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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mistermj who wrote (85462)	3/24/2003 3:49:11 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi mjfdl; Re: "Dressing as civilians doesn't make then civilians Carl." I agree. But the problem is that they're indistinguishable from civilians 99% of the time. This makes all our fancy weaponry (which I helped design), useless. Re: "The reports I heard tonight say they were elite troops sent down from Baghdad for this type of mission." The real question is civilian support. What is happening is that we are getting shot at by irregulars in towns that we have already supposedly pacified. Now if the Iraqi population was in support Bush's little adventure some of them would be turning in those "elite troops sent down from Baghdad". So whether those forces are elite troops or not doesn't really matter. You see, occupations are a matter of a "battle for hearts and minds." When people feel oppressed by a dictatorship, they welcome assistance from abroad. Their love for their liberators is typically highest right at the moment of liberation. If you want to get kissed by a Frenchwoman, you had to be there in 1944. What is worrisome about Iraq is that there is no honeymoon with the civilian population even in the southern Shiite region. By the way, the Iranians made the same mistake late in the Iran/Iraq war. They were under the impression that they would be met with flowers in Basra but instead the local population put up a heroic effort to stop them at the city. I quoted a book liberally into the thread that made this very point. Pick up "The Longest War" by Dilip Hiro. Here's a quote: Bilow, August 21, 2002 The history of the Iraqi / Iranian war shows that the Iraqis were far stouter defenders of their own territory (i.e. Iraq) than they were of captured territory (i.e. Iran or later, Kuwait). A regime change by force would require marching on Baghdad. The conscripts would be defending their homes in that case. #reply-17905057 Here are the fatuous replies I got: siliconinvestor.com -- Carl