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May 04, 2004
BOPNews: A good read
The Blogging of the President: 2004. There are lots of political sites out there. BOP is one of the best. Here's a good piece on what one journalists sees in Iraq.
- Many Iraqis have turned against America itself. After the invasion, there were always Iraqis who were anti-American, but the majority were not. Up until recently, Iraqis were anti-Bush and anti-occupation, but still talked about how much they loved the American people. Right before Al-Sadr and Falluja, this changed. Iraqis started to turn against American journalists and now do not like Americans, period.
- The significance of the pictures of torture cannot be overstated. While Saddam tortured more systematically and more often, Iraqis never saw evidence of it in print. Since they do not trust the press to report the truth just because that's the function of the press, many have concluded that the American occupation is in fact worse than Saddam. Why else would pictures of torture be allowed?
- Americans do not want to talk about what's actually going on in Iraq. We are very interested in Iraq as a political issue, but the details are subordinate to Bush-supporting or Bush-bashing. Ted Koppel and Fox News's pissing contest is example A. The lack of republican (little r) outrage at the torture is example B.
- Sistani is critical to Iraqi stability.
- Troops are undertrained for peacekeeping and there aren't enough of them. The lack of training is evident, and the soldiers do not see themselves as policemen, nor do they know how to act as such (unlike Kosovo, where soldiers did receive peacekeeping training).
- We have handed Osama bin Laden a huge victory, for the reasons Tacitus talks about.
Posted by rich at May 4, 2004 08:25 AM
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