Increasingly, terrorists have been shaping their strategy around media operations, relying on their tacit partnership with the MSM to achieve shared political goals.

Otherwise 3/11 wouldn't have been possible.

Yeah, like the suicides the MSM faked at Gitmo and the massacre they faked at Haditha. Sick, guys, sick.

What do the American public call the suicides at Gitmo?

A good start.

As for Haditha, that story is "fake but accurate." In other words a Mary Mapes -- Dan RaTHer Lie. As phony as Tawana Brawley or the Duke Lacrosse case.

Hey, Jim, let them know here.

Andrew - you link to Stormfront, but the white supremacists at Stormfront don't agree with Jim. They're "anti-war". Most are supporters of Cindy Sheehan and the Arab war against Israel. Most hate the Neo-cons with an almost Howard-Dean like passion.

Messiah, a friend of Stormfront, says this about pal Cindy's essay on Haditha:

According to Cindy, the NEO CONS have plenty to do with this war.
Anyone who knows who the Neo Cons are know they're mostly Jews
and are running a purely Jewish/Israeli lobby created agenda into American politics.
Sometimes we have to read between the lines.

Cindy has her voice, yet there needs to be many more voices speaking out, and crying out against these wars Israel has planned for us to fight and has us fighting as we speak.

Do you know of anyone else who's speaking out that can be brought to power in the move to end the war? I know some of the Iraq War Vets Against the War are doing a good job, but are they producing any headline grabbers yet? We need to create recognizeable names to associate with our "Anti War for Israel, Fought with American money and Blood" agenda.

Who's really speaking out against these Jew created wars?

..the "anti-war" Stormfront members, Cindy Sheehan and and Osama's mujahideen have been "speaking out" for years.

I see that Andrew is making his usual attempt to call people with whom he disagrees nazis.

My, my. If I wasn't being told otherwise, I'd say we were winning.

The louder the left squeals, the more I know we're doing the right thing.

Think the raids will help put a damper on HadiTHagate?

The connection between the media and terrorism is old, old news. The analysis goes back to the sixties, at least. It was well demonstrated by the PLO at Munich in 1972.

Today's MSM has the historical memory of a mayfly, and a buttload of political malice to boot, so they are oblivious to the role they play. It is in fact a more important role than the terrorist himself, whose mayhem is always beside the point. It's the attention that turns ordinary murder into "propaganda by the deed". Al-Qaeda is hardly the first organization to tailor its activity and rhetoric to the prejudices of the press.

Pretty soon Haditha-deniers like Rockford will be the new Holocaust-deniers from Stormfront, guys whose sanity you wonder about.

Let's see if I get Andrew's "logic" right:

1) A years-long, planned genocide was carried out by a group with a specific, identifiable ideology.
2) Another group shares that ideology, and denies that the original group actually carried out the genocide.
3) ???
4) Any person who denies any accusation of wrongdoing that includes killing someone must therefore share the goals of those who deny the years-long genocide, and thus of those who committed the genocide.
5) People who think that maybe, just maybe, the media is being snowed by the enemy in Iraq into reporting the killing of some civilians in Iraq as a deliberate US military targeting of civilians (which obviously must be just as bad as the deliberate, policy-driven killing of six million people) are in fact Nazis.

It's the part between step 2 and step 4 that keeps stumping me.

Andrew J. Lazarus - you're not getting the point. Try to learn something about real fascists. They're anti-war, anti-neocon, anti-Bush, isolationist.

They have more in common with Howard Dean and Kos then they do with anyone who questions the facts about an ongoing investigation. Everytime you mention them, we notice the resemblance between them and the Left. They love Cindy Sheehan, they support the Arabs against Israel. The only difference is, they say Jew instead of Zionist.

Yawn. You clowns have probably deluded yourselves into thinking that the Abu Ghraib prisoners set up their own orgies and fooled the guards into posing with them.

The issue is not the Iraq War position of the trivial number of American echt fascists; the issue is Mr. Rockford's ability to wave away inconvenient truths via conspiracy theories. The left is not immune to such theories (e.g., did Bush really win Ohio), but get no more (and I suspect less) respectful treatment than does #3.

Andrew,

Do you truly have no understanding of citizenship and the legal system you live under - or are you just pretending not to - or is that just something you're just happy to cast aside when your enemies are involved?

The Marines involved are your fellow citizens. You therefore owe them several duties, as part of the shared obligations of a citizenship that asks you first and foremost to protect each other. One is the presumption of innocence. Note that this does not stop you from making moral judgments, or even saying "I think they're guilty" and arguing why.

It DOES stop you from treating the verdict as a foregone conclusion, however, a mentality that would make any trial pointless and undermines the very foundations of your justice system. I'll add that there are a lot of discrepancies emerging in the stories around Haditha, and that it is entirely reasonable to hold serious doubts pending evidence that clarifies the picture. Something that doesn't really come until trial.

To compare this attitude of reasoned doubt to Holocaust denial, in an attempt to bully others into accepting guilt before a trial, is to display more than a little bit in common with the fascists yourself.

I'll add that the status of those accused also lays a duty upon you - it's a greater duty than usual to consider their side of the story and give it a fair hearing. Aside from the reasons noted above, the people involved here were engaged in putting their lives on the line at the explicit request of the polity you're part of. In other words, on your behalf. Whether you personally wish them to be there or not is irrelevant; the situation remains, as does the duty accompanying it so long as you remain a citizen.

