Why is it that I, nasty ol’ atheist who is completely ignorant of theology and religious history, can see the parallels in the execution of Hussein, but our theocracy-sympathizing leaders bumble along, failing to see the damning errors of their position? Glenn Greenwald’s post on the ineptitude of the lynching is chilling.
One participant described the meeting this way: “The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, ‘Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?’ The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, ‘This is our problem and we will handle the consequences. If there is any damage done, it is we who will be damaged, not you.'”
You know, foreign occupying power, powerful religious group agitating for the execution of a hated, charismatic competitor, promises of who will bear the guilt for the deed, metaphorical washing of the hands…jebus, if I know what a counterproductive PR disaster that was for the Pharisees and the Romans, what’s the matter with the American leadership in Iraq? Don’t they read the bibles they thump? Add to that that they’ve apparently done the execution at a time when it is “religiously unacceptable”, and we’ve got a situation that makes Pontius Pilate look good.
I know. They must all be hardcore atheists over there.
If their past history is any indication, they’re militant atheists, too!
Today’s headlines: Jesus Christ invades Kuwait. More and other news at eleven.
That’s nothing – according to Revelations, he will take over the whole damn world, and murder millions. The nice guy who grew up a peace and love hippie in the three gospels will return as a radically crazed Christian dictator.
Oh, damn! PZ forgot that Jesus never invaded Kuwait. That completely invalidates the parallels!
One must not settle for anything less than isomorphism.
It was just a joke…
One of the aspects of the “political blogosphere” that I find interesting is the degree to which the left and the right are “preaching to the choir” and simply talking past one another.
Other than further polarizing an already polarized situation, I can’t see that much of anything is being accomplished. Preaching to the choir and having them applaud you may be satisfying, but does it matter?
I don’t have any fixes, but it’s somewhat morbid to observe so much heat and so little light.
Don’t they read the bibles they thump?
Surely that’s not a serious question.
“Surely that’s not a serious question.”
No, I’m pretty sure it’s a rhetorical one.
The nice guy who grew up a peace and love hippie in the three gospels will return as a radically crazed Christian dictator.
Second Comings will do that to a fella.
What’s the matter with the American leadership in Iraq?
Jay Rosen has a great post on the Bush administration and Iraq (and Bush policy in general):
Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind’s Scoop
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/12/18/suskind_empiricism.html
You know, foreign occupying power,
Last I checked, the Iraqi government was no longer a transitional government. U.S. forces are there at the behest of the democratically elected Iraqi government. It is no longer an occupation, nor has it been for some time.
who will bear the guilt for the deed,
You can blame me. I’ll bear the “guilt.” Saddam’s sentence doesn’t bother me. While the timing may not have been the greatest, I suspect that the overwhelming number of those who are angry with us over his execution at the time would likely be just as angry with us if it occurred at any other time. Shiite Muslims, by the way, were quite happy at the timing. It wasn’t a uniformly negative reaction after all. Except, of course, among already disgruntled Sunnis and western liberals.
Why is it that I, nasty ol’ atheist who is completely ignorant of theology and religious history, can see the parallels in the execution of Hussein
Why is it that liberals like you can so frequently miss the obvious differences? I’m an agnostic, but whatever Jesus might have been, he wasn’t a genocidal mass murderer.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they aren’t.
While I am at it: I am one of those who are not just unhappy with the timing, but the timing is especially bad. I’d have loved to hear the genocidal mass murderer being asked a few more questions about his genocides and other crimes.
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they aren’t.
While I am at it: I am one of those who are not just unhappy with the timing, but the timing is especially bad. I’d have loved to hear the genocidal mass murderer being asked a few more questions about his genocides and other crimes.
An obvious legal fiction. The vast majority of the Iraqi people *and* their democratically elected government want us out. We’re not out. Ergo, they aren’t the ones deciding whether we’re in or out. If the Iraqi government decides to claim that they don’t really want us out, so as not to underline their own powerlessness, they can do so, but they shouldn’t expect to fool anyone. That’s just spin added after the decision has already been made – and not by Iraqis.
In the long run the Shia are going to have to either live with the Sunni (however disgruntled) or mass murder them. Which outcome do you prefer?
