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

To: frankw1900 who wrote (113557)	9/1/2003 12:05:16 AM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

let's pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000...A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !! Are you beginning to see now the reason that so many Bush supporters just could not wait for the invasion to begin?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (113557)	9/1/2003 12:05:47 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Well, I am a libertarian, when all else is done and I am pushed to the wall. I don't trust government further than I can throw it, and I am not physically all that strong. The reconstruction of Iraq seems particularly bone-headed to me, when push comes to shove. The nihilism of the indigenous people is monumental.

To: frankw1900 who wrote (113557)	9/1/2003 5:33:12 PM
From: E	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Is anyone besides me skeptical about riverbend being a 24 year old Iraqi female? On the basis of her writing, I don't buy this: A lot of you have been asking about my background and the reason why my English is good. I am Iraqi- born in Iraq to Iraqi parents, but was raised abroad for several years as a child. I came back in my early teens and continued studying in English in Baghdad- reading any book I could get my hands on. "Abroad"? It would be England, or, most likely, judging by the style, America. Why not say so? For "several years?" It would have to be many years, not just "several," and why say "several," and not "for five years"? And she returned "in [her] early teens"? Not at 14? 15? Is she not quite sure of the number of years? The age she returned? And she lived abroad "as a child"? The English on display is not English learned by a child and brought back to Iraq, and not the English of someone who picked up most of their adult English by "reading any book I could get my hands on." It's contemporary, colloquial English. And she doesn't describe herself as a writer, so that we might conjecture that we've come across an extraordinary literary spirit -- she's a computer geek, according to her self-description. And Riverbend presents not the cris de coeur of a bright, anguished, educated young Iraqi woman, is my impression, but what are essentially mature, well-organized, persuasive polemical essays written in English more sophisticated than that at the command of maybe 90% of the posters on SI and 99.9% of the 24 year old Americans who've grown up in this country speaking English as their first language. She may be what she purports to be, but I can't help feeling very skeptical about it, based solely on her writing style. (My impulse is actually to put 'her' in quotes.) This is not a comment on the substance of the riverbend posts. What do you think, frank?