Again, you may legitimately argue that IF they are guilty, their status and sworn responsibility (as "sheepdogs," to use Whittle's term) would make their crimes more problematic. But treating their guilt as foregone before trial, and arguing that failure to agree with you is an illegitimate point of view, is an even larger breach of civic duty than usual.

Not to mention a neat demonstration of the absolute lie behind the Left's "we support the troops" mantra. Nobody really believes this, Andrew, preciusely because of the kind of behaviour you display here. Like the bigot whose "best friends are black people" but just can't help letting his true feelings slip in unguarded moments, you make your real feelings abundantly clear through the denials. And you are hardly alone as an example among your fellows.

The Marines may indeed be guilty. We shall see. But right now we don't really know very much except that there's enough credible evidence to lay charges. That is a serious thing - but not dispositive. So how about acknowledging the uncertainties involved, and arguing your points with a bit more civics and civility behind them?

Or alternatively, simply acknowledging your basic bigotry and stereotypes when it comes to the military - at which point we can treat such arguments with the seriousness they deserve.

Either way works for me.

Sigh. Please stop feeding the troll. Especially the odious and deranged ones.

Miserable Troll states:

Pretty soon Haditha-deniers like Rockford will be the new Holocaust-deniers from Stormfront, guys whose sanity you wonder about"

I guess you have all the facts in the Haditha case, care to share?

Andrew --

Jenin was a lie, a "Genocide" that resulted in:

Around 50 Israeli soldiers dead. Around 65 Palestinians dead, all but 15 armed fighters.

The latest "Israeli shelling" of a Gaza beach has the Israeli Army claiming they stopped shelling 30 minutes before the explosion, and Hamas bulldozed the site and will not let in independendent investigators or the press.

Israeli soldiers accused of "murder" in the death of the young boy supposedly shot in a gun battle are suing France TV-2 over the affair, charging the whole thing was staged and the boy was not in fact shot but is unharmed to this day (footage was supplied by the PLA and severely edited).

Claims of "atrocities" against US and British troops in Iraq were investigated and found to be groundless. A soldier in Abu Grhaib was convicted and sentenced to 18 months for "letting his dog growl" at a prisoner I kid you not.

Currently the Iraqis will NOT allow exhumation of the bodies of the civilians killed in Haditha. Suggesting strongly they won't like what they find.

There are ZERO eyewitnesses (unlike My Lai), instead we have "after-the-fact" people such as "The Hammurabi Human Rights Organization" consisting of two middle aged ex-Baathists, a Doctor offering no forensic evidence but who considers removing Saddam a War Crime (and Saddam a great leader), a "journalist" who was imprisoned by the Iraqi authorities twice for ties to Al Qaeda, and another who spent the first Thanksgiving after 9/11 with the Taliban and damned GWB for bombing them, expressing "solidarity" with the Taliban and "that we are not so different from them."

The ex-Marine who now claims he photographed bodies of dead civilians shot at point blank range execution style only made the claim a year after the event, and cannot produce the photos or consistently describe his personal camera that he claims he took the photos with. He made this claim after being arrested for stealing a truck and crashing it, claiming PTS disorder.

With all the numerous phony war veterans against the war, claims of phony atrocities proven false in the past, retractions already by the media, and involvement of dubious witnesses (mostly ex-Saddam supporters and known Al Qaeda supporters) ...

Occam's Butterknife suggests the Marines are bloodthirsty killers and murderers (like all Red State Americans). Occam's Razor suggests the account in the Washington Post (civilians killed by clearing the house in general accordance with ROE) is most likely the correct one ... though we don't know for certain.

[Note: Roggio reported at the time on this incident, consistent with the WaPo account ... the incident was well known and considered sad but not unusual]

What is disturbing is that Brawley, the Duke LaCrosse Case, phony allegations in the past over atrocities GUARANTEE that when actual credible allegations are made regarding rape or atrocities they will not be listened to. "Fake but accurate" effectively ended any rational discussion of GWB's unusual to say the least National Guard career.

Yeah, like the suicides the MSM faked at Gitmo and the massacre they faked at Haditha. Sick, guys, sick.

Andrew, here's a short list of US prisons that have closed because of suicides by inmates:

1.
2.
3.

Thanks for playing.

That being said, you might also want to look at this before jumping on board the Haditha gravy train. You'll criticize the source, I'm sure, but I'm actually more interested in a debate about the content.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that you term men accused of this crime sitting at Pendleton awaiting trial in shackles as not punishment enough, but you complain that some of the worst murderers on the face of the earth captured in the act of trying to kill Americans playing soccer, pray, and have halal meals is somehow unfair.

look at this before jumping on board the Haditha gravy train. You'll criticize the source, I'm sure, but I'm actually more interested in a debate about the content.

Content. Yes.

First off, it appears that every eyewitness is a defendant, unless we include an iraqi girl who didn't see much because her mother died on top of her. There aren't any reliable surviving witnesses.

On the other side, Marines are surely going to stick up for each other in a case this serious. Ready to put your life on the line for your buddy, and then rat on him to the brass? Not our Marine Corps.