If our long-term goal for Iraq is stability, and if we refuse to perpetrate or countenance genocide to achieve that goal, then our only hope is for cooler heads to prevail on both sides (well, all sides, really – there’s actually more than two). A goal which is unlikely to be advanced by setting off powderkegs. (Quite aside from the morality of lynching, which is what this was, and whether open hypocrisy and disregard for law is a good way to promote democracy in Iraq or anywhere else.)
Why do you presume that one side has any desire of talking to the other? You certainly don’t.
And to think that your statement not only lacks your prescribed “light” but the requisite heat as well. Please explain to us why you didn’t see the irony of your own statement before posting it?
Speaking of secong comings, did anyone notice the latest AP Poll?
Twenty-five percent of respondents said
“Jesus Christ will return to earth”
sounded ‘likely’ to happen this year.
One repondent in four. There’s just no logical thought for some people, is there?
Geeze, you gotta understand that believing that Jesus is going to arrive “very soon” (“imminently” is the term we learned in Sunday school) is part of the Bible and an intrinsic part of Christian faith. It’s not even a fundie thing.
If you had asked the respondents if they thought Christ was going to “return” this MONTH, the same proportion would probably have answered “yes.” What’s surprising is not that so many answered “yes,” but that so few did, considering how many people in this country consider themselves practicing Christians.
I wonder if the only way to secure some kind of peace in Iraq is to break it into three different countries: Shia, Suni, and Kurd. Iraq was a European construct anyway so it wouldn’t be the first time the ‘west’ has created middle eastern countries.
I’m glad he’s gone, and so are most Iraqis, but what a mess we’ve got. :( I wasn’t really against the idea of ousting the bastard, but we just didn’t have a plan to deal with the inevitable. There were plenty of folks predicting exactly what is happening. This administration’s ineptness has cost lives. (That isn’t saying any other administration would have done better; I’ve been critical of everything Clinton did as well)
Iran for a start… incidentally, they (apart from Halliburton and Bechtel) are the only ones who have so far profited from this whole mess.
No. Turkey will not allow an independent Kurdish state within the next two generations. Iran and Syria wouldn’t be exactly delighted either. Iran would of course be delighted with an independent Shiite state, but Saudi Arabia, among several others, would not… It’s a lose-lose-lose-lose situation.
Iran for a start… incidentally, they (apart from Halliburton and Bechtel) are the only ones who have so far profited from this whole mess.
No. Turkey will not allow an independent Kurdish state within the next two generations. Iran and Syria wouldn’t be exactly delighted either. Iran would of course be delighted with an independent Shiite state, but Saudi Arabia, among several others, would not… It’s a lose-lose-lose-lose situation.
Lets see a ***real*** provable quote(s) of that claim, because the only place I see anyone making it isn’t in Iraqi blogs, Iraqi papers, Iraqi news, etc. The only places I see it is so called liberal blogs and terrorist state run news networks, one of which still has Bahgdad “They are no where near the airport or city” Bob working for them. I have to agree with Scott Belyea on this one. Both sides are so convinced of the superiority of their own views they not only don’t accept, respect or recognize contradiction, they have actually started to invent bullshit magical prophecies about what will happen next, and a week later insist, with the same fevor, and lack of rational thought as end of timers, that X, Y and Z are *proof* that its already happening. I am getting seriously fracking sick of one side saying that anyone who isn’t willing to ignore the problem or at least blame 100% of its existence on what Bush did, and no one and nothing else, unless called on it, at which point you hear a lot of whining about change but not one tiny microscopic scrap of a suggestion about how to hell you stop the existing problems long enough to “fix” the rest of it. Its not a fracking reactor or computer. You don’t turn thousands of years of idiots killing each other off and stop them from continually blaming the US for all of it, even for shit that happened before the US even existed.
