Dancing in the streets!

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Evil_Eric_4
Pattycakes,Curtsibling,Micheal The Great,Gepap,Boris,MarkG,and others.

Sorry we won--better luck next time huh?

Maybe your despot/terrorist of choice will beat the USA next time then YOU folks can dance in the streets.

Today is the Iraqis and coalitions time.

You just trolled a moderator and the site owner. Prepare to die.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by GePap


I wouldn't expect much more fighting for now. They would be smarter just to let the US in and sit tight for the aftermath. Why get killed today when you can still have a chance to get what you want later?

I'm not saying you are wrong, but those guys are quite unpredictable. I have been surprised before.

[Evil_Eric_4]

I could give a crap-I read this whole thread and these folks seem genuinely depressed--I was just trying to lift their spirits.If I get banned fine--I mostly just lurk anyway.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Evil_Eric_4
Pattycakes,Curtsibling,Micheal The Great,Gepap,Boris,MarkG,and others.

Sorry we won--better luck next time huh?

Maybe your despot/terrorist of choice will beat the USA next time then YOU folks can dance in the streets.

Today is the Iraqis and coalitions time.

precious, really. Now that Sloww and lancer are temporarily out, we need someone to take up the mantle.

Of course, I have not seen much of you here, so I assume you are not very well versed at all in people's position, so ignorance can be forgiven.

[Lincoln]

Hey, we need someone to take up the slack now that Sloww and Lancer are gone. Let Eric do it! At least he isn't mincing words...

[GePap]

No artistry in it, really. Sort of, well, predictable and overdone.

but as I sdaid, before, I am glad the war is close to over, so finally we can get to Day +1 after Saddam. The war coverage as so annoyig I started avoiding the news, which is a rare thing for me.

[Q Classic]

why is it that everyone who supported the coalition from the get-go think that the people now counselling for more vigilance in the wake of the war and those who didn't want the war in the first place are sad that the iraqis have been liberated?

[GePap]

Iraq today: from NYTimes

In Iraq Towns, Allegiances Shift Quickly to Winning Side
By CHARLIE LeDUFF


UMAIT, Iraq, April 9 — Three sheiks met an American colonel in the center of town today.

"Would you like us to point out the bad people to you?" the tallest and most regal of them asked.

"Yes, point them out and we'll take care of them," the colonel said, his arms pinned to his side by a crowd of men and boys curious to hear their liberator speak.

"Of course," the regal sheik said, "We can point them out to you and then we can take care of them ourselves."

"No just go about your business," the colonel said.

Of course there is no business to go about. There is nothing here. At the central market there were a few dried berries, tea, small piles of salt, nothing more. In Al Amarah, a city nearby, the hospital and banks have been looted, scavengers were taking tires from military vehicles and a boy emerged from the police station with a wooden door.

The towns and villages are destroyed and nearly everybody agrees that it was 35 years of the Baath Party that destroyed them.

Though the Americans have promised to hunt down party officials and prosecute them, it is nearly impossible to do.

The marines took no prisoners here today and few arrests are expected. Despite the grand sheik's assurances that he has the names and addresses of the so-called bad and corrupt men, the marines are proving unwilling to step into thousand year old clan feuds.

After all, the local men whisper, many families had informants, and every neighborhood had a member of the party. This connection proved important for employment, promotions and the well-being of their children.

"Do not trust the shieks," said Habib Hadi, a petroleum engineer who speaks a decent English and was drinking tea at the market. "They want power. It is better to believe that the soldiers and party members have gone. How do Americans say? Sleeping dogs?"

In this conservative Shiite village just a few miles east of the Iranian border, they say allegiances flow in the order of Allah, family, village, clan, tribe. Relations are a complex stew of history and allegiances. An enemy one day may be a friend the next. A rival becomes a brother-in-law. The settling of scores will be done by the men of this village, not the men of America or Britain.

According to the Moroccan journalist Anas Bouslamti, who has studied the Middle East for 15 years and was in Kulait today, a family could not eat without some government connection, and all but the most destitute households were tethered to the regime in some way.

"In times like these when the power is collapsing, the people shift to the winning side," Mr. Bouslamti said. "When the power falls the people say they had nothing to do with it. They saw nothing. They are innocents. The same thing happened with the Nazis, the Communists and the Taliban."

This evening, black plumes of smoke billowed from the center of Al Amarah and loud explosions rumbled across the desert. The Americans had pulled back to base camps or were bivouacked on the outskirts of the city on the Tigris. The war for internal power is on.

United States forces are not policing the local streets, fearing that they would appear to be an occupying army.