If the brass do try for an impartial judgement, it will need to be mostly on physical evidence. There's nothing else that's the slightest bit reliable. The Marines had their chance to get their story straight, that says they were following the ROE to the letter, and they'll stick to it. Say they made a casual mistake or two that didn't actually affect the results much, and they mostly did everything right. Whyever would they admit to that now, under the microscope? If there's any minor reason to lie, and they've thought it out ahead of time, they're going to lie their heads off about that. These are Marines, after all.

And this report says that the "witnesses" on the other side are no more reliable. I've seen no verification of the report's claims, it could be just another hit piece, but it could be true. So we have the ballistics reports, and we probably won't have the bodies exhumed. Assuming the video was actually taken the next day (and that might be checked technically) they could tell something or other from it. Not a lot of solid evidence. Unless they get the bodies.

So I predict the defendants will be exxonerated. If there's a possible doubt whether they're guilty, their higher-ups will declare them innocent since that's what's best for the whole organization. Most iraqis will believe they did an atrocity and got away with it, just as they believe the same for 50 other incidents that don't have a video and haven't gotten western media attention.

The superior officers who got accused of running a coverup will also officially be exxonerated because there can't be a coverup if there's no crime. Needless to say, though, the incident isn't at all good for the careers of the Marines involved, and it won't be good for the officers who did the coverup. It won't be a green light for Marines to do atrocities and think they can get away with it. Just for a moment suppose they did the worst that they've been accused of, and suppose that they wrongly get declared completely innocent -- this whole process is not anything that any Marine would ever want to go through.

Compare the Pantano case. Suppose for a moment that he shot two iraqis in cold blood, for example on a hunch that they were insurgents who didn't happen to be carrying anything incriminating at the moment. All of his men testified that they weren't watching at the time. Later some of them testified that they heard him give a warning in english and arabic before he shot. The only one who spoke out against him was somebody who had solid reason to have a grudge against him. All precisely what we'd naturally expect if he was guilty. All his men who trusted him would stand up for him. Now suppose he was innocent. Exactly the same story, except the malcontent has to not only rat on him, but make up a false story to rat on him with. To me that makes it somewhat more likely it happened the way that one witness said, and Pantano likely got away with murder -- of iraqis, not a big deal. But there's essentially no credible evidence either way.

The cost of tiny vidcams has gone down from the $100 range to more like the $10 range. Give it a few years and our guys could all have helmet cams that see and hear what they do. Encrypt the data (and put in a self-destruct) so enemies can't read it. Then it isn't just your word about what happened. (Or sometimes a freak accident will destroy the data or the whole helmet cam, leading to serious questions about what happened.)

There are various disadvantages to a system like that, but it would make a big difference for things like Haditha.

a short list of US prisons that have closed because of suicides by inmates:

Compare that to the Canadian general population, where there were 3648 suicides in 2002, with rates climbing. Somebody should shut that damn place down. It's a kind of Gitmo with sub-zero temps, and the jihadists are all running around loose.

Of course dead Canadians and convicts are of no concern to Andrew, compared to important things like some al-Qaeda operative getting a nosebleed.

Glen Wishard - 'Pantano likely got away with murder -- of Iraqis, not a big deal'. SO in other words Iraqi life is cheap? Why would someone say that? You people blog - discuss - about Iraq as if you know exactly what’s happening in Iraq? Do you know the actual civilian death count in Iraq? And please don’t insult the dead by saying something like collateral damage. You have the dead who are dieing because of bombing, the infighting along religious, ethnic and family lines which one reads about on daily bases but what about the ones who are dieing because of lack of medical conditions? Babies being born dead? Common poor dieing because of hunger? etc...etc. For you people living in the west with a full stomach its easy to discuss and quarrel along party lines. But please don’t think Iraqi life is worthless and cheap.

Pantano speaks:

"A year ago I was charged with two counts of premeditated murder and with other war crimes related to my service in Iraq. My wife and mother sat in a Camp Lejeune courtroom for five days while prosecutors painted me as a monster; then autopsy evidence blew their case out of the water, and the Marine Corps dropped all charges against me ["Marine Officer Cleared in Killing of Two Iraqis," news story, May 27, 2005]."

See story. That's not an acquittal, that's outright dropped charges following an autopsy. Which is about as clear as it gets re: innocent. No-one is getting away with murder in that situation.

Joe, how does dropped charges mean he didn't get away with murder?

I haven't looked at all the details, would someone explain what the autopsy showed that made him innocent?

Pantano was charged on the basis of eye-witness testimony from an individual who testified that the men were shot in their backs while in a kneeling position. The individual had a beaf with Pantano. The autopsy showed that the victims were not shot in the position the witness described. WP

Domestically, we know that eye witness testimony is the least reliable type of evidence when we study wrongful convictions.

SO in other words Iraqi life is cheap? Why would someone say that? You people blog - discuss - about Iraq as if you know exactly what’s happening in Iraq? Do you know the actual civilian death count in Iraq?

No, we don't. We have a civilian group which has tried to find the absolute minimum possible death count due to violence, by accepting only the instances that have solid western documentation. But that's a minimum. Every now and then some horrendous number slips out of Baghdad, leaked by a central hospital or the coroners office or something. Apparently the immediate result of that is tightened security, to keep us from hearing more.