Even a fucking cop knows that if you can’t negotiate with someone, you take down the asshole with a gun, so more people don’t die, before worrying about how to help the hostages. We have thousands of nuts with guns, millions of hostages and too few cops, and the nuts, when they don’t have anything to do are spreading out to kill people in places that *maybe* have something to do with about 10% of the shit they blame on them. Lets hear the “valid” suggestion the liberal side has for it. We already know what the right’s solution is, “If it pissed me off, shoot it!”, but what the hell is the left’s? So far all I see is people babbling about stuff that borders on conspiracy theory, lots of whining about how we need to do something different, and occational delusional BS that isn’t much beyond, “Give them some flowers and say you love them.”, all of which ignores *everything* about how they think and what they practically send out fracking invitations to watch them destroy or kill. Sorry, but I am getting fed up with watching both sides spiral into insanity, rather than actually sitting down and discussing the real facts of the situation, kind of like how the right insists that the recent study “vindicates” them, while the left insists of harping on the incomplete version released to the press, that implied leaving was best, when the real version comes just short of both saying a) Bush is an idiot and b) we can’t leave, because it will only make things worse. The right refuses to acknowledge (a) and the left developes some sort of incomprehensible reading disability when confronted with (b). WTF!! How the hell does anyone think you can solve a problem, especially one this many centuries in the making, and this complex, when both sides ignore 50% of every damn thing they need to acknowledge to make progress at solving it?
Its gotten so bad that, imho, I don’t think a solution is possible, short of an all out war that no one really wants, because neither side will accept *any* compromise to their delusional positions, or even to their presumptions of what those positions *should* be.
Sorry for the rant, but I could have predicted this response. And while we are at it, I am sure the ticker tape parades and dancing in the streets when they heard about Hitler dying was “barbaric” too right? Or would it only have been barbaric if they fucking shot, instead of him killing himself? What they hell reaction do you expect these people to have had, quiet contemplation and a cup of tea? Put in their position, living under such a lunatic for so long, with so many famaly members, friends and neighbors randomly vanishing, etc., I don’t think even the high and mighty pacifists on here would, in the same situation, just shrug their shoulders and walk away from it. You would be fracking dancing in the streets along with them. Any claim otherwise is just self serving lies to bolster false claims of superiority over all those stupid foreigners.
The only places I see it is so called liberal blogs and terrorist state run news networks, one of which still has Bahgdad “They are no where near the airport or city” Bob working for them.
Yes, like the AP and Pew. Nice work, sherlock! That might take all of three seconds to find, but you’d prefer to maintain you’re shocking ignorance and announce it to all present. But at least you’re completely conviced by your own cluelessness. A perfect combination of militant stupidity and pride.
I don’t think even the high and mighty pacifists on here would, in the same situation, just shrug their shoulders and walk away from it. You would be fracking dancing in the streets along with them. Any claim otherwise is just self serving lies to bolster false claims of superiority over all those stupid foreigners.
What’s a matter asshole, the pressure getting to you? In all the stupid comments on this thread and in your post, this is quite possibly the most idiotic. Congrats. It’s a tall standard.
Here’s the thing hero. You. Just. Don’t. Get. It.
Killing people, while it may be the jazz of the moment, rarely — and I mean almost never — ends well. Killing Hussein, no matter how justified by the people victimized by him, only serves to further anger others, while providing no relief to those who lost loved ones. In other words, braniac, revenge has NEVER ended a war, but quite often made it worse.
And that’s beyond the idea that we’ve managed to convice most of the (Sunni) Arab world that a Kanagroo court was good enough (not to mention a US decision, far from your ‘stupid foreigner’ lunacy, the world correctly and notably sees this as a US-backed execution. Maybe if we didn’t have a President who so gleefully stood by capital punishment this wouldn’t be so obvious, but it’s quite noticeable, you need it all spelled out.) for any desireable outcome.
You wait. You’ll find no matter how fucking stupid you decide to be, that this will work out even worse for our troops than keeping Saddam alive and in jail. And it was something we didn’t even have to endorse.
It may, in fact, been about doleing out “justice”, and letting some Shia gain revenge over the properly hated Hussein. But that’s a far, far, far sight from being the right thing to do, never mind the right thing to support.
But, as is plain, you don’t really consider such things, as is implicit in your support of a needlessly provocative execution in the midst of a Civil War.
Actually, I’ve learned that most christians don’t know jack about The Bible. I’ve read the damned thing and two different study guides for the both the New and Old Testaments, and as a steel-hard atheist I know far more about their silly religion than most folk who profess to be “christians”.
Most christians are just christians because they’ve been told that they are, or told that they must be. No other reason.
