As funding legislation passed by the US Congress now requires a report in September about the success of the surge, it’s worthwhile to reflect on how the goalposts which would constitute “victory” have shifted over the years. There’s a useful timeline here. The announced goal of the surge was to bring stability to Baghdad. No longer the case:
May 2007: With the U.S. occupation in its fifth year and violence surging despite the influx of additional American troops, U.S. officials lower the bar again.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said May 7 that for the U.S. troop escalation to be judged a success, American forces need not bring stability to Baghdad.
“The goal in September is not whether the violence has been significantly reduced, or stability has been brought … but rather whether it has been reduced to a level that the political reconciliation process is moving forward in some meaningful way,” Gates said.
One other way of looking at the progress of the surge is to contemplate the fracturing of the narrative that there is one single “enemy”, and that we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.
The news that the Islamic Army of Iraq (one of the main Sunni insurgent groups) fought a battle against al-Qaeda for control of a Baghdad neighborhood would, in a decent world, put to a rest the idea that we’re fighting some consolidated “jihadist” menace in Iraq. We’re fighting a whole bunch of people. Many of those people are fighting other people who we’re also fighting. And only a tiny minority of the people we’re fighting in Iraq are even loosely tied to al-Qaeda.
Then you can look at some graphic indicators:
What I’d like to know (among other things), is why there’s bugger all analysis of the Iraq strategy in the Australian media. We get the daily reports on execution killings, kidnappings, US military deaths, and suicide bombings, but we get virtually nothing on the Iraqi political situation, the configuration of forces, or the medium term implications of the Coalition presence. I imagine that the war will pop up when and if it becomes an election issue (and I hope Labor make it one, because the Libs won’t dare to mention their foreign policy this election cycle – we’ve heard nothing at all since Ratty’s Obama crack). But in the absence of consistent reporting which does analysis and context as well as body counts (one of the reason I posted the graphs without commentary is to demonstrate that they’re open to a variety of interpretations and as Vietnam and the Macnamara quantification = victory strategy shows, simple numbers are meaningless as an indication of “victory”) it’s very hard to properly assess what’s going on in Iraq. Given that we’re actually participating in the war, this should be a national scandal.
Great question, no real answers.
A couple of possibilities: Too many “serious” pundits invested in the war, difficult for them to change course and admit they were wrong; as you say, the ALP hasn’t run hard on the war post-Latham, even though there’s gotta be no downside left by now.
That said, there are some rumblings from the punditariat that it was All A Bad Idea All Along Of Course now…
There’s always also the “market cornered by Sheridan and Kelly” explanation, but where’s the good stuff in the Smage, or supposed magazines of ideas and reportage like The Monthly for instance?
Kim: Great question… or: What Bill Said.
As a certfifed Iraq War nerd this has been bugging me for a good long while. Most Aussie war coverage/analysis didn’t evolve past the crappy, facile depths of 03-04 (“Zarqawi, Fearsome Leader of the Insurgents Must Be Stopped For Peace To Have a Chance…” “This isn’t a Civil War… yet”) until sometime last year, and the “our troops are somehow important” meme wasn’t busted until Howard let rip at Obama.
Worse: despite US and Iraqi troops finding a factory on Iraqi soil, run by Iraqis, churning out the things, the media are still running the “Iran has been sending deadly complex shaped charges to Iraq” line.
Problem 1. is that the thing is So Bloody Complex, so a perfectly cogent analysis one week will be found wanting the next, as another factor emerges, because…
2. Nobody Knows Anything — where was Al-Sadr? Why would he be hiding in Iran? Was he really? Who’s infiltrated which arm of the Security Forces this week? When you add the rumours, disinformation and outright propaganda run by all sides I can see why a lot of journos, even serious war correspondents just wouldn’t bother.
3. Agendas. You’ve noted the Kelly-Sheridans, but a lot of the non-analysis has been less than impressive as well, for similar ideological reasons as well, and I arn’t just talking the people who champion the ‘Iraqi Resistance’ and don’t want to talk about SCIRI. For some of the Smagers and Monthly writiers it seems enough to describe the conflict, carnage, and outright civil war and say “Look, it’s a civil war, it’s spinning out of control, lets get the f**k out” — fair enough, but it precludes a serious analysis of who, how, why etc.