And please don’t insult the dead by saying something like collateral damage. You have the dead who are dieing because of bombing, the infighting along religious, ethnic and family lines which one reads about on daily bases but what about the ones who are dieing because of lack of medical conditions? Babies being born dead? Common poor dieing because of hunger? etc...etc.

We don't hear about those. The US forces do not feel responsible for tracking iraqi casualties at all. The iraqi government isn't equipped to do it very well and apparently they are usually supposed to keep the numbers secret. We just don't hear. Starvation? I hadn't heard anything about that at all.

OK, I just did a quick lit search.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1448680,00.html
2005. Starving babies. 7.7% of children with acute malnutrition, up from 4% right after the victory. No link to the actual research. I saw this when it came out, but nothing since, and I'd forgotten about it.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/2f579a75641ad1b1b8ef750a7efb67ce.htm
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DAH517137.htm
UNICEF report. One in three Iraqi children is malnourished and underweight, according to a report released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Amman on 2 May. 2006. I didn't hear anything about this until I looked for it. According to the report, a full 25 percent of Iraqi children between six months and five years old suffer from either acute or chronic malnutrition. This was predictable. Acute malnutrition is a killer. Children die of diarrheal diseases or measles or whatever, they die of things they'd easily survive otherwise. If they survive, their growth and brain development tend to be stunted. The problem is particularly dire in the south, especially in the provinces of Basra, Diala, Najaf, Qadissiyah, Salahuddin and Wasit, due primarily to a lack of health funding. This is not what I'd have predicted. I'd expect things to be much worse in the west and north, south of the kurdish areas. But those areas would be harder to get information about due to the violence and general disorganization.

http://www.muhajabah.com/islamicblog/archives/the_clipboard/010682.php#notice
Here's a report from slightly less than a year ago about starving refugees from al Qaim. When we attacked we blocked ambulances and humanitarian aid from coming in. (In some circumstances this is a war crime.) I hadn't been keeping up, I hadn't noticed we were attacking al Qaim.

I'm sort of surprised there hasn't been more news about all this. Early in the CPA days we got reports about the food distribution system. Imported grains and legumes would come in at one port near Basra and from there they'd be rationed all over iraq. 85% of the people could not survive without them. They got local fresh vegetables but the staples were imported and rationed. So CPA put fresh college grads to work making million-ton deals and arranging logistics. The port was overcrowded to the point it was hard to get more grain through it. They arranged to get it expanded and modernised, but that was going to put it out of commission for months. The goal was to get 3 months reserve food warehoused, so any little distribution blip wouldn't put them permanently behind. Then the CPA packed up and handed it over to iraqis with US advisors, and the CPA reports stopped.

I predicted in 2003 that if things got bad we'd use that as a weapon. Why pay for food to send to insurgent-controlled areas? Why not use starvation as one more tool to get them to surrender? And if anything in the fragile distribution or payment systems broke down so not enough food arrived, surely we'd feed our friends before neutrals. But for 3 years I've never seen anybody discuss the food distribution system at all, except for the idea that it ought to be shut down because it isn't free enterprise.

For you people living in the west with a full stomach its easy to discuss and quarrel along party lines. But please don’t think Iraqi life is worthless and cheap.

In a rather grim sense I do think that. Not that iraqi lives matter less to God. But it's like, in china even before the japanese occupation got bad, there were a whole lot of people who just couldn't get enough to eat. The son of a british diplomat (who was 8 or so then) later wrote about going out his mansion's front gate and finding a beggar who'd died in the night beside the gate. As things got worse sometimes it took a couple of days before somebody carried the bodies off and he and his friends played among them. And as the disorganization spread, with peasants conscripted into the armies on one side or turned into slave labor on the other, with the distribution system breaking down, with the economy failing and many people unable to find paying work and inevitably reaching the point they couldn't buy food.... Life was cheap. If 30 million people are going to starve this year, and by careful planning you can save 10 of them, what can you do but accept that the beggars around you are going to die and their lives are -- worthless?

Iraq is heading there. On a smaller scale because the population is smaller. I don't see what to do about it. I just now realised I'd been avoiding thinking about this for a couple of years now, because I didn't see any hint of a solution short of persuading a whole lot of people to do things different. Hopeless.

So Faisal, the original topic was US soldiers who saw iraqi lives as cheap. You think that's bad. But see, every iraqi civilian is a potential enemy. We regard our soldiers' lives as worth far more than iraqi civilians. If one soldier dies to save one iraqi civilian or ten iraqi civilians, for all we know that's one or ten insurgents he died for. Not a good trade at all. So our first priority is to save our soldiers' lives, consistent with accomplishing the mission. If our guys get hit with an ambush the rules they learn say they should lay down a field of fire, shoot anybody who moves or doesn't move. That keeps insurgents from getting the initiative. It's hard on any civilians who happen to be in the area. Sad for them.

See, if an american soldier murders another american soldier, that's very very important and we will take it very very seriously. Nobody will stick up for him unless they happen to be a close personal friend. But if an american soldier murders an iraqi, that isn't nearly such a big deal. We'll have to have a big trial and make a big fuss over it if the media gets pictures. And if an american soldier happens to kill an iraqi or two that he already suspected might be insurgents, well, mostly that's his judgement call. We'll still have a big trial if the media gets pictures, but it's far more important that insurgents fail to kill US soldiers, than that US soldiers refrain from killing suspected insurgents.

