisting terrorism, presumably because of his ties to a political party emphasizing Arab Nationalism (please name me a third world "Liberation" movement the U.S. was not opposed to during the cold war) and a vague sort of "socialism." Rather than being an "American Stooge," he was an "Arab commie rat." Then he lost his terrorist status when war broke out between Iran and Iraq in 1980, and the U.S. wanted to slap around the Islamic Republic without actually having to fight a war with it for being unceremoniously booted out of Iran, along with the Shah, whom we helped re-install (the British did the first installation to remove his Nazi-sympathizing father) back in 1953. In 1980, we supplied weapons for Saddam for this purpose, as we previously had done for the Shah. Some of the weapons were chemical weapons. Don Rumsfeld worked with Saddam during the 80's. His status as "American Stooge" had been reinvoked, until the first gulf war, when he became an "enemy of democracy."

I guess what I wish to explain to you is that I don't make out global politics to be as black and white as you seem to think I do. Saddam was occasionally an assistant in U.S. global political objectives. He had an ever shifting "status" in the eyes of those who make foreign policy. Sometimes an asset, sometimes condemned and demonized. There is no sacred conduct or fixed set of ethics in diplomacy of this sort, just questions of the most efficient means to an end in power and control acquisition. Personally, I call this conduct shameful and unethical, althought there might be some folks here who would debate me on this point. I just don't get why you think the U.S. was showing any sort of principle in condemning Saddam, when condemn or lionize, both are means to ends. However, we are still in agreement, I think, also with everyone else commenting on this blog, that Saddam was a shitburger.

By the way, its "taqdeermachen" with a "Qaf" rather than a "Gaf," though if you are studying Persian, I see why you might think this.

Oh James, and its not "Mullah (flattery will get you nowhere)", but "Darth." Iranians want the Shah back? I dunno... most of my Iranian coleagues and classmates would disagree with you on that count... not that they care for the mullahs and the "Guardian's council" either...

Taqdeermachen --- ok, you were good for a smile and a chuckle, and for refining my perspective, though in all honesty the particulars of the U.S. relationship to Sadaam is not new to me, and it does bring into question the whole "real politik" thing.

I don't think I was making the point that the U.S. was showing any principle in condemning Sadaam, or in kicking him out of power. My contention with his being put out of power is that at least there's SOMETHING positive to show for the mess that's going on over there. As far as condemning him is concerned, this gets into the question of the sanctions and how that should have been handled after Gulf I --- I mean I do feel Sadaam should have been condemned, that the world should have been taking him to task for being a homicidal whatever and doing what it could to remove him from power, but how do you do it, how should it be done? I don't know, and I'm not sure that the sanctions were the way to do it, but then what else is there?

While I think Sadaam being gone is a wonderful result to all of this, I make no excuses for what Bush did --- removing Sadaam as far as the administration is concerned is a convenient after-excuse given that they can't substantiate the ostensible original reasons for going in there.

I respectfully retract the "Mullah" crack, and will leave things at:

"However, we are still in agreement, I think, also with everyone else commenting on this blog, that Saddam was a sh__burger."

That he was, with plenty of lettuce, cheese, special sauce all on a sesame seed bun.

Ali --- who have I disagreed with? Let's be specific, I want to be sure that I'm not totally delusional. Put up the case in point. In fact my substantive points here have been in agreement with others made by those posters who are trying to take this thing seriously. You see man, you need to not just read what you read, but pay attention to it as well for not only are you not hitting my "disagreement" factor right, you're also coming up with a conclusion that doesn't come from anything I've said.

What I have said is that the U.S. has gone into that region of the world to help grow democracy without understanding the nature of the people they're dealing with. Being overly concerned with the hymen of your women doesn't make you mentally deficient; it does, in my mind, represent a total misplacement of priorities. I appreciate that this is a western perspective, and at least I understand that this middle eastern focus is intrinsic to the nature of the people living there, people who have a rich tradition of learnedness and innovation.

Alas, though, the learnedness and innovation has been on the wane for the past 500 years or so, but again this hardly represents a lack of intelligence, but it does reflect a problem that the region needs to fix because it's contributing to the poverty there, will be especially felt when the oil goes away and something has to replace it, and it's totally undermining half of the human capital there, to be more specific the women. Iran is the only country that comes close to having a country where women are close to being empowered given the number of them educated, and it's doubtful that most of the women there would say that they're given the freedom that their capabilities merit. But it's not just the women, everyone loses when books aren't freely available, newspapers aren't free to do what papers are supposed to do, and people in general aren't allowed to express themselves and to learn as they want --- this all contributes to the stifling of the Middle East and Iran.