Finally, are there many Australian ME specialists? I haven’t exactly been keeping count, but most of our geopolitic/forpol nerds appear SE Asian specialists. At least we’ve got Michael Ware
There’s a fair few ME specialists in academia, but they face getting their heads shot off if they say anything about Israel and Palestine (a lot are what used to be called “Arabists”) so I think they keep their heads down more often than not.
Can’t think of any journos specialising in ME stuff except for McGeough. Is he still with the SMH?
But you’d think some of the editors around the place would confront the fact that there should be a duty to report on this stuff seriously, and allocate resources accordingly. Obviously, it’s very dangerous for journos actually in Iraq now, but is it too much to ask for just some intelligent filtering and analysis?
Kim: maybe they’ve decided to let the blogs handle it, ’cause god knows they do a better job of it…
In many cases the blogs do in fact do it better. The best commentaries on the situation in Lebanon/Syria can be found on Lebanese or Lebanese expat blogs.
There are good blogs in Iraq, as well, and I’d trust them more than the MSM, frankly. Milbloggers are a good source of info as to what’s really going on outside the Green Zone.
Didn’t the US DoD ban milblogging? Or was that only use of Myspace, YouTube etc?
As I recall it was at least YouTube and myspace, but I seem to recall the bans being for on-duty personnel — a lot of milblogging is done by retirees and non-serving mil, and I’m pretty sure they’d allow milbloggers who are blogging their point of view a degre of leniency.
Thanks, Leinad.
The blogs are light years ahead of the mainstream media, except for the odd show like Dateline.
By John Howard supporting the Busheviks in this FIASCO he has demonstrated once again that he leans towards the ‘war-mongering’ section of the population & those Corporations who have benefited from this strategic mess. Yet, he plays it, as always, like the ‘common-sense’ politician…it’s all a wink & a nod…”we have to keep the Super Power on side just in case those capricious Muslims or Chinese up there decide to come our way…we’ll throw in a token force & keep them as far away as possible from the ‘kill zones’…portray them as ‘hearts & minds’ winners, trainers & rebuilders…& in the long run the xenophobic, ‘have their cake & eat it too’ public will forgive us our trespasses & think me a sensible Leader” (my words)…and all the time he gets away w/ using cohorts to stir up anti-Muslim feeling, the AWB scandal & supporting ‘bogus’ intelligence…& sanctioning and participating in a pre-emptive strike on a Nation that posed almost NIL threat to Australia.
The Aussie media has generally given him the gift of a BS legacy w/ a cherry on top.
But little by little, the Bloggers are outing him & his Enablers…w/ the help of a few courageous correspondents, journalists & whistleblowers (regardless of the threats posed by dobbing on the Government they worked for)…so the duplicity, incompetence & grotesque motivations of this Federal Govt. will become glaringly obvious for most to see.
Howard, Downer & other minders & ministers own this Iraq FIASCO as much as Blair, Bush, Berlusconi, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Chalabi, Wolfowitz, Fythe, Pearle, Murdoch & others. Its time they were held to account.
Good stuff Kim. The use of charts is highly effective.
Leinad – I seem to remember it was bandwidth issues. Blogging was chewing up too much at the expense of operational information. Could be wrong about that though. Or that could have been the military’s excuse.
The blue is post-surge.
…And if not bandwidth or the obvious operational security/’information management’ issues it could just as easily be the same reasons YouTube and Blogger get banned from workplaces worldwide
An interesting analysis (or potted version thereof) of the situation in Iraq is here.
our Workplaces acting somewhat like the Chinese Communist Party, Taliban & Totalitarian regimes…and Bush, Blair & Howard call it a ‘War for freedom’…ironic & tragic, to say the least.
Thinking like your enemy is transforming into acting like your enemy. Abu Graib is another example.
I’ve just started reading Al Gore’s new book – one thing he emphasises is the failure of news corporations to subsidise actual news gathering and to insist that news becomes a profit centre leads in a direct line to not only infotainment as news but also to the slashing of budgets which allow journos to specialise, research widely. I suspect there’s also something about the news cycle of Australian political coverage operating here – if it’s not the issue of the week, it doesn’t get analysis.
It is a bloody disgrace.
“Howard, Downer & other minders & ministers own this Iraq FIASCO as much as Blair, Bush, Berlusconi, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Chalabi, Wolfowitz, Fythe, Pearle, Murdoch & others. Its time they were held to account.”
D’accord, nasking.
