The Heroic Iraqi Insurgents

How disgusting that you find such actions "heroic."

He is being sarcastic. All this carnage could have been avoided if GWB = George Will Bomb, hadn't invaded Iraq.

Yes, when the inurgents bomb a hospital, it's because Bush is a villain.

What would you call the soldiers that were mentioned being killed in that article? Forgotten? Ignored? Non-consequential?

You know, you should have put "Heroic" in quotation marks to show everyone you were being sarcastic.

No, but before we invaded, insurgents were not bombing hospitals and other civilians daily. That's just a simple fact.

Yes, I know. Now read mine again.

I agree with wolf that quotes would have clarified meaning.

Frankly what annoys me is that having invaded Iraq, (for whatever reason) the occupation has been a disaster. Why were so few troops deployed? This was Invasion Lite, lo cal low cost. And its not worked.

As soon as the Sunni Ba'athists teamed up with the mad religious jihadists Iraq was lost imo.

Yep. Do it right, or get the H out.

Is someone sawing Brandon's head off while he screams again?




To the extent that you can be damned sure nobody would have been bombing hospitals in Iraq had there been no invasion, this statement is accurate.

If there's a .3 probability that a hospital bombing was due to George W Bush, how many hospital bombings have to occur before we can be sure that Bush was responsible for at least one of them?

The the MSM can cheer when that number is reached, because they only care about attacking GWB.

You are quite right Set. We invaded illegally and without just cause. My understanding is that international law is actually on the side of those resisiting the occupation. But what is a small matter of legality when it comes to big power politics? Had we not invaded there would not have been resistance to the invasion, simple.

But WHAT IF things had gone according to the plan we were sold immediately prior to going in there? That is Saddam's regime would collapse with virtually no fight. The Iraqis would greet us with flowers. In a few months the infrastructure of the country would be up and running, and Iraq well on the way to becoming a stable pro-west but muslim democracy. Thats how it was sold to us no? And if it had worked, Bush and Blair would have been feted as heros no? The little matter of the illegality of the war, and the real reasons for starting it would have been easily forgotten. People would be too busy wishing the New Iraq all the best, that no one would bother to point out that legally it was a bastard child.

Of course it has not gone right, it has gone horribly wrong. So thats the most charitable I can be towards Bush and co.

And then of course there is the real cynical alternative. They just employed the minimum numbers to get rid of Saddam and hold the oil fields. They were never really interested in the rest of the country, it could go to hell and probably would...so long as western interests controlled the bits of Iraq that really mattered...?

Brandon
Yes it is cowboy George's fault. Would any of this bombing and killing of civilians have occurred sans the invasion by the US and the coalition of the bought

Why was Paul Wolfowitz pushed out of the Pentagon onto the World Bank? The answer lies in a 323-page document, secret until now, indicating that the allies of Big Oil in the Bush Administration have defeated neo-conservatives and their chief Wolfowitz. BBC Television Newsnight tells the true story of the fall of the neo-cons. An investigation conducted by BBC with Harper's magazine will also reveal that the US State Department made detailed plans for war in Iraq -- and for Iraq's oil -- within weeks of Bush's first inauguration in 2001.

View Segments of Iraq oil plans

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

No, Saddam and his cronies were doing an excellent job of killing Iraqi civilians before we got there.

Steve, i do think it instructive to look at the history of "Mesopotamia" prior to 1930. The Caliphate did not attempt to make the Kurds of the north live in peace with the quasi-arab semites of the south, nor to make the Shi'ites of the delta live in peace with the Sunni of the river valleys--they were content that these people should manage their own local affairs. Neither the Seljuk Turks nor the Osmali Turks attempted to make the regions of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra into a single, comprehensive entity. It was only with Balfour and Churchill that these disparate regions were rammed together in a politically morganatic marriage for one reason and one reason only--they were the petroleum producing regions of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. The English actually did "do it right" with their 1922 occupation--and they faced an insurgency, nevertheless.

We might have more effectively managed the post-conventional combat phases of the invasion better. Certainly the incompetence in providing electricity and clean water, sewage and refuse removal were criminal in nature. The one attempt at the infrastructure was to get the petroleum pumping again, and even that was not competently managed. There is a "Keystone Kop-esque" quality to the performance of the Shrub and his forty theives of Baghdad, but it ain't funny, and it's costing the lives of far too many Iraqis, as well as the English and American boys who die for no damned good reason.

Fedral
And now we are are responsible for their deaths but in far greater numbers.

That is completely ridiculous, but certainly does typify the kind of thinking that occupies most liberal minds.