Feisal, I hope you can understand how our soldiers would feel that way. I expect if soldiers from your country ever wind up occupying the USA they'll feel just the same.

I halfway expected that the iraqi Assembly would have voted to tell the US military to go away by now. From iraqi polls (which are biased, they tend to go to relatively safe places and talk to safe people) it looks like nothing else they could do would give them as much legitimacy in the eyes of their voters. But they haven't, They kind of talk like they're waiting for us to train up the iraqi army. But we're training the iraqi army in our methods. Not what you'd think the iraqi government would find much useful.

PD Shaw, thank you!

So they had one guy arguing for the prosecution, and others who tended to argue for the defense, and they found a way to imply that the single prosecution witness was wrong.

It might have been murder, but I'd have cleared him of all charges based on that, if it had been my responsibility to judge it.

It’s very interesting how easy it is for one of you to state that American life is more important and valuable than an Iraqi life and actually provide a rationale. It should make one ponder about the times we are living in, is it the 22nd century or the medieval times where the lives of the strong matter and the weak, well their existence is a nonentity. I don’t think its just to put all Iraqi’s in the same bucket and say well they are all enemies and hence death of a few is better then death of one US soldier? I think there is a moral dilemma one should face when making vague comments of such nature. Does the hoopla created in the media dictate to its government/citizens how they/it should engage/debate in/about warfare?
Is the USA still part of any international or global treaty? Or do they apply when and only when Western countries engage in warfare? It seems the later is true because as stated by US Armys Law of Land Warfare - as an occupying force, the United States is responsible for virtually every facet of Iraq's civil administration, according to long-accepted treaties that have been incorporated into US’s own laws and guidelines for war. Foremost, the occupying army must assure that the basic humanitarian needs of the population are met, either by bringing in food and medicine. Now obviously if one considers the life of an Iraqi less valuable then the life of a German (World War I & II) then its a no brainer that the above laws of occupation do not matter in Iraq.
I think it would serve the interest of US government/citizens if Iraq were to become a barren land with its population of 30 million totally dissipated. Then the reason why US is in Iraq would become clear and present itself – OIL. If I was an American I would say that would be ideal considering my appetite for oil so why doesn’t the American government state the obvious and stop bushing around this War on terror façade? Iraq will become the 22nd century Palestine the difference here being not the existence of the aggressor (Israel) is dependent on the occupation but because of its thirst for black gold.
With this bias that exist even with intellectuals, as those on this blog (I would hate to imagine the thinking of a red stater) it seems trivial that it answers the question 'why do they hate us?' Its not because of your freedom and equality, its because of these concepts of superiority and condescension.

Faisal.

I'm not following the thread but something you said stood out.

"...as an occupying force, the United States..."

The U.S. is no longer an occupying force. It is assisting an ally in domestic security.

If you disagree with that statement, then what other steps would be needed to make it non-occupying? If you say leaving Iraq, then is the U.S. currently occupying Germany, Enlgand, Saudi Arabia and South Korea as well? That sounds silly. You can only be occupying if there is not a government in place. There is.

The rest of your argument may be completely valid. I don't know. But we're not an occupying force any more. That much I know is true.

If the U.S. wanted the oil, it would have cut a deal with Saddam. Who would that have hurt?

And Faisal, you may want to check with a German about WWI and WWII history before you accuse the U.S. (and Great Britain) of treating Germans more humanely than Iraqis. They will tell you about intentional starvations, fire-bombing civilian targets, and massacres of German ethnics by liberated nationals. They will also point to an express reconstruction policy of turning Germany into pastureland so that its people could never raise their heads again.

Daniel, to my way of thinking, a country is still occupied when a foreign army can do whatever they want in that country without retribution.

On the other hand, a country is accepting foreign assistance in its domestic security when the foreign troops are subject to its laws and serve under its command.

So, just as an example, imagine that in 30 years or so the USA was suffering from a vicious insurgency by armed moonbats. And the chinese army was assisting in putting them down. And suppose that the chinese insisted that any US military units must serve under chinese command. The chinese soldiers were not subject to any US jurisdiction; anyone who wanted to accuse a member of the People's Liberation Army of a crime had to go to their command and explain the problem, and their superior officers would investigate and almost always decide that they had done nothing wrong. The counterinsurgency plan was formulated in Beijing; DC had no input except the President could theoretically "consult" and in theory might object to particular chinese operations. Chinese airstrikes destroy 80% of San Francisco and 60% of Boston, and 40% of Salt Lake City but last-minute intervention by the President and by Jerry Falwell manage to save the Mormon Tabernacle. The chinese are systematically destroying, one after another, every city in central moonbat territories -- northern california, oregon, washington, idaho, and the entire northeast. Meanwhile in the mixed and neocon cities they hold, they often set up security checkpoints that result in rush hour often lasting 4 to 6 hours. But lots of people have little reason to get to work since the electricity is on an average of 4 hours a day at random times. The chinese took responsibility for getting the power turned back on, but did nothing but spend US money for 2 years. Then they turned the problem over to the bankrupt US government. Each office in the US administration in DC has a chinese-appointed "advisor" who can get people fired but who can't be fired himself.