April 2004: 57% of Iraqis say that foreign troops should leave.
September 2006:(pdf) 37% want the US out within 6 months, and another 34% want them out within a year. (71% total, 91% of Sunnis, 74% of Shiites.)
November 2005: Iraqi leaders call for withdrawal timetable.
Clearly, the Iraqi people want us out, the question being whether how long it takes. The only argument capable of suggesting that it is the will of the Iraqis that the US stays, is that these polls are saying that Iraqis want the US out later, not just yet. But no actions have been taken by the US to begin withdrawal or to set a timetable, despite it being desired for a great length of time.
I know it’s a rant, but I don’t find your post very coherent, especially this quasi-sentence:
“I am getting seriously fracking sick of one side saying that anyone who isn’t willing to ignore the problem or at least blame 100% of its existence on what Bush did, and no one and nothing else, unless called on it, at which point you hear a lot of whining about change but not one tiny microscopic scrap of a suggestion about how to hell you stop the existing problems long enough to “fix” the rest of it.”
The Bush administration and its political allies are without doubt 100% responsible for the disaster that is Iraq. The fundamentalists, opportunists and warring sects and factions within Iraq obviously share much of the blame.
“We already know what the right’s solution is, “If it pissed me off, shoot it!”, but what the hell is the left’s?”
What the hell is your plan? Seriously, you seem to expect everyone else to have one, why can’t you come up with your own?
But anyway, although there is no lock-step liberal position, the main one is pretty straightforward: we’re doing more harm than good there, so we… wait for it… stop being there. The other main option is to partition the country, although they are not exclusive. If you’re expecting someone to come up with some brilliant plan to save the world you’re going to be disappointed.
Is the premise true? Re: terrorism, we are obviously making things worse. The stability of Iraq and the safety of it’s people is a more complex question, but attacks are increasing, the government appears aligned with one of our main enemies in the country, and the army and police force we’re supposedly training are a part of it all. We couldn’t create a stable democracy if we stayed there ten years. Will the result of us leaving be worse if we start to leave now, versus starting to leave in a few years? Peace will be harder to achieve later. They’ll be stronger, better trained, more motivated and more organised to kill each other if we given them more time. When you include the number of innocent Iraqis dead in the mean time, the better ways to spend the money, and other pressing concerns, then the premise is definitely demonstrated. Feel free to cite the part of the ISG report that shows I’m wrong about this. As I understand it the report encourages a timetable for withdrawal and when it suggests a pull out would be inadvisable it is referring only to immediate withdrawal.
Setting a timetable for withdrawal and disengaging from the current Iraqi “leadership” provides several opportunities to desescalate the conflict. And leaving doesn’t mean we can’t do the odd bombing here and there. As you pull out, the elements of the civil war will become more obvious and it will be possible to estimate how things will develop. We can then influence what happens with less risk and greater precision, provide a barrier for partitioning if that is required, and negotiate, bringing in other members of the Islamic world to mediate between the groups.
The liberal plan to combat terrorism is also straightforward: control the number of terrorists, capture and stop the terrorists that do exist.
Not creating terrorist breeding and training grounds (read: Iraq) is a major part of that, so is lowering the number of legitimate grievances that the Muslim community possesses. The hardest one will be Israel/Palestine, but the US cannot keep paying for and building Israel’s bombs without placing strict conditions upon them.
“And while we are at it, I am sure the ticker tape parades and dancing in the streets when they heard about Hitler dying was “barbaric” too right?”
Well those celebrations might have had something to do with the fact that the war against Germany had just finished… if they actually happened. Which is to say, Hitler died on April 30, were there any major parades or street-dancing before VE day?
If Hitler had been stuck in prison for a couple of years after the war ended and then he was killed in an ugly farce to the sound of Japanese chanting “Hirohito”, or even just killed, then yes I’d call celebratory parades barbaric. Everyone accepts that those affected deeply by Saddam’s actions will instinctively rejoice at his death, and no one will denounce a mere emotional release. But Saddam’s been out of power since 2003, this was in cold blood, for vengeance, and imprudent. What excuse do you give to the Westerners cheering Saddam’s death? Should Iraqis have also been dancing in the street at news of Ronald Reagan’s death?
