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"Moqtada Al Sadar is the leader of Iraq. unofficialy that is."
Biko
That worries me. It is saddening that once a great nation under Saddam and before that Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and before that the Marxist Abdi Karim Qassim and before that the Arifs - all secular Iraqist rulers - is now being run by this little petty Shiast moron from Karbala whose only `achievement' is that he is his father's son.
Yes I blame America for empowering filth like him, but for Iraqis, this moron has been nothing but a disaster.
Not good enough for America and not good enough for Iraq.
Shoddy rulers for both but sadly the latter suffers far more.
Did you hear the famous British leftist Tony Benn's saying " If the Pilot of my plane said to me I am not a Pilot but my father was a very good one I will get out of that plane very quickly"
Biko, I agree that the raid was extremely well planned, and well executed. HOWEVER, the execution of captives is clearly a violation of the laws of land warfare, and that completely sullies the individuals who conducted the raid. And of course, we are going to find them and kill them.
The real issue is your argument about the raid being justified. In a sense, you can argue that the insurgents are fully justified in resisting occupation by foreign forces. However in this case, I do not believe they are doing themselves any favors. You and I both know this insurgency has completely fractured the country. The sectarian violence is going to turn into a full blown civil war if we leave prior to a stable government being able to take control. So while I applaud the skill of the insurgents who carried out the raid, I do not applaud their morals nor their cause. They, and people like them, are on the road to hell. When we withdraw, they will arrive there.
The United States Armed Forces clearly respects the laws of land warfare. SOME INDIVIDUALS may not, but when and where those individuals are identified, they are prosecuted.
Let me ask you something, when was the last time an Iraqi insurgent group prosecuted one of its own for war crimes? They kill prisoners of war routinely. Do we? If we did, there would have been no Abu Ghraib scandal, because there would have been no prisoners to put in them.
We could have fire bombed Baghdad and just leveled the place indiscriminately. Did we do that? We could have done the same to Fallujah, left no building standing, killed everyone in it. Did we do that? Did we do that in Tikrit? No, as an institution and mostly as individuals, we follow the laws of land warfare. The insurgents do not. Not against us, and not against each other either.
This failure to follow the laws of land warfare, or even recongize they exist, and their determination to pursue sectarian aims, is what is slowly, but inexorably, going to destroy the country. We leave in 2009. And when we do, Iraq will self immolate, and it will be their own fault. They have a chance now to bury the hatchet, and unite as a civil society. But they refuse to do it. Instead they all insist on having everything their own way. So we can expect to see a full blown civil war as we go out the gate, and it will be one that makes Somalias pale in comparison.