Would that sound perhaps a little bit like occupation to you?

Faisal, I see I have not been clear.

I certainly do not at all claim that an american life is worth more than an iraqi life. Jesus said that God notices every sparrow fall. I wouldn't be at all surprised if God considers a sparrow's life to be worth as much as a human being's.

But of course human beings themselves don't value all lives equally. If I'm in combat I'm going to look out for myself first, most of the time. And also I'm going to look after my buddies. Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his buddy." Maybe I'd do that, but not very often. It's something you can mostly only do once.

If our position is getting fired on and some visiting reporter is fool enough to be a target and draw fire, that's just fine. Better him than me. I'll use the info to locate the enemy. But I'll warn him if I get a good chance to, I'm a nice guy. So OK, if some idiot US citizen is wandering around in danger, I'll help him if I can. But I'm probably not going to put my life on the line for him. He shouldn't be there.

And if it's some iraqi citizen and I don't even know whose side they're on -- they better not startle me.

This is not a good way to get things calmed down. But we're stuck with it now.

I think the USA would have been a whole lot better off if we'd done some simple things different at the beginning. If we'd announced at the start that our military would only stay in iraq long enough to restore order, and then leave. (And we might later negotiate with the iraqi government for bases, we'd pay a reasonable price and follow their laws and if we couldn't make a deal then it wouldn't happen.) If we'd worked out a way to exchange our combat troops for occupation troops who hadn't gotten shot at for 6 weeks. Our combat troops had all the wrong attitudes for dealing peacefully with civilians. If we'd kept on setting up democratic local governments in iraqi cities and townships. (Bremer stopped that and appointed governors. That didn't work. He didn't like it that religious people were getting elected. He tried to stop that. Leading to....) If we'd allowed the Ba'ath political party to run, and allowed Ba'athists to run, and only punished the ones who'd committed clear crimes.

If we'd actually had reconstruction plans. Paid iraqi exile engineers to study the types of power plants and waterworks iraq was using, and build relationships with the suppliers of spare parts etc, and then we move them in right behind the attacking troops to talk to the iraqi engineers maintaining the plants and see what needs to be done quick. And do those things quick. A measly one billion dollars spent during the war and in the first 3 weeks afterward, priority shipping for parts etc, and reconstruction might have turned out a whole lot better. Only it wouldn't be american parts.

But now it's failing. Iraq is like a tree with its taproot cut. The country is dying. They aren't far from lethal epidemics, which might not even be reported in the western press. Anybody who's depending on the iraqi economy for their food, water, power, job, education, or medical care is in danger. People who're themselves OK but who have to live close to that, have to be callous.

If you're a reporter who visits a disaster zone you can afford to be sentimental. You can give the food you brought for yourself to some starving child and feel a little better. You can go hungry a few days and feel like you aren't morally rotten. You can empty out your pockets and give your money to people in trouble. It might do them some good. Then you go home.

But if you have to be there day after day, you can't afford to give your food to starving people unless you're ready to starve yourself. And if you starve you can't do your job properly. They have contaminated water. You have enough clean water for yourself. Give it away and they get a little treat and you get dysentery. You could scrape together all the money you can get to help them. Then when you retire you can try to live on social security. No matter how much you do, it's never enough. You have to get hardened to it, to accept that most of them are going to die soon and with luck you're going to live, and feeling guilty about that doesn't do much good.

If you're an aid worker then at least you have the consolation that you're doing all you can for them. If you're a soldier it's harder. You follow orders. You keep a clear separation between them and us. You help the victims when you can, or you hate them all, or you try to ignore them. But no matter how you react in the short run, when you get back to the USA you pray and you get ready to do whatever it takes to keep what happened there from ever happening here, to your own people.

I hope that's clearer.

What did this powerless Iraqi government do prior to the siege of Fallujah? You might want to study history a bit more before making historical analogies, J Thomas. Especially if you're going to waste your time and everyone else's with essays.

Also, after you finish with recent history you might want to look into the San Francisco Treaty and the Allied High Commission lest you feel the need to give us a discourse on past occupations.

OK Frontinus, what in your opinion did the powerful iraqi government do before the destruction of Fallujah?

Faisal,

I have to agree with John Derbyshire over at NRO:

[M]y attitude to the war is really just punitive, and Iraq was a target of opportunity. I am not a Wilsonian nation-builder. I don’t want to “bring democracy to Iraq.” I don’t, in fact, give a fig about the Iraqis. I am happy to leave barbarians alone to practice their unspeakable folkways, so long as they do not bother civilized peoples.

Unfortunately for Iraq, Saddam did bother civilized peoples. Unfortunately for us, we tried to civilize the Iraqis rather than blast them and leave. The White Man's burden should have been laid down a long time ago.

It's not a matter of my opinion...it's a matter of facts on a timeline*. If you don't know enough about the happenings of Iraqi politics you're probably better off not writing 500 words about it. I do thank you for the brevity of your reply though.

• I'd suggest Google for "Iraqi Governing Council" and Fallujah. I wouldn't want you to rely solely on my opinion. Heavens forbid.

