Brandon9000 wrote:Actually, the death would be for the president's goal of leaving Iraq with a stable, democratic government, rather than abandon it to be overrun by the insurgents, who would most likely replace the democratically elected government with some sort of religious dictatorship.
This shows a very naive ignorance of the situation in Iraq. Insurgents are either the former Ba'athists, who have lost everything in the loss of power, and therefore have nothing further to lose, they are the Sunnis; or, they are foreigners (most from immediately neighboring nations other than Iran) who have come for the opportunity to kill Americans. The latter are a small group by the account of all observers other than administration or administration-supporting pundits, who want to forward the false "better to fight them there" line of reasoning. That line of reasoning ignores that people can easily go there to kill Americans because we send our men and women into harm's way in the middle east. Other foreign observers have noted that there is little evidence that there is a large foreign contingent in Iraq. Speakers of Arabic have accents as surely as do speakers of English, or French, or of Spanish--and the local Iraqis can spot a foreigner as easily as we would spot an Englishman or an Australian at home.
The sectarian violence is only partly forwarded by insurgents. Sunnis who wish to kill Shi'ites can be and are likely to be the same insurgents who attack the green zone and American and British troops. But those who kill Sunnis--and this is the fastest-growing group, and has likely now become the majority group--are Shi'ite militia members, or members of the police or the Iraqi army, who are overwhelmingly Shi'ite (former Sunni members of the military are associated with the Ba'athist Arab Socialist Party, and are excluded from participation in the police and the army). As one cogent observer has put it, the torturers and murders don't dress up like the police or the army, they
are the police or the army.
Iraqi police linked to death squads--The Times online (UK)
Iraqi police killed 14 year old boy for being homosexual--The Independent online (UK)
Iraqi police barred over killings--BBC
26 dead in Iraqi "revenge killings"--CNN
Conservatives can bury their heads in the sand without comfort, because they are not in the firing line. Iraqis are. A civil war has already broken out, and the employees of the Shi'ite-dominated Interior Ministry--the police--have taken their side in the conflict. If there were a religious dictatorship, it would be accomplished by replacing the democratically-elected government, it would be created by the democratically elected government.