"Our main function here is to wrest control of the country from Saddam," said Brig. Gen. Rich Natonski, commanding officer of Task Force Tawara. "Once we accomplish that, then the work of rebuilding this country can begin."

A picture is starting to develop about the life in the Hussein era. The local men say that a man will humiliate himself or trespass upon his neighbor in the face of terror and torture. How else could more than 100 men in this village of 3,000 have gone missing without a trace?

"My brother he just disappeared one night in the hands of the secret police," said Ahmed Al Eidi, a school teacher. "They never gave me his body."

Mr. Hadi's brother was hanged in public, accused of sedition. Mr. Hadi himself spent a month in prison, where he said he was tortured. He described the cell as a squalid room without windows or ventilation. The guards were hardened men who resented even giving a glass of water. They administered beatings to the bottoms of his feet.

"I did nothing, I tell you that, believe me," he said. "Somebody accused me of saying bad things about Saddam. I did not."

The reception for the Americans today was lukewarm. These are the most conservative of the Muslim marshland people. They complained that soldiers have distributed pictures of women with their heads bared. They asked the colonel that his soldiers not touch nor speak to their women at the check points.

Times are hard. The value of the Iraqi dinar has fallen 150 percent since the beginning of the war. Power is out all along the countryside. The Iraqis thank the Americans for their freedom, they desire their help, but they are beginning to ask how long the Americans will stay.

"I think 770 days will be enough," said Ali Shahar, an elementary school principal. "Two years. Rumsfeld promised two years."

This evening, a man's daughter was shot in the back of the head by misdirected American fire. The father wanted an assurance. "Promise me this will not be an occupation by the Americans."

[Jaguar]

The value of the Iraqi dinar has fallen 150 percent

[Evil_Eric_4]

Q Cubed asked:
why is it that everyone who supported the coalition from the get-go think that the people now counselling for more vigilance in the wake of the war and those who didn't want the war in the first place are sad that the iraqis have been liberated?


Because I read their posts--have you?

[Ned]

When Boris posted that picture, I thought of the liberation of Berlin by the Russians. There was jubilation and looting that day - by the revenge-seeking Russians, not by the freed Germans. There was also a good deal of raping of German women.

In retrospect, we should have made a mad dash to Berlin instead of stopping at the Elbe. I suspect there would have been celebration and joy by the German people had American troops taken the city.

But we will never know, will we?

It never ceases to amaze me that there are those who so hate America or George Bush that they can be against the liberation of the Iraqi because the US and George Bush did it. Even if there is some uncertainty as to their future, what is very clear is that the Iraqi people are now free of Saddam, a dictator who exceeded Stalin in his brutality. This seems to suggest that the left does not really care for the fate of an oppressed people - at least so long as the people are oppressed by an anti-American regime.

[Q Classic]

evil_eric, please.

i wasn't ever in favor of the war. nor was i ever against it.

i'm counselling vigilance in the wake of this conflict, because even if we have liberated baghdad, this isn't the end of anything.

i'm happy for the iraqis who are liberated now. all i'm saying is that let's not get carried away here.

i read their posts, and none of them have said that iraqi freedom is a bad thing. the strongest statement by any of them has been one of caution--that we ought to keep in mind that rebuilding is more critical than celebrating in the campaign to "win hearts and minds".

knee-jerk reactions and gross generalizations like this assumption that these people are unhappy the iraqis are free have done nothing but make all pro-war people look like rabid american imperialists and all anti-war people look like communist traitors.

[Ben Kenobi]

But my grandparents were happy! Not because they didn't care about the victims, but because they knew that soon no more new victims would die!

Amen Cybershy

Where was all the resistance, the worries of massive civilian and combatant casulties within Baghdad?

[Evil_Eric_4]

Roger that Ned--and when they all come screaming that thats not what they wrote I say this--
I can read between the freaking lines.

[GePap]

"read between the lines"?



I am sorry, but there IS NOT BETWEEN THE LINES. what was written is what was said. Now, if you have some deperate need to infer some hatred of the Us from my commnets or the commnets of other, go ahead, but that says far more about you state of mind and being than mine.

It never ceases to amaze me that there are those who so hate America or George Bush that they can be against the liberation of the Iraqi because the US and George Bush did it. Even if there is some uncertainty as to their future, what is very clear is that the Iraqi people are now free of Saddam, a dictator who exceeded Stalin in his brutality. This seems to suggest that the left does not really care for the fate of an oppressed people - at least so long as the people are oppressed by an anti-American regime.

Ned: I cna only say to you what I said to Evil_Eric.

Your constant statements that "the left hates America, the left hates people" tell us far more about your state of mind than anyting else. Maybe one day you can move beyond your deeply held biases, which color how you read what other people say.