Quote: Dave said: As for media reports on the good things happening in Iraq.... on the domestic front, I have little idea of what you guys are seeing on TV, but I assume you aren't seeing the good thinsg happening there. The overwhelming preoccupation is security, in the media, and I thnk its a correct preoccupation. What's the point of building schools and hospitals if they are going to be looted, or the people heading up the education department are shot? Having only 170000 soldiers or so (plus the large number of "military consultants") on the ground in Iraq clearly isn't enough. The US taxpayer shouldn't be shouldering it all, either: NATO and the UN should get involved, but with France in a corner that won't happen in a hurry. Some better diplomacy - multilateral instead of the chest-thumping Bushite unilateralism - would fix that up.
In asking me in response to my complaints about torture whether I see any reasonable alternatives to pulling troops out, your post kind of implies that torture is a necessary evil in a military occupation. I don't accept that at all.
I disagree. By reporting on the building of schools and the like, it gives a real feel good purpose to why we invaded in the first place. In other words, its the propoganda I expect from my nation's media. They still have to call the government, and the military, when they fuck up, but that doesn't mean they can sit quietly waiting for that to happen. And that's what they did.
As for torture, I never made any mention of it, and I never intended to imply anything about it. Torture is wrong. And this is clearly torture.
"Well, as it happens, I wrote the damned SOP," Illescue half snarled, "and as of now, you can bar those jackals from any part of this facility until Hell's a hockey rink! Is that perfectly clear?!" - Dr. Franz Illescue - Honor Harrington: At All Costs
"I don't know what I'm do, or how I do, I just do." - Alexander Ovechkin</sub>
