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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (85678)3/24/2003 5:56:37 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
<Like I've told you guys before, it is true that you can have peace at the barrel of a gun. But you have to pull the trigger. And keep pulling it over and over. Until you kill 5% or so of the population.>

Maybe that's in a Kingdom, where the people identify with each other, a bit like Japan in WWII.

But in a place like Iraq, where the people don't especially identify with Saddam, perhaps Carl's Universal 5% would me much fewer. Perhaps the relevant 5% in that instance would be 5% of the Republican Guard. That would involve 5% of 100,000 = 20,000, which isn't many at all. Maybe even fewer than that in that few of them are fighting for something they believe in - just power.

I expect we might hear "Et tu Brutus?" as Brutus plunges his dagger into Saddam in an attempt to remain part of the new power play.

But I thought the Republican Guard [the Elite Division or whatever it's called] numbered only 20,000 or so. Which would mean only 1,000 need to be killed [if we accept Carl's theorem of decimation].

Decimation [meaning reducing by 10%, though the meaning is changed to something else these days] seems to be about the right number to complete a rout.

I'll go with a decimation as being the right proportion to obtain surrender.

Mqurice
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