State of Iraq

[nicky g]

The most dangerous place in the world
Insurance major Aon ranks Iraq as the most dangerous place in the world to do business, and notes that the fallout of the war has seen the threat increase in Western countries tied to it.

Iraq blighted by poor services
More than two years after the war, the much vaunted reconstruction has done little for the average Iraqi.

"There are continuing power cuts in much of the country and hospitals struggle to provide adequate treatment.

Sewage often pours untreated into rivers which many Iraqis have to drink from.

Look around the Iraqi capital, and the most obvious change over the past two years has been the mushrooming of concrete anti-blast barriers.

In most areas there is little visible sign of reconstruction and residents across the city have power for half the day at most."

New police, old methods

"the training of the 142,000-member police force -- about half the total security forces supposedly needed -- is moving more slowly and fraught with bigger problems than reports by U.S. officials might suggest... Most disturbing, in the last half of 2004 Iraqi police have killed political opponents, falsely arrested people to extort money, and systematically raped and tortured female prisoners, according to a February, 2005, State Dept. report on Iraq's human rights record. In one of the worst examples, police in Basra reported last December that officers in the Internal Affairs Unit were involved in the slaughter of 10 Baath Party members. "

Not to mention recent reports of massive increases in infant mortality, a violent death rate more than twice that before the war, and so on. Thanks again boys.

[Cyrus]

As long as justice rules supreme in the United States, there is hope for the Middle East, for Iraqis either living or gratefully dead, for Iraq, for democracy, for freedom, for private property, for the price of oil - for everyone.


Los Angeles : Man gets 8 years for vandalizing SUVs

<font color="white"> . </font>

[MMMMMM]

You guys will be shown to be on the wrong side of history (as the Left nearly always is).

The insurgency in Iraq is diminishing due to less support and more aggressive action by the Iraqis themselves against it.

Diverse political groups are coming together to work together.

Iraqi infrastructure is being built and rebuilt.

A despotic regime which murdered over 300000 of its own contrymen has been removed.

The "Thanks again boys" is particularly misguided and odious.

I am totally amazed at the number of people who don't recoil at the idea of the maintenance of the former totalitarian tyranny. Don't you guys realize that there is always a price to be paid for overthrowing tyranny? Freedom isn't free. Iraq is in one of its toughest periods now but even so it is better than 6 months ago and will get slowly better. THAT'S certainly better than another 30 years of tyranny. Sheesh.

[ACPlayer]

... painting the opponents of the war as "Left". Just becuase you dont agree with it does not make it so. Ask the many conservative (who are willing to think independently of the Republican party line) who opposed the war.

The rest of the post is the line you are fed from dubious soruces like WorldNet, Debka and Fox and gobble up like a good soldier.

[jokerswild]

I tried thinking of you as an intelligent follower of Neocon fascism. It doesn't work. Any man that believes that the Speaker of the House is a Senator certainly understands history. LOL!

If you had lived in Germany in the 30's, you'd have supported the Reich with enthusiasm. The Nazis, and fascists in general, are right wingers. I know that comes as a surprise to your feeble mind.

Thinking of you as a stupid, greedy, jackboot licker gets the money.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
...painting the opponents of the war as "Left". Just becuase you dont agree with it does not make it so. Ask the many conservative (who are willing to think independently of the Republican party line) who opposed the war.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I was referring to Nicky and Cyrus as "Left", since they were only ones in the thread at that point;-) Sorry for not making that clear;-)

However it is true that the Left typically did/does oppose the war more so than did the Center or the Right. I also do think that the Left has been amazingly often on the wrong side of history.

[MMMMMM]

You are really losing it, jokerswild.

I've put in a reservation for you at the Four Paws Resort so you can recuperate.

Poor PsYcHo-ScHnAuZeR. You're a good dog, really. Everything is going to be OK. Don't let that mean man bite you.

[hetron]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
...painting the opponents of the war as "Left". Just becuase you dont agree with it does not make it so. Ask the many conservative (who are willing to think independently of the Republican party line) who opposed the war.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I was referring to Nicky and Cyrus as "Left", since they were only ones in the thread at that point;-) Sorry for not making that clear;-)

However it is true that the Left typically did/does oppose the war more so than did the Center or the Right. I also do think that the Left has been amazingly often on the wrong side of history.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good thing they were right on slavery, women's rights, segregation and worker's rights, huh?

Vast generalizations earn you nothing but chuckles from me. It's the only reason I read this forum anymore.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Good thing they were right on slavery, women's rights, segregation and worker's rights, huh?

Vast generalizations earn you nothing but chuckles from me. It's the only reason I read this forum anymore.

[/ QUOTE ]

It wasn't like the Center or Right was wrong on all those things, was it? And the Democrats were more opposed to black civil rights than were the Republicans at the time.

Anyway here's an article you might will find interesting:

" Michael Costello: Left on the wrong side of history

April 15, 2005

HOW has it happened that the Left of politics across the world has ended up opposing a foreign policy philosophy of spreading democracy in favour of supporting the traditional conservative agenda of stability, sovereignty and the status quo? Because that is what the Left is doing in its hostile reaction to George W. Bush's second inaugural address.

