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To: sea_urchin who wrote (19759)	12/11/2003 6:29:43 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 81102

> I have no idea whether what you have posted is truth, half-truth or simply US government propaganda? How can anyone know? Seems these people know. signonsandiego.com >>>Group members told reporters at the National Press Club Wednesday that their impression was that Iraqis remained grateful Saddam was gone, but were growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of rebuilding and the bad conditions in hospitals, schools and elsewhere. U.S. soldiers were also growing frustrated with the stressful conditions and were eager to return home, they said. "I was just incredibly shocked at how bad it is for the average person and how much their faith in America is deteriorating," said Mike Lopercio, a Tempe, Ariz., businessman who visited his son serving with the 82nd Airborne Division in Fallujah. <<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (19759)	12/12/2003 9:40:32 AM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81102

> When true democracy happens I may be willing to review my position but certainly not before. However, I have my doubts whether I will live so long as to be able to see that. theaustralian.news.com.au >>>Those who try to do the undoable must also think the unthinkable. US strategists in Iraq are contemplating what they have always denied, the search for a "strong man with a moustache" to stop the present rot. If the result is not democracy, so be it. If the result is the dismemberment of Iraq, so be it. Iraq has become a mess. There is only one priority: to "get out with dignity". This strategy is now being rammed down the throat of the US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, by George W. Bush's new "realist", Deputy National Security Adviser Bob Blackwill. He answers to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, not US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and is the new boss of Iraq. The Pentagon, Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, architects of the old "idealist" strategy, are in retreat. The Iraqi Governing Council, which Bremer reluctantly created, will be disbanded. Washington must find someone with whom it can do business, someone who can deliver order in return for power. The yearning for national unity and dignity may be palpable in Baghdad. It was hoped that, after Hussein, the US might deliver it. Such unity is not in sight. Possibly if the US had purged and redeployed the Baath party it might have stood a chance. They did not. Instead they are turning to the ayatollahs. But they, or their civilian frontmen, would face intense Sunni resistance. The odds would be on the Sunnis eventually demanding similar autonomy to that enjoyed by the Kurds, perhaps with help from their co-religionists, the Syrians. Small wonder Iraq's six adjacent states are in a state of suspended horror. They see Rumsfeld's "cradle of stability" turning into anything but. The strongman solution cannot hold. Iraq seems ever more likely to split three ways. Fragmentation has become the default mode of Western intervention. It was so in Yugoslavia. It is so in Afghanistan. In 20 years of meddling, the US and Britain have made a mess of this nation. They owe it the least blood-spattered path they can fashion to whatever the future has in store.<<<