Firstly, in seriousness; excellent reply Deuc! I was hoping someone would provide such readily available – though ignored by the U.S. MSM – evidence.
Secondly, hhmmm, and seriously as well; Second Comings will do that to a fella.
Being over 40, I’ve got to recommend that Second Comings are more likely to cause a gently sleepy contentment than any sort of rage.
You just made this iconoclast’s day PZ.
Comparing Jesus Christ to Saddam Hussein.
Golden!
It wasn’t a uniformly negative reaction after all. Except, of course, among already disgruntled Sunnis and western liberals.
snip
Why is it that I, nasty ol’ atheist who is completely ignorant of theology and religious history, can see the parallels in the execution of Hussein
Why is it that liberals like you can so frequently miss the obvious differences?
snip
Posted by: mike
Why is it that people who get on the internet just to cry about liberals miss the obvious-that they are not taken any more seriously than people who were worked up into a frenzy in the 50’s? That’s just so 2004. Step away from the propaganda machine and get some information from someone who knows what they are talking about and doesn’t just want to sell books. People who are overly obsessed with liberals are kind of a laughing stock actually. There is just something inherently funny about them, kind of like this decade’s version of the Polish jokes, only actually funny.
Chris
An obvious legal fiction. The vast majority of the Iraqi people *and* their democratically elected government want us out.
An obvious lie. The Iraqi government never has any difficulty raising a public stink about something when they are offended, rightfully or otherwise, by Americans. They certainly are not pushing very hard to get us out. In fact, government officials are, for the most part, insisting we stay. One of the reasons they probably choose to cooperate with us on so many other matters is their concern over what would happen if we were to withdraw.
Mena,
People who are overly obsessed with liberals are kind of a laughing stock actually.
I don’t consider myself “overly obsessed” merely because I choose to comment upon something. Correctly identifying somebody as a liberal and expressing disagreement with their viewpoint makes someone a “laughing stock?” If you want to see laughing stocks, I recommend heading on over to such left-wing sites as Huffington Post, the Democratic Underground, or Daily Kos for a taste of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” or some rants about 9/11 being a “controlled demolition.”
David Marjanovic: No. Turkey will not allow an independent Kurdish state within the next two generations.
What would they do to stop it? Annex a whole new chunk of Kurdistan on top of what they already have? Seriously, I don’t mean to be snarky, just curious how folks envisage that scenario unfolding.
Closing the US military bases in Turkey and the pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan. And raising a major stink in the NATO of which Turkey is a member.
Closing the US military bases in Turkey and the pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan. And raising a major stink in the NATO of which Turkey is a member.
Oh give me a fracking break! The AP has reported lots of positive things too from over there. The problem is, no one, but a few obscure local papers, wanted to print any of it. I don’t blaim the AP for that. I do blaim over 90% of the news agencies for ignoring shit they could have published that wasn’t sensational crap from practically the day the first shot was fired, because it sold better to talk about people getting blown up than people being helped some place. But even then, where is the AP getting its news? We have had fracking militants slipping into every part of the Iraqi government from the start, do you really think the AP, for which less than 10% of their correspondants are actually “on the ground”, instead of in a bahgdad hotel getting everything second hand, can “trust” every source they have, especially when they have been embarassed several times by both those sources reporting incomplete information, or worse, reporting on staged crap, which they had no way to verify. Not to mention the bigger problem, which at least on guy that is still imbedded talked about, which involved the military refusing to allow the direct witnesses to report until nearly 24 hours after an imcomplete “official” version was released, which left out half the information.
The only people that have screwed up worse in Iraq than Bush is the press. And getting it right by constantly getting half of it wrong, until it *has* gone completely wrong is the art of religious prophets, not news reporters. News reporters are supposed to state facts, and make sure they have the right fracking facts in the first place. More than half of the modern *news* reporters are “analysts” instead of reporters. The spend five minutes getting their facts wrong, then 10 minutes expounding on their *opinion* of what that incomplete information means. Imagine if we did science that way. Don’t spend long hours carefully examining a subject, just peek in the door, make some snap judgements about it, then write a 500 page report on what you *think* is actually happening in the room. Oh, and if you are wrong, write a a paragraph rebutal of your previous statement, a month later, when no one A) remembers what the hell the original report said, or B) cares. The AP isn’t using even close to 100% reliable sources and the rest of the world is picking and choosing what to write about with the same gall and disinterest in the whole picture as Biblical appologists employ when deciding which parts of the Bible to cut and paste as a defense of their lunacy. You have to be blind not to see how this is a *major* problem.