It is entirely understandable that the Left is viscerally anti-Bush. His political strategy is not based on the democratic approach of seeking the middle ground, but on sharpening differences and divisions, of defaming and intimidating those who do not support him as appeasers, immoral and weak. His and his cabinet officers' contemptuous treatment of allies and the international institutional framework could not be better demonstrated than by his nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN. I have had direct experience of how Bolton works. He believes that when the US says "jump", others should ask "how high?" He tolerates nothing else.

But there's something much deeper at work here than the Left's dislike of Bush. It is something that has bedevilled the Left since the 1960s.

Bush said in his second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

This is resonant of John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961, when he said: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Kennedy's words inspired the world. It particularly inspired those of us on the progressive side of politics. But those words turned sour because they presaged the US drive deeper into Vietnam. And for most members of

the Left, Vietnam is the seminal personal and political rite of passage. Vietnam destroyed a Democrat president. It brought down a Republican president. It discredited the moral and political leadership of the US. Now when the trumpet sounds, the Left's instinctive reaction is to cry "No, not another Vietnam".

And so it has been over Iraq. The Left sees it as a Vietnam-style quagmire, a parcel of lies, leading once again to defeat. But the military, geostrategic and political terms of engagement in Iraq are different to those of Vietnam. The most profound difference rests on the issue of democracy. For 15 years the Americans ran the South Vietnamese political system; the elections held were dubious and led to regimes without legitimacy.

In sharp contrast, Iraq's elections were for real. They are considered legitimate by the world because they are legitimate to Iraqis themselves, who voted in droves. A two-month delay in putting together a new government, far from being a negative, is a positive because those months were devoted to what democracy does best -- political accommodation, power sharing, consensus building.

Now the Iraqis have a Kurd as President, a Sunni and a Shia as vice-presidents, a Sunni as Speaker and a Shia as Prime Minister. Negotiations for the final constitution will also require accommodation, compromise and broad support. Nothing remotely like this ever happened in Vietnam.

This has dramatically affected the insurgency. The Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading group of Sunni religious leaders, has told Sunnis they should joint the government forces. This is a reversal of the association's previous position. It signals the likely end, albeit over considerable time, of the local insurgency. Al-Qa'ida fighters led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will continue but, despite their high profile, they are a third-order problem compared with the Sunni insurgency.

Some say, as did Kim Beazley, that the elections in Iraq have not had any influence on promoting democracy elsewhere in the region -- for example, in Lebanon. This is incorrect. The Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said recently of developments in Lebanon that "this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

True, Bush and others are over-claiming progress and underestimating the dangers that lie ahead. We accept democracy as normal; it is not. Democracy is the most radical and revolutionary political idea in the world. Having an election does not, on its own, lead to good government (think of Russia), and democracy can completely fail (as in Zimbabwe). But it can also over time succeed spectacularly (for example, in eastern Europe and East Asia). Democracy is full of risk, but nothing is more full of hope -- ask the voters of Iraq, Ukraine, Palestine, Afghanistan and elsewhere, who so treasure their right to vote that they risk their lives for it.

A foreign policy without principle will fail because it is fundamentally sterile. That is why unadorned so-called "realism" in foreign policy, with its emphasis on stability and the status quo, can sound clever and sophisticated but in the end implodes under its own emptiness. But principle must be pursued with pragmatism and with patience if it is not to end in recklessness and aggression.

The key thing for those on the Left to understand is that intense dislike of Bush and echoes of Vietnam do not make a foreign policy. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Bolton - they too will pass. What will go on is the great human desire to be free, which should be at the core of our foreign policy. The great danger for the Left is that its Vietnam and Bush obsessions may mean that it will end up on the wrong side of history. "

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...n/story_page/0,5744,12856956%5E7583,00.html

[nicky g]

"I am totally amazed at the number of people who don't recoil at the idea of the maintenance of the former totalitarian tyranny. Don't you guys realize that there is always a price to be paid for overthrowing tyranny? Freedom isn't free. Iraq is in one of its toughest periods now but even so it is better than 6 months ago and will get slowly better. THAT'S certainly better than another 30 years of tyranny. Sheesh. "

According to the Aon report, it's more dangerous than it was a year ago.

The question is at what point the price no longer becomes worth it. IMO given that Saddam was contained and weak prior to the war, and the war has seen indicators such as death rates, unemployment and malnutirition spiral upwards in its aftermanth, not even counting its direct consequences in terms of death and destruction, of the war and the fallout for other nations, that point was passed quite some time ago. Tere's also the question of the quality of the freedom that has been paid for, one so far marred by curfews, the large-scale displacement of civilians, the police state-style behaviour mentioned above, disappearances and torture and so on. I suspect however that there is no point at which the war becomes not worth it for many of its supporters. It reminds me of an argument we had here about Russia, when someone said that Russia was better off economically than prior to the collapse of Communism. I pointed out that, more than a decade later, it actually wasn't better off on any economic indicator, which earned me a barrage of accusations of short-sightendness, simply because I pointed out an indisputable fact, because one day we're told it will be better off. Perhaps. The fact is that Iraq is still in a mess caused directly by the architects of the war and the people they charged with the running of the country in its aftermath, at a cost of tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used to save many lives elsewhere. One can only hope that the new government will do a better job if it ever gets off the ground properly and can act without US interference.