Frontinus, maybe you'd better give me your interpretation. My interpretation is that when they heard we were doing major airstrikes in Fallujah, the IGC strongly objected. They said it was illegal and unacceptable, and they demanded we stop.

And our response was to keep going with more airstrkes and a ground invasion and then we noticed that we were generating a whole lot of resistance. So we officially stopped after all, though the Marines kept attacking, and we let the IGC negotiate with the Fallujah city government for us. They worked out a compromise that we grudgingly accepted. Then after the US elections were wrapped up in November we finished everything we'd started in April.

You seem to think this indicates some sort of power exercised by the IGC. What gives you that impression?

Just to liven things up...

I suggest we bring back Raymond to restore balance to the Force™ by battling it out with Andrew J. Lazarus.

J Thomas can then muddy the waters by expounding on how their positions lack the requisite nuance, along with a heaping side dish of statistical tautologies just to top things off.

Barring that, let's have someone cook up Laz-bot, Ray-bot, and JTom-bot PHP scripts to join in the virtual eBattle, virtually... so to speak. The winner would be the first commenter that correctly identifies the eBots from their corresponding eFolks.

Good Luck!

I want a bot for me, too. No reason to miss all the fun while I move and am away from the blog. Algorithm submissions are open....

My comments have been blocked, so much for getting a different prespective.

Let me ask you this what do American soldiers in Iraq, Israelis in Palestine, Russians in Chechnya, suicide bombers of 9/11 have in common? In each case, soldiers went into battle convinced that they were fighting an enemy who was not only inferior to them, but also represented a threat to their countries/faith. Hatred and fear drive otherwise decent human beings to commit butchery on a scale they would be incapable of in their normal setting.

How do ordinary people reach such a state of inhumanness? Their indoctrination starts long before they enter military academies and training camps. Subtly and incessantly, the media as well as school textbooks drum in the message that their country, their civilization and their particular faith are superior to all others.
More importantly, the establishment keeps its population in ignorance about a potential adversary. Travel is made difficult, and the import of newspapers, books and magazines from the opposing country is restricted. News in the home media is heavily slanted in order to distort reality. The perception of threat is magnified, and the common elements blurred over.
Against this backdrop, hatred is easy to generate. The ‘other’ is shown as somehow less than human. Pejorative names are routinely applied: thus, ‘goks’, ‘ragheads’ and ‘bingos’ become part of everyday vocabulary. Even when a soldier kills an innocent civilian in enemy territory, this act is somehow not a crime because after all, one ‘haji’ looks like another.
This de-humanizing of the adversary goes a long way to explaining horrors like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, 9/11 and Mai Lai. If you torture or slaughter mere ‘ragheads’, what’s the big deal?
These attitudes and prejudices are shaped by culture and history, and are given currency by the reactionary media as well as by a populist establishment seeking to gain support from the lowest common denominator. TV channels like Fox News whip up the crudest form of patriotism to gain market share, and politicians use the flag shamelessly to garner votes.
When instructors receive raw young recruits in military training establishments, half their work is already done. All that remains is to erase a soldier’s individuality, and instill instant, unquestioning obedience into him. This is done through systematic and savage bullying, made innocuous by harmless-seeming terms such as ‘hazing’ or ‘ragging’.
When a young man of 20 is sent to do battle in a faraway land, he has a lifetime of indoctrination behind him. He truly believes he has right on his side, and that God will watch over him. He has also been totally convinced that he is fighting to protect his country and his family, never mind that they are thousands of miles away.
In such a theatre, everybody not wearing a uniform like yours is a potential enemy. A woman in a burqa – a Muslim woman’s head dress - could conceal a weapon, and a young boy could be carrying ammunition for a militant. All men are, of course, immediately suspect. On patrol, with a heightened sense of danger and with adrenaline coursing through the system, the first instinct is to shoot first at any sign of possible danger. ‘Better safe than sorry’ becomes the battlefield maxim.
So when we read that American soldiers recently shot a pregnant Iraqi woman dead as she was being rushed to a nearby hospital, we can guess at what went through their minds as they manned a checkpoint. On average, seven Iraqi civilians are killed in similar incidents every week.
But as a generation of Vietnam veterans learned after they returned home, you do not just walk away after burying the dead. For many, committing nameless horrors because you are ordered to leaves deep psychological scars that you carry your whole life.

The ultimate axis of evil is the one between ignorance, fear, hatred and violence.

J, I honestly don't care about your interpretations as I'm sure you don't care about mine. Putting your conspiracy bunk about elections aside, can you not just stick to the facts? Operation Vigilant Resolve was halted because members of the IGC refused to go along with a siege. Once an interim government was seated a month or two later negotiations began again. Now you might not think the transition is significant but to atleast a few interested parties(oh, the Arab League, UNGC, OIC, and others I can't recall atm) it signified the first sovereign government of Iraq. Your ignorant and offhand compendium of, umm, nothing really isn't persuasive. The airstrikes were assisting the indigenous Iraqi patrols that took over from the Marines after VR ended. They had the backing and assistance of the IGC/IIG all along thanks to (the puppet, I'm sure) Allawi. And little else was done UNTIL those indigenous Iraqi elements were finally crushed by the insurgents in September/October. The timing of the final siege of Fallujah probably had more to do with the peaceniks and anti-war types that were braying for the ceasefire in April. It is, however, nice to see that that cudgel is still being used. Attack in April and it's wag the dog...attack in November and it's counting votes before body bags. Lovely little game you've got there.