The fact is the US war against Iraq is a war crime, a violation of each of several Nuremberg Principles. It also violates US CODE: Title 18,2441. War crimes, a capital crime.
No wonder the MSM are so bashful about it.
Hoffman at Rob.s is one of those eloquent idiots the world can do without.Prescience about the future of seventeen year olds is a wimps morality to actually destroy their futures.Vietnam may have serious problems where people are under a lack of human rights,but the government there isnt stupid.Russia took a long time to build up its humanity after the 2cnd World War.Could it be for all of Putin.s failures he has read the graffiti on the wall!? There is a simpler explanation for maybe the reportage has dropped apart from the obvious media motivations,expanded on at this site,is well we,are expressing matters in English,and well,this superior language is well and truly been given a run for its money against stiff opposition,like every language spoken now seeing the blunders in its own expression,from Leaders like George W.Bush to Howards empty words….to even my failures via blog..is plainly enough.The English is lousy,lets speak our own,and be eloquent in English for their pretense to reason.,maybe the thoughts of those let down,demoralised,abandoned,destroyed, diseased.And forgive me for saying as in prayer ..Lord have mercy!
“fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here”
I’ve alway considered this the most salient point. Bush has said this at least once and it’s a justification that goes without scrutiny (as much as I’ve seen). So, withdraw CoW and we all descend into our own private Iraqs?
Who (among us) knows what the f*k is going on over there? I do know that Iraqis are copping it so “we” don’t have to and I think its more likely that we can make sense of “our” motivations for perpetuating this war than its conduct. I wonder how that idea, better at yours than ours, would go in one of those expressions of democracy the Iraqis have, now that “we” have made it like it is there.
Yes, the “fight them in Iraq so they don’t follow us to the US” is bollocks. The threat is going to be closer to home.
If it’s a genuine threat at all, Shaun. There have been so many cases of FBI arrests being made in the States where the evidence just falls apart on examination and it turns out to be a bunch of nutcases mouthing off and making grandiose claims about what they’re going to do without any real intent or capability, that I’m getting very suspicious about high profile arrests.
The US army is in Iraq killing muslim terrorists.
And the problem with that is what exactly?
Arrested for mouthing off without any capability or intent?
Happens every time some wally says “hijack” for a joke at an Ozzi airport.
If people don’t want to be arrested, I suggest they don’t come up with “fake” plots to bomb airports & such places. Tough luck fellers.
Well, SATP, they’re fighting Iraqi Sunni nationalists and a smaller group of Al-Qaeda terrorists from outside the country.
And no, they’re not the same thing: in fact, they’re shooting each other in the streets of Baghdad as we speak.
Basically, it seem the local insurgents have had it with Al-Qaeda.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6714713.stm
Now, if the Yanks are smart – which they clearly arent – they could use this division to broker an exit.
But they’ll have to drop that “everyone who hates us equals terrorist” crap to pull it off.
SATP
Collateral damage to :
Innocent Iraqis
Democracy
The rule of law
Credibility of our “leaders”
Truth
Pterosaur, the first of your points is a very unfortunate truth.
The other 4 points are plain false. Our leaders are overseeing the killing of muslim terrorists, this ADDS to the credibility of such leaders.
Democracy, Truth & Rule of Law, in both Iraq & coalition nations, are stronger than ever. Perhaps you typed in error?
SATP
Hey, whose your dealer – I want some of that stuff
Waaaay cool !
Pterosaur, the next time I touch drugs will be the first. Which has nothing to do with the topic of the thread.
That is a fair point Mark but I haven’t had time to delve deeper into the alleged plot. However it does reinforce that the the terrorist are not going to come from Iraq and are likely to be homegrown. As long as the intelligence agencies don’t list to the politicians, counter terrorism may work.
I mean we can trust the MSM to report it accurately right?
I think the point is, SATP, that they’ve created what’s likely to be the biggest terrorist training ground for at least the next decade.
You might like to remember that these people don’t just come off production lines with the word “terrorist” stamped on their foreheads. They’re created through things like social breakdown, crime, random arrests, mass unemployment arising from – oh, I forgot, don’t mention the
Mission Accomplishedwar.My point exactly Christine, the more of them killed the better.
Nothing we do can make it any worse. These sickos want us dead. Period.
It is not our fault remember, it is the fault of the terrorists. Whose side are YOU on?
Grow up, FFS.
