Here's a bit of FIRST HAND NEWS. Sunday afternoon my wife and I were invited to a home party to celebrate a friends daughter's recent return from Iraq. She is an officer in the Airforce intelligence and went from Kuwait, first to Basra, then to Northern Iraq to assist the Kurds and finally to Bagdad. She worked with the F.I.F. (Free Iraqi Forces), first I had heard of that term. Anyhow, I had a long talk with her. (she was personally present when we had that unfortunate friendly fire accident wherein some journalists were killed up in Northern Iraq). Anyhow, according to her the vast majority of Iraqui's are very greatful that we are there and dont wish us to leave until security and infrastructure is straightened out. What you are reading in the media are the dissidents, basically holdovers from Saddam's regime plus some malcontents from other Arab nations that just want to kill infidels, primarily Americans and British. It is true that with all the factions we have to go slowly and not push any single group to avoid antagonizing the other groups, thus its a slow process but she said we are making good progress considering where we had to start from. JDN
Thanks, its good to hear some positive news from that place. I would have been very surprised if there were not any Iraqis who did not support our efforts. The problem is that the minority who are opposed to us are sizeable enough and well armed enough to cause us some significant problems. And unfortunately, their bullets are very effective at killing our soldiers. My fear both before and since the war is that Iraq could very easily turn into our version of Palestine. Hamas is a minority portion of the Palestinian population but they are very effective at killing and demoralizing Israelis.
For some one who did not want to this war in the first place and who suspected from the get go that Mr. Bush was lying about WMD, the current situation is what I feared most might happen. It could well turn into a quagmire for our soldiers and a bottomless money pit for the US Treasury. In spite of your good news, its anecdotal at best and reflects only in part of what is happening in Iraq at the current time. |