At the end of the day though, it’s certainly a great advert for the ‘freedom and democracy’ that Bush and Blair (don’t forget our dear Prime Minister) promised to bring to Iraq isn’t it?
That’s the government that we invaded Iraq in order to install? That mob of guys in black balaclavas waving a noose?
That’s what ‘bringing freedom and democracy’ to a country looks like these days?
That’s what Bush and Blair lied so much and killed so many thousands of people to achieve?
Grainy footage of a chanting mob of hooded fanatics stringing up an (embarassingly brave) old man, in what appears to be an abandoned garage?
God help us.
You have to ask, what possible reason might they have to want to make Saddam a hero and martyr to a significant number of people worldwide and why they’d want to offer provocation to innumerable muslims by the timing (from what I can gather the timing is a bit like AQ putting out a video of a hostage execution on xmas morning) and further, why they’d want to vividly demonstrate to the world that they’ve put a bunch of death squads in charge of the bloody wreckage which they’ve created in Iraq and called it a ‘legitimate government.’
The other explanation is that they actually have no ****ing clue about any of this stuff, and it’s simply a side-effect of staging a bit of a circus for some of their Iraqi puppets with old grudges and for their remaining drool-case supporters in the US, by demonstrating their arbitary power of life and death over uppity foreigners, just like Caligula did by throwing them to the lions.
Excuse me if I sound a bit cynical here, but I’m not a bit impressed.
I don’t consider myself “overly obsessed” merely because I choose to comment upon something.
Neither does anyone else. I think that you did have some good points but, quite frankly, your presentation sucked.
Correctly identifying somebody as a liberal and expressing disagreement with their viewpoint makes someone a “laughing stock?”
It’s more that you choose to be one of the people who seem to be intent on using a term which you have no clue about what it actually means just because, well, I don’t know why. It’s out dated, lame, and just makes someone look like they are stuck on the far left wing (that’s another laughable term when interspersed with liberal you know)- of the bell curve. It seems to indicate that the person talking doesn’t care what reality is, he or she just wants to hear what they want to hear and everything else is wrong. Go to a thesaurus and look up the antonym of liberal. Do you really want that to be a description of you?
If you want to see laughing stocks, I recommend heading on over to such left-wing sites as Huffington Post, the Democratic Underground, or Daily Kos for a taste of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” or some rants about 9/11 being a “controlled demolition.”
Posted by: mike
This is just downright hilarious actually. Either you are obsessed and visit those sites often or you don’t go there at all and like the rest of the echo chamber you are just repeating what you were told. I don’t know either way since I don’t go to any of those sites myself but I’m assuming the latter since checking facts just never seems to be a concern for the people who are stuck at the level of constantly whining about liberals. Even if they did have this stuff on those sites, are you suggesting that “monkey see, monkey do” is a valid argument? Should that be incorporated in the legal system? Maybe you can find a few activist judges to get it through. It reminds me of how any time Bush was criticized the bots would start with “But Clinton did…” I suggest that you do a web search for cartoons, political humor, and listen to some of the stuff that is being said on channels other than Fox. You guys are laughing stocks, I’m just the one letting you know about it. May I suggest that you start with Tom Tomorrow and “The Colbert Report” and go from there?
Thanks Michael.
Mike,
How do you counter the links I have already posted? The words “Iraqi Government” can be applied to both the parliament and the executive/cabinet. It may be true that the latter has not publicly called for the withdrawal of US troops, but a few things about this should be said. Maliki et al currently have a somewhat codependent relationship with each other, creating a vested interest. If they adhere to the will of Iraqis and categorically ask the US to leave then they risk being unseated by the US or losing the power they currently possess. We do not know what discussions they have had with the Bush administration, although any behind the scenes requests would probably be ignored. On the other-hand, they have their own allegiances including, as this incident shows, Al-Sadr, who along with many others certainly is trying hard to get us out of Iraq. And moreover, their support also depends on the will of the Iraqis, and to not criticize the US in particular situations would be political suicide (and/or literal). Hence, unfavourable statements about the US are rather poor evidence of what the government can and/or wishes to do.
