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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (334943)	4/23/2007 4:30:48 PM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1574000

From Virginia to Iraq Mon Apr 23, 6:49 AM ET One remarkably widespread response to the Virginia Tech tragedy has been generosity toward 23-year-old gunman Seung Hui Cho and his family. The father of one victim, Reema Samaha, 18, offered condolences Sunday to Cho's family, "which has also lost a son." Reema's last name means forgiveness, he explained at her memorial service. Most immediately, that message might help prevent the kind of backlash against Cho's family and fellow South Koreans that was common against Middle Easterners after 9/11 - and that many South Koreans now say they fear. More broadly, it points up the most potent ingredient in reconciliation - one that is badly needed in Iraq. The Virginia Tech shooting and its emotional aftermath help open a window into the pain of the ongoing slaughter in Iraq. The scale is far, far different. The numbers from Iraq are jaw-dropping. Thirty three deaths can mark a good day in Iraq. On an average day, three times that number are murdered. That's a country a fraction our size. Adjusted for population, it is the equivalent of nearly 40 Virginia Tech massacres. Every day. Many Iraqis are kidnapped. Bodies show up in ditches with signs of torture, including drilling to the head. Patients are executed in hospitals. Many Iraqis simply disappear. About 90,000 a month are fleeing their homes. In the USA, the comparable number would be one million. The violence has reached into, and traumatized, every Iraqi family. The point of this is not to trivialize the tragedy at Virginia Tech, which is wrenching, but to expose the enormity of the problem in Iraq and how disproportional it is to the American political debate. Both Republicans and Democrats tend to talk about the U.S. commitment in terms of months. But the best case for Iraq is that it will follow the pattern of places such as Northern Ireland and Bosnia where sectarian killings and torture eventually gave way to reconciliation. In each case, that has taken many years and extraordinary international commitment. U.S. troops will be gone long before that happens, but the American obligation to help will linger. It's not too soon to begin recognizing that reality. Nor is it too soon to ask how the sort of reconciliation that Samaha's father offered Sunday might be achieved. Copyright © 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (334943)	4/23/2007 4:40:08 PM
From: d[-_-]b	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574000

He didn't accept the "nuance" that criminals would still have access to guns while law-abiding citizens wouldn't, because to him, it was all about reducing overall gun violence. I don't accept suicide, accidental shootings, self defense or police shooting criminals as "gun violence". Just remove those numbers from the misleading statistics and you've achieved a huge reduction.