Anyway Ali, I don't disagree with anyone other than those who take personal swipes at me, make me out to be being something I'm not, or worse get into a Jewish thing that's beneath any intelligent person on this list or anywhere else. Otherwise you want to have a serious discussion I'm about as there as there can be.

James to Sixpack:

"you really don't seem to follow how you're so out of place in any venue where a substantive discussion could ever be expected. Which makes me even more astounded that you're here at all. What's the point? You spew your nastiness, you make your off the wall claims, blatantly demonstrate your ignorance and inability to grasp anything without an expletive attached to it, and when you cut through it all you're fundamentally a hateful person "

Gosh, I couldn't have described James better if I tried!!!

James, what are you NOT studying right now (you once said you were a student)?
When I read your posts, I see whiskey and cigarettes, and women in red, red lipstick. -- (Flashback to my Irish immigrant family, the generation before last. Note: Irish people like to argue. A lot. An example is the Irish activist who was imprisoned by the British, and then a week later, the local populace elected him to parliament, just to show the British bastards a thing or two.)
As to your point: "It was unethical for the US to invade Iraq unilaterally, but since we did, aren't you glad?"
I would have to say no. It is, was, and always will be unethical. The end does not justify the means. Even violent revolution by the Iraqui people would have been better, because in order to do so, they would have had to develop the organisational and idealogical strength to re-invent themselves. As it stands, they are simply a decapitated version of the same old weak, amorphous banana republic, at the mercy of primitive tribal shamen, warlords and gangsters.

James: "the U.S. has gone into that region of the world to help grow democracy without understanding the nature of the people they're dealing with."

Puleeeeeeeeeeeeeeze... are you frickin nuts? are you a child?

If you had one working cell in your head you would have known that the U.S. did not need to build military bases in Iraq to help grow democracy. but that is only one proof. no need to tell you more and elaborate since your dysfunctional brain cells can't process and differentiate fact from fiction.

To JustaJames: I never said the following:

"It was unethical for the US to invade Iraq unilaterally, but since we did, aren't you glad?"

My point was, it's done, and there's something good to have come from it, in addition to a lot that's bad. So great, what should be done to help excentuate what's good and can do the most for the Iraqi people. This isn't an end justifies the means situation, it's more akin to "Damn, I broke the eggs, now I have to make omelets" situation.

The question remains, what should have been done about Sadaam if not be taken out? Should he have been allowed to continue, which in this case meant commiting genocide on his own people, or what?

Well Mullah Messian, if there is anyone on this blog who might give me pause to reflect that I might be neuronally deficient it's someone like you who so clearly is. Any concern I may have had lasted for all of a pico-second --- being neuronally lacking, how in the world could you know about anyone else? I'm sure your lack of ability to talk about the points is more indicative of your not understanding them than anything else, or worse, your inability to see how complicated the situation really is. Well, of course, mullahs can't think, they live by knee jerks.

As for the quote, frankly I don't think that's what I said. I believe I said we went into that part of the world without understanding the people we were dealing with. This endeavor we're in was to eliminate WMD, that was the primary reason. This democracy thing has become a focus after it became clear we had our heads up our butt on the first reason.

Hey, you guys! Wotchout! Iffen you stir the pot, you're gonna have to lick the stick!

Justajames, I didn't attend to your questions ---right now I'm not studying anatomy and physiology, which I'm hating with a passion, and loading up on a better understanding of creationism (I'm mucking my way through Robert Pennock's "Intelligent Design Creationisn and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives"). I've been trying to come to some sort of understanding of the creationist movement here in the U.S.

As for women in red, only if my lovely wife dons it (she does look good in it, I must say), I've never smoked (thank God), and while I do have an affection for Bourbon (Woodford Reserve being my current label of choice) it's only imbibed very judiciously and infrequently, maybe once a week and never when I'm trying to write something.