Still, the Bush administration’s own words are that US forces will stay until we win; a statement not contingent on whether the Iraqis want us there. I would also be incredibly surprised if the Iraqi government was systematically directing US forces in any way. (Ie. aside from the odd protestation or providing “intelligence”.) But the will of the people should be the primary factor. Eg. if the English cabinet, obviously against the will of a vast majority of English people, requested that the US take military control of England, and that happened, (with or w/o parliamentary ratification) would that not be an occupation?
I do not think it is correct to require non-consent as part of the definition of an occupying power. It seems to me that once possession and control is taken of a certain area, then occupation is occurring. The US certainly meets those criteria, so what is wrong with the use of the word, other than the fact it bears a negative connotation? The Iraqis additionally have no power to dispel American forces in any event.
Kagehi,
Jay B’s point was that evidence of the Iraqis disapproval of the current situation has been widely published and is easily available outside of left wing or Islamist sources. Whatever else AP has published does not counter his/her attack on your original statement. What do you seek to show by criticising the reporting of the Iraq war? Do you deny that Iraq has gone down the shitter? You don’t seem to, and even the Bush administration is now admitting it. Or is it that you think we could have won the war if only we’d cheerleadered all the schools we’ve built, (that people are often scared to go to) the infrastructure we’ve reconstructed, (less than what’s paid for, which we unnecessarily destroyed in the invasion, and which the insurgents are attacking too) or the number of police and soldiers that have been trained? (Although the police are appalling, and the army is still nowhere near good enough.)
This absurd statement: “The only people that have screwed up worse in Iraq than Bush is the press.” seems to suggest it. While it’s possible that a more vigilant media could have prevented the Iraq war, and could have reigned in his continuing follies by giving them the attention they deserved, I can’t fathom how they could have done anything worse or how they could have failed more comprehensively than Bush has.
Newspapers should publish what is important and I would think that both us and the Iraqis would be more concerned and interested in deaths and how the country is going, than with minor achievements that shouldn’t be a problem anyway. But in case I’ve missed something, perhaps you can point me to any great news items about Iraq that hasn’t been distributed enough? The elections, as well as the associated fraud, could have done with a bit more coverage, but that’s all I can think of.
“do you really think the AP, for which less than 10% of their correspondants are actually “on the ground”, instead of in a bahgdad hotel getting everything second hand, can “trust” every source they have, especially when they have been embarassed several times by both those sources reporting incomplete information, or worse, reporting on staged crap, which they had no way to verify”
No, I do not think they can trust every source no matter whether they are in Iraq or not. One would hope they do not. Do you think they’re not trying to do the best they can? Many of them are stuck in a hotel because it’s a little dangerous out there. At least 32 of them were killed last year, and the vast majority of those were Iraqis, who presumably could blend in a bit better than Westerners.
“constantly getting half of it wrong,”
Wrong how? Just false, or some inconsequential details? Several times is not half, do you have any evidence that they are wrong, in substance, so much? A few aberrations are not enough, since statistics-wise the overall picture would be mainly accurate.
caractacus, I’d go with option number two, although I’d give more “credit” to the Iraqi leaders.
Mike: “Last I checked, the Iraqi government was no longer a transitional government. U.S. forces are there at the behest of the democratically elected Iraqi government. It is no longer an occupation, nor has it been for some time.”
AFAIK, for instance, if an Iraqi is picked up by US forces, and the US guys making the decision wish to keep him, he stays in US custody. Also, no US soldier has been tried by an Iraqi court for any action in Iraq.
For a recent example, Saddam was in US custody as long as and whenever it suited the US government. The only reason that he was executed by Iraqis was that the US government decided to do that.
That doesn’t sound like a sovereign nation to me.
How utterly obtuse!
It’s not a “foreign occupation”, even though foreign troops are occupying Iraq, because said foreign troops have gone to the trouble to install a puppet regime.
Man, the United States, UK, and Canada are going to have to apologize to France for the invasion back in 1944. By Mike’s logic, France had its own government at the time, and wanted the Germans to be there.
that is nod bad