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Baghdad: A Day in the Life

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1. At 10:30 PM on 01 Jan 2008, Mark wrote:

   An old saying around my parts has it that people get the government they deserve. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Iraq was invaded for one reason and one reason only and that was that the American government perceived it as a security threat. People around the world and even in America can make up all the stories they like but that is the blunt truth of it. Whether it turned out to be as real a threat as the US government thought it was is beside the point. Everyone and that includes The Congress of the United States, the overwhelming majority of Americans, and all major foreign intelligence services thought so. It's evidently what Saddam Hussein wanted everyone including his own generals to believe. Of course his was a dumb idea then with fatal consequences for him, and it's a dumb idea for Iran to be doing it today. European governments opposed the invasion because friends of the powerful in France, Germany, Russia (and China) were making fortunes circumventing the UN sanctions. They cynically whipped up anti-American sentiment all over Europe. Europeans were not merely indifferent to a possible Iraqi attack on America, some of them hoped for it. It's a blunder the wretched jealous Europeans will eventually pay very dearly for in more ways than we can now know.

   Iraqis were given a chance they would never have gotten otherwise, the curse of one of the most brutal tyrants in history was removed from them, something they could not possibly have done by themselves. (How cynical of Europeans who were given the same chance by America when it defeated YES IT DEFEATED Hitler to deny that opportunity to Iraqis. BTW, Russia NEVER would have defeated Hitler without massive American aid and a second and third front in Northern Africa/Southern Europe and eventually in Western Europe. Russia has not repaid one cent of the billion dollars in material it was loaned in the 1940s.) That Iraqis and their "Arab brothers" and other Moslems blew that chance is their own fault, not America's. It is not up to America to solve the world's problems. The Iraqi government seems oblivious to the fact that time is rapidly running out for them. If they do not manage to convince the American voters by election day in November that they are well on the road to a peaceful settlement where they will no longer continue to cost America a vast treasure of money and blood, the winner of the Presidential race will be the candidate who promises to pull out of Iraq the fastest. And that pullout will be ordered on January 21, 2009 come hell or high water and there won't be a damned thing the Iraqis can do about it. If they again become a problem for America's security one day, the US will be fully prepared to go back in and do the job over again only next time they might not be so gentle about it. Too bad for the innocent civilian victims, that is the nature of war and why governments should try to avoid it unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Anyway, Iraq makes a good case for every civilian owning at least one gun to protect his family. Bad as it is in Baghdad, it's paradise compared to other places like Darfur. I'll bet any of those refugees in Darfur would trade places with any resident of Baghdad in a heartbeat.

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2. At 05:47 PM on 03 Jan 2008, wrote:

   Would you cover our conference, "Disarmament and Globalisation" at SOAS on Monday 7th Jan. Read Freedland in the Guardian yesterday, on Gordon's role in 2008. www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2234009,00.html

   Surely the Prime Minister should support an agenda of peace rather than considering war with Iran?

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