On the contrary Christine, it is you who has the unsustainable, juvenile and trite viewpoint.
agreed Mark…
check out this ‘Corporate Media Pyramid’…gives you a good idea why the mainstream media fails to appropriately tackle issues such as Corporate accountability, CEOs obscene pay & benefits, the beneficiaries of the ‘War on Terrorism’ etc…& why there is so much focus on ‘info-tainment:
http://www.holology.com/media.html
You think your getting the news…but often you’re getting ads constructed to look like news topics & issues. Or justifications for War in order to support a Government that looks favourably upon your cross-media ownership…or creating a ‘faux’/distorted debate in order to hook in viewers, up ratings & profit from advertiser’s dollars. Vertical & horizontal integration gone mad.
Exactly why the independant blogs & news sources are so valuable.
I agree w/ Mark’s approach…take the news w/ a pinch of salt…look at this latest JFK plot…interesting these so called ‘Terrorists’ are arrested just before the Democratic Party debate, happened to state “it would be like killing JFK twice” or such…yes, the idol of many a Democrat…& occurs during the Bushevik’s great Aussie allies conference…& just as heaps of American troops are being reported killed in this surge…
…& supposedly “Kadir’s wife, Isha, said that her husband was nabbed while boarding a flight to Venezuela, where he planned to pick up a travel visa to attend an Islamic religious conference in Iran. He had flown from Guyana to Trinidad on Thursday.”
…so the arch enemies Venezuela & Iran also get mentioned in the same breath. As reported on the ever reliable Fox News…
Gimme a break!
once again, conveniently, the news of a ‘terror plot’ comes to the rescue of the Busheviks & keeps the Dems in the ‘War on Terrorism’ camp.
Orwellian, to say the least.
Darn, I think the media pyramid link i provided has gone into your spam bin.
Kim
WHO are these “ME specialists” who are too scared to discuss Iraq in case they say something about Israel and “Palestine?” You would do well to realise that Palestine ceased to exist in May, 1948.
The British Mandate of Palestine henceforth became:
1. Israel;
2 The illegally invaded, occupied and annexed “West Bank” (known as Sumaria and Judea for several millenia previously)
3. The illegally invaded and occupied territory of Egypt aka “the Gaza Strip.”
Also, if these scared “ME specialists” are not capable of discussing Iraq without reflexively putting the Iraeli-Palestinian conflict front and centre, we really must question their command of their “specialty.”
Mark
Apropos Al Gore’s musings on profit-making strategies in the media. Haven’t newspapers ALWAYS sought to make a profit? I am not sure how Gore’s economic model for running tobacco plantations (his only exposure to running a business) translates to his being any authority on media economics.
Ah yes the same hypocrite at the pub who suddenly becomes so concerned about FGM, yet can characterise the deaths of at least tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians as ‘very unfortunate’, and still support the war that has caused those deaths.
Iraq is a war zone.
FGM is the result of a conscious choice made at a personal level by an adult. Failure to proceed with FGM will result in no collateral consequences.
Failure to prosecute a war, or aggressive prosecution of a war, is a whole different matter.
Adrian, please cut & paste where I have ever supported FGM, (if I am “suddenly” opposed to it).
What is your alternative suggestion for handling Iraq? If you prefer to allow muslim terrorists to live, when there is a chance to kill them, then I suggest for the sake of mankind that you don’t breed. I suspect there are many other ways in which you don’t measure up.
Listen carefully HATP, no one suggested you supported FGM, just that your sudden conversion has more to do with an excuse to bash the ‘left’ than genuine concern.
Likewise your refusal to understand even the basic lessons from Iraq is further evidence, if it were needed, of your lack of good faith.
For the record my suggestions for ‘handling Iraq’ were not to invade in the first place. Had we not done so and used other means to get rid of Suddam we would have saved the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people and made the world a safer place by not creating a terrorist training ground. This is such a no brainer that I find it hard to believe that it still has to be pointed out to some people five years after the invasion.
And what really annoys me about those that still support said invasion, is the way that they can so casually dismiss the deaths of so may innocent civilians. Just imagine if those civilians were white and lived somewhat closer to home.
Exactly, Adrian.
Why is Iraq a war zone?
You can suspect all you like hypocrite at the pub, but the above statement says a lot more about you than it does about me.
Those whos job it is to judge the credibility of their leader say that SATP is wrong.