As for the Irish thing, my lineage is that surely, but I don't see myself as Irish. I visited there two years ago and it was a nice country but I had no sense of place there, and realistically there was no reason for me to. I grew up in a housing projects in the Bronx, specifically in Marble Hill, and have no sense of what being Irish means and in truth there's really no way for me to as neither of my parents (1st generation both) had any real ties to the "mother" land.

My "argumentativeness", if that's the right word, is debatable. I like a good discussion, but I hate dealing with those who don't think. When someone simply gets on here and spits foulness simply because they disagree with me for some reason it gets the juices flowing and there I go. To me that's not being argumentative, since the other person isn't arguing their merely being impolite, disrespectful, and self-demeaning; I see it as defending a right to think and say what's on one's mind (though what one says should be said with respect and without resort to traveling into the gutter). I guess that perspective comes from growing up in a housing project and enough time behind my belt in enough places to know if you don't do that you set very bad precedents.

So here's a point at which I do disagree, and that's with your assessment of where the Iraqi people are at. First there'd likely never have been an internal uprising as the three factions that are at play now have hated each other for a long time (the Kurds --- and yes, the Kurds are Sunni but they see themselves as Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni) and would not have worked together as it would have, at a minimum, required the Shia and Kurds to come together and that didn't work the last time it was tried.

Anyway, the issue as I see it is that there's at least one good thing to come out of this: Sadaam is gone. Now the Iraqis can try to figure out what they want for themselves if they'd just allow the time. If the U.S. pulled out today they'd be at each other's throats and they may still yet come to pass as it would in just about any scenario one can envision. If they can just pull it together in the coming year they can figure out what their country will become, and I think we can be pretty sure it's not going to be anything close to a western democracy. Fine, it'll be there's and they can make a mess or prize out of it as they want and hopefully do it with as little internal bloodshed as possible. A homicidal dictator and his government is out of power, and that's for the good, now we need to move to something that the Iraqis can take over and make work.

To Messiah, Correction ---

James: "the U.S. has gone into that region of the world to help grow democracy without understanding the nature of the people they're dealing with."

I apologize, that is in fact an exact quote of what I said in an earlier post now that I've had time to re-read what I've written. It's also taken out of context --- the U.S. never went into Iraq to bring simply bring democracy (I've said this a number of times here), but because they came up short on WMD it now touts the point that this is what they're trying to do there. If in fact this was any concern at all then they should have gone into the country understanding that this it's not possible to do in a western context given that the people there aren't western, don't think in a western way, and wouldn't know what to do with a western construct when they have no interest in what such a construct presents to them given their individual factionalism.

I doubt this clarifies anything for at least a few, but the apology needed to be made and an attempt at clarification provided.

James,
I think everyone including yourself agrees that the Bush administration has made big mistakes including going to Iraq withou UN.

You are being beaten up because you mix up views all the time. Reading your posts, one gets confused what is it that you are saying except that you are confident that the person who you are responding is wrong.

I suggest that you go for quality rather than quantity of posts... if possible!

Mehran, If you see specific inconcistencies in anything I've posted please point them out as there are none that I'm aware of. I will stand corrected if there are.

Now as far as being attacked is concerned, here's what we have to choose from (note: these are all cut and pasted from posts above with the author provided at the beginning):

Ali: What I get from James and others with similar view is that they truly believe Middle Easterners lack mental capacity and therefore a benevolent power has to civilize them.

Sixpack: I thinh james should go to iraq wearing an orange jumpsuit with a star of david on it.

Messiah: James makes an ideal candidate for interrogators in Iraq now that physical torture is officially banned there.

Anonymous:
James,
point blank.... Are you a Jew?
Yes or No. that will do!

Sixpack: jimbo
you are filty stupid bastard. I asked you a question and you cant answer me. so shut a hell up.

Admittedly including Ali's post here may be a tad bit unfair as he may have some honest to God reason to think that I was inferring something along the lines of what he was saying, but that said he cites nothing to back it up.

No, I think I'm being "beaten up" here by people who simply don't like what I have to say and instead of their providing points of disagreement they get personal, nasty and low-life, and some of them don't even have the cujones to provide their names.

Somehow I'm not seeing inconcistencies in anything I'm posting, rather I'm seeing an attempt to shut someone up, and anyone else on here who may have something to say which doesn't necessarily agree with the people doing the drive-by postings.

I may be seeing this from too personal a perspective, so I standby for some light on the matter.