Now as to why I think the refusals and denunciations of the Iraqi government were an exercise of power...easy...they achieved their desired result. Now why do you think achieving their desired result through independent action somehow shows impotence? I can't wait for your twisted and brutalised logic on this one.

Faisal, so what do you call it when Calley, and others who commit atrocies, are charged, convicted, and punished? Some retrograde, atavistic humanism the system somehow didn't crush? Spare us the angst-ridden monologue. Soylent green is people...we all know the story by now.

Frontinus, I wouldn't have asked about your interpretations if I wasn't curious about them.

can you not just stick to the facts? Operation Vigilant Resolve was halted because

When you say X happens because of Y and you aren't talking hard science, you're interpreting beyond the facts.

So OK, the foreign army is, on its own initiative about to destroy a city of 300,000 or so people, a place where at least 1% of the population of the nation lives. And you believe the local government manages to temporarily stop them. And your interpretation is that shows the local government is powerful?

Let's try that in my similar situation. The PLA informs the US government that they are extremely upset after some chinese nationals got killed in Philadelphia, and also they believe that Philadelphia is the nerve center that all the moonbats are controlled from, so they intend to level the place. (Philadelphia has about 0.5% of the population of the USA.) The US government says no, we can't allow that, you mustn't destroy Philadelphia. The chinese, graceful as always, say they'll take our opinion into account and start the bombings and artillery and sniping etc. The US government, concerned about the political fallout from the PLA destroying a US city (not to mention the Liberty Bell etc), desperately tries to negotiate and finally get a compromise -- we can try to put together some units of the old disbanded US Army and occupy Philadelphia ourselves. And if we can show that we've disarmed all the criminal gangs, they won't destroy the city. And then as it turns out, 7 months later they do destroy it.

Would you feel that showed the US government had power over the PLA?

Yes, semantics is a great fallback if you never want to take a position or be proven wrong. I understand that already without an exhibition. I don't need a rubric from the sciences to remember history. If you want to propose another reason for the halt to VR then do so. But if you think it had anything to do with anything other than the IGC flexing its muscle you're going to need to practice revisionist history since I think even the benighted Juan Cole championed the IGC at the time.

This entire thing was discussed ad nauseum back in 2004 as the events unfolded. I'll let you guess how the war supporters felt about the delay in taking Fallujah. Work those grey cells, J. As for whether that one incident proves the Iraqi government was powerless or powerful that's a false dichotomy. They were and still are somewhere between the two. So, yes, you're still wrong. Thanks.

And you can save your inane analogy or whatever a non-analogous attempt at an analogy would be called. You don't get to define what an occupation means nor what constitutes sovereignty. But guessing from what I've read of you today I doubt you'd hesitate to do either. Hence the suggestion to read up on post WWII. In all the axis countries the Allies maintained military autonomy WHILE the natives ran their sovereign governments. The two are not mutually exclusive no matter how much you need them to be. Sorry.

So when we read that American soldiers recently shot a pregnant Iraqi woman dead as she was being rushed to a nearby hospital, we can guess at what went through their minds as they manned a checkpoint. On average, seven Iraqi civilians are killed in similar incidents every week.

I expect they were horrified. But they couldn't tell it wasn't a suicide bomber car.

It's a bad situation. I keep thinking we should have come up with a better way by now. It's been 3 years. We ought to have better technology. Better markings to make sure people see the checkpoint coming. (But if they see it too far ahead, bad guys can just avoid it.) Electronics to get a better look at the fast cars before they get close. Maybe a device to shred the tires if a car keeps coming. We shouldn't still be stuck in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.

Then there's the tactic itself. We decided that inconveniencing insurgents is worth the inconenience to innocent iraqis. We don't do that in the USA. Imagine if we did. It's 7 AM in DC and we put a checkpoint at the Wilson bridge. Every car has to wait in line to be searched for drugs. Turn a 1 hour commute into 5 hours. Put another one on 5th Avenue in NY. Etc. It would shut down the economy. It couldn't possibly be worth it. I doubt we'd do that for a terrorist nuke. In 20+ years of driving in the USA I've passed checkpoints 3 times. Two times were rural roads in the south, both on weekends. One had a line of 5 cars, the other 20 cars. They looked at my license and waved me on. The third time was in Texas close to the mexican border. They looked at my blonde wife and 2 blonde kids and waved us past.

The media have given ISF members a reputation for waving people through checkpoints. We can teach them how to do it but we can't teach them that it's worth doing. Or maybe iraqis are better at seeing which cars to stop.

In general, checkpoints look like a bad tactic that does more harm than good. We should have come up with something better by now. Something less disruptive. But saying so makes me a civilian telling the military how to do their jobs from thousands of miles away. I don't know how to do it better. I don't even know how to check your claim that it's still 7 civilians a week. It would be hard for anybody but the US military to track that number, and it makes sense they'd keep it secret. Assuming they keep count.

The US side is real real lucky the insurgents have the reputation for killing journalists. That's the only thing that keeps this war from being a PR disaster for us.