WOW! Wouldn’t it be great if Australia had more feminist advocates like this? What a powerful speech!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/to-submit-to-the-book-is-to-exist-in-their-hell/2007/06/03/1180809336515.html
Mark
Iraq is a war zone, because the removal of Saddam provided the first real opportunity the Sunnis and Shia have had to wage jihad until only one is left standing as legitimate caliph for the whole region.
That is, the first real opportunity since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
That is a big part of it, yes, although I would have added that the way Saddam ran the show hugely exacerbated those pre-existing divisions. Establishing that the contents of Pandorra’s Box, however, does not relieve the dumbass who opened it of responsibility for his actions.
14 US military dead in Iraq over the weekend.
Was a time when the Australian press – never concerned about Iraqi casualties – at least reported ‘coalition’ carnage.
Iraq is now an unutterable shame. Surely Rudd will press the issue now the UK military is demanding a withdrawal within 12 months.
Which would make sense if either religious grouping was a unified bloc with Caliphate as its goal, and if the neighbours were somehow unwilling to smack them down. Neither is the case, and only a few of the Sunni jihadists dream of Caliphate. Someone’s been reading too much Bernard Lewis…
Credibility?
Bwahahahahaha!
Ninnies like SATP apparently need reminding that the US and its clients are losing the war in Iraq.
It seems the Keyboard Kommando keeps on forgetting this overriding fact.
I’m happy to return to full gloat mode as many times as required to remind them of just how stupid and ignorant they are.
With each iteration, more RWDB true believers snap out of their denial and retire, shame-faced, from blogging.
SATP is one of the last holdouts. He now has rarity value.
Reading SATP’s lucubrations is like watching the last dodo waddling through the undergrowth towards extinction: equal parts comic, pathetic, and nostalgic.
Don’t die SATP.
Why do people imagine that liberation against forces that will blow you up because of your religion or lack of it or because you will not just submit to being ruled over by the tyranny (as it has always been), ought to be shorter than say the years of the Chinese revolution? Communists were attacked and slaughtered in 1927 yet that didn’t help the reactionaries in the long run. 22years later the weak had grown strong and the strong had grown weak through their own policies. Each was free to choose as we are all free to choose now.
In Iraq the week are growing stronger all the time. The trajectory is quite clear. This war is strategically well founded. If I was on the other side trying to either re-impose a Baathist dictatorship founded in the Sunni 20% or the even more bizarre al Qaeda goals of trying to provoke a regional war through the mass murder of Shia peoples I would despair. Al Qaeda policies have now provoked a Sunni backlash against al Qaeda.
So I doubt that this war will take 22years but if it did what choice would the Iraqi masses have but to fight? It was never going to be anything other than armed struggle that liberated the peoples of Iraq, so what is it with this constant complaint that the US has opened Pandora’s Box.
I had never imagined a left that could openly call for peace, with the fascists still left ruling, but that is what this ‘Oh how I wish they had left Saddam in place’ stuff is all about. Better not rock the boat of the tyranny. Leave the Middle East as a political swamp knowing that the mosquitoes that emerged on 9/11 had to be chased into Afghanistan and that war still not won and ended.
Why are Mark and Kym as supporters of the war in Afghanistan not trying to convince tigtog and others of the importance of that war and explaining that the time is an irrelevancy? Is it because they would then have to address the second stage of the war in Iraq from the same perspective?
Where is the left wing solidarity with the oppressed against the oppressor?
Quite. Killing the Americans over here so we don’t have to kill them over there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/middleeast/04surge.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Katz, you should give up the drink. I am not commenting on “winning” or “losing” in Iraq. It is not a personal ego trip for me, it is the other side of the world.
I am just glad that muslim terrorists are being killed.
Are you?
Any time you want to use the word “pathetic” about me in real life, come to my door & try it, please.
[link]
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21836084-5005961,00.html
OK Mark and Leinad the enemy is alive and still fighting. But that hardly means that the Baathists are going to return to power or that al Qaeda are not being attacked now by Sunni elements that once tolerated their existence.
The idea that the Iraqi masses who turned out to vote and have representatives are losing this war (Katz calls them clients) is strange. The war goes on and can at a low level like this for a long time but political resolutions are emerging and they do not include the re-establishment of the Baathist tyranny nor the acceptance of al Qaeda as any type of tolerated political player, nor is Sadr coming to power.
Meanwhile rapid progress is being made in the Kurdish region.
