Two thirds more americans support political assasination today than two decades ago and an increasing number support torture

Amlord

Are you addressing me?

Fighting fire with fire

PARIS For the past few months I have watched with bewilderment as America has adopted Israel's mistaken strategy in the Middle East. Will America take as long as Israel to realize that starting a war is nothing like finishing it, and that military occupation does not bring about peace or security?
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Two pictures in the International Herald Tribune on the same day, June 16, spoke volumes. One showed an Israeli soldier in Hebron pointing his automatic rifle at civilians with their hands in the air, and another of an American soldier doing exactly the same thing in Falluja, Iraq. If there were no captions, you couldn't tell one photograph from the other.
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America, like Israel, is getting increasingly bogged down by an open-ended military occupation, as attacks on its troops continue almost daily in Iraq. The situation has been aggravated by America's break-up of state institutions such as the army, rendering millions of Iraqis unemployed.

Iraq is not Palestine, the US is not building settlements and doesn't want Iraq the be the 51st state. US policy is not Israelized.

turnea



I don't think the article was saying their situation was the same. Only that the willingness now shown by America to use heavy handed force to deal with situations which could be solved easily by political or diplomatic means is a reflection of what has taken place in Israel.

There is no question that the situation in Iraq is similar to the situation in Israel. Only that the way of dealing with the response is similar.

Wow! Are you actually implying the Iraq situation could be solved "easily by political or diplomatic means"? After looking back on the twelve years process of dealing with Iraq, I'm going to have to ask you to elaborate.

Not only does it seem the Bush administration have accepted the 'might makes right' viewpoint, disturbingly more and more of the American people seem to believe so too!

From Moif's article:

turnea



Yes. Of course it could. War fare is usually held to be the last resort, used only when all other options have been exhausted. In Iraq, the government of Saddam Hussein would eventually have been brought low by the sanctions.
Of course it would have taken a long time, but I think the out come was inevitable. I believe Bush and his supporters chose the war because they could, not because they had to.

That doesn't mean that I disagreed with the need to use force in Iraq, only that I don't believe it was the only option available.

And with hind sight, I must conclude that America's presence in Iraq is not wanted and there fore unjustified without a serious effort to bring stability to that nation as soon as possible. As it is today, I don't see that happening any time soon...

Iraq today said that nearly 8,000 young children and old people died in June as a result of trade sanctions that have been in force for nine years.

Health ministry statistics, quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency INA, attributed the deaths of 5,410 children under five and 2,521 people over 50 last month to the sanctions. ...Hans von Sponek, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq... "Every day that passes intensifies shortages, deprivation," he said, claiming that the effects were robbing a generation of young Iraqis of education and destroying its middle classes through "emigration, deprivation or sheer intellectual impoverishment."

The core of the U.S. dilemma is that no end is in sight to its costly strategy, despite recent rumbles of unrest in southern Iraq. The policy also is now openly scorned by three of the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members, each with veto power, which are expected to vote next month on a course of action.

In the past, the United States has ultimately prevailed with the argument that Iraq should not be readmitted to the community of nations as long as it refuses to comply with basic terms of the 1991 Persian Gulf War cease-fire, most notably on destroying all its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq still refuses to take the first step in the process - the listing of what is in its arsenal - which was supposed to have been completed in a matter of days eight years ago.

Yet Washington is finding it ever harder both to sustain its policy and to contain Saddam in the context of these events over the past three years:

-- Iraqi troops have driven the U.S.-funded Iraqi opposition from its base in northern Kurdistan into exile. The opposition's political headquarters now is in London.

-- U.N. weapons inspectors trying to find and shut down Iraq's nuclear, biological- and chemical-weapon and ballistic-missile programs were expelled. Any new team would have to start the search virtually from scratch.

-- Eight months of almost daily U.S. and British airstrikes in response to Iraqi provocations have failed to cow the Iraqi military. Pilots have flown roughly 70 percent as many sorties as NATO flew in its 78 days of saturation bombing of Yugoslavia, yet Iraq has managed to rebuild several facilities hit since four days of Operation Desert Fox last December led to an escalation over the northern and southern "no-fly" zones.

-- Saddam has defied every intelligence prediction of internal trouble or an imminent demise.

-- A new UNICEF survey reports that child mortality in Iraq has doubled since the Gulf War. Although it blames the Baghdad regime for not doing enough to help mothers and children, the survey of 24,000 families also concludes that the toughest sanctions regime ever imposed on any country shares the blame. ...a growing number of U.N. member states are piqued by what they see as the United States' excessive imposition of sanctions for a variety of offenses, from domestic drug production to trade violations.

"There's a real sanctions weariness at the U.N. generally, and on Iraq in particular. The Europeans are fed up with our sanctions on everyone on Earth," said another well-placed U.S. official.

A majority of Baghdad residents feel US and British troops should stay in Iraq for at least a year, according to the first attempt at an opinion poll.

The You.Gov poll results were released as news emerged that a ground-to-air missile was fired at a US military plane near Baghdad airport.

The poll said 31% wanted troops to stay "a few years", while 25% said "about a year."

Only 13% said they should leave now, while 20% said they should go "within 12 months".

The survey also found that half thought the US-led coalition was right to invade.

You.Gov said there was no certainty that the 798 respondents were a representative sample and that several interviews were conducted with gunfire in the background.