i get up every morning and the news is all bad, day after day. Polling numbers now suggest the majority of Iraqis want us out and are willing to take their chances with whatever happens. Why not?
Quote:
BAGHDAD - Sadoun Dulame read the results of his latest poll again and again. He added up percentages, highlighted sections, and scribbled notes in the margins.
No matter how he crunched the numbers, however, he found himself in the uncomfortable position last week of having to tell occupation authorities that the report they commissioned paints the bleakest picture yet of the U.S.-led coalition's reputation in Iraq. For the first time, according to Dulame's poll, a majority of Iraqis said they would feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately.
And that poll was conducted before the prison scandal erupted.
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it truly seems that this we can do no right there....and that we are beyond redemption. the "liberator" fantasy is long dead and the notion that this is still part of the "war on terror" exists only in the administration's pr rhetoric.
Quote:
According to Dulame, director of the independent Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, prisoner abuse and other coalition missteps are fueling a dangerous blend of Islamism and tribalism.
For example, while U.S. officials insist that only fringe elements support radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a majority of Iraqis crossed ethnic and sectarian lines to name him the second-most-respected man in Iraq, according to the coalition-funded poll.
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so why not leave? aside from the administration insistence on continuing to get Americans killed to save political face, what's the point?
Quote:
Doubts about the Governing Council's competence and legitimacy resurfaced yesterday, when about 2,000 of Iraq's top scholars and activists gathered at the Babylon Hotel in Baghdad to form an anti-American political bloc.
A highly diverse crowd of Islamists, Christians, secular nationalists, Baathists and communists listened as speakers demanded an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and the dismantling of the Governing Council, whose members rode into Iraq "on American tanks." Even the prospect of civil war sounded better to them than a prolonged occupation.
"We'd like the Americans to go even if that means a sectarian war," Ahmed al-Baghdadi, a Shiite cleric, told the cheering crowd. "It would be a war among our boys, and old guys like us would be able to settle it quickly."
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right-o, Ahmed - we'll pull out, you guys can sort it out, and call us for some aid when the shooting stops.
the notion that we can't leave coz it will hurt the US standing in future endeavors is laughable - it's hard to see how we could worsen America's standing in the world, at this point.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/n...8625055.htm?1c