But Afghanistan is seeing an upsurge as well and the probability is for even more fighting yet why has that longer war not lost the support of Kim and Mark? Why this constant harping as if the Iraqi Government is making no progress. It would seem that it was only a few short years ago when the forces that make up both governments were far more week than they are now. It is not ‘we’ who will win the war it is the Iraqi people who will win it.
“Give them a date and it is amazing how people and political parties will stop fighting each other and start working towards a peaceful transfer of power,� he said. Transfer from who to who exactly? From those that win elections to those that lose them presumably. Why does it not surprise me that a reactionary Brit General could think like that?
Never said they were/weren’t. Oh, and it’s enemies. It ain’t just the Jihadist Group Formerly Known As Monotheism and Holy War blowing up US soldiers and bombing marketplaces.
Quite right, the current political resolutions favour an autonomous Kurdish fiefdom which is eyeing Mosul and Kirkuk as well as staring down Turkey over a formal declaration of independence and support for the PKK in the north, and a fundamentalist Shia agglomeration in the south, though wether it’s a nationalist pro-Sadr or a pro-Iranian one remains to be seen. Lenin must be jerking off at the thought…
Face it Paddy: this thing is splintering badly. The Iraqi government is a thoroughly sectarian body that governs in the narrow, factional interests of its major players — the Supreme Command for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI (now rebranded SIIC), Al-Dawa Islamiya (linked to the Beirut truck-bombing of US Marines in 1983), the Kurdish Alliance (who recently passed a law making it an offence to criticise Jalal Talabani) and Al-Sadr (who’s still voting in their bloc despite recent tantrums, fleeing for his life etc). The secular parties lost out in 2005 and they’ve gotten weaker since. The major Sunni representatives are either neo-Baathist (NDC) or fundamentalist (IAF/AMS).
All arms of the security forces have been compromised from top down and bottom up, and horizontally as well, depending on the local powers that be. This isn’t post-war Europe, this isn’t Vietnam, this is Lebanon, times ten, fought on the world’s second largest oil reserves with the surplus munitions of two armies. Drop the black and white TV, honey — we’re in technicolour, high definition 16,000×12,4000.
Pathetic: evoking pathos or sympathy.
I’m really sympathetic to SATP’s addiction to violence as a solution, whether in the Middle East, or at his door in Woop Woop.
There is compelling symmetry between Hotelier Steve’s solution for Iraq and his invitation to visit him. So, where is that door of yours, then, Steve?
“Why are Mark and Kym as supporters of the war in Afghanistan not trying to convince tigtog and others of the importance of that war and explaining that the time is an irrelevancy?�
I can’t speak for Mark and Kim but it is very, very foolish to suggest that time is an irrelevancy in any war. In a democracy if people want something (say the end of a war) badly enough then sooner or later they will put in place a government to bring that end about.
Hence the amount of time between a) the beginning of a war and when the majority conclude that it is no longer worth it and b) the amount of time between then and the point when they put in place a government that will extricate them is always relevant.
And I don’t know as much as I should about Afghanistan but I do believe that NATO is fighting a much more conventional enemy that mounts offensives when the weather permits it then withdraws back to Wazirastan or wherever it is that they are hanging around these days.
It is not sitting on top of a civil war which is far to complicated to reduce down to any crude Manichean dichotomy of oppressed and oppressor
Violence is often the only soloution some people understand.
A very effective way of mending manners.
My offer stands Katz, back up your words any time.
What Chris said.
Good grief. How childish.
Alas Ken I don’t have a solution for Iraq. I am flat out to find a solution for my own mortgage repayments. *sigh*.
However my door can be found. On two occassions an individual has turned up in person to take issue with something I have posted. I er… believe neither of them will be back for a second go.
It has been my experience Ken, that comments made at a distance tend to be more moderate when the commenter is standing at a distance of less than one metre from the person they were previously slating…. just sayin’.
“Violence is often the only soloution some people understand. A very effective way of mending manners. My offer stands Katz, back up your words any time.”
Steve at the pub behaves like the
Alpha Chimp at the water hole
in Kubrick’s 2001,
brandishing the tapir femur
in rage and triumph
before tossing it starwards.
Not that Stevie is a card-carrying Neanderthalis Queenslandis or anything of the sort. The bloke is a walking, talking, blogging quantum leap of simean enlightenment.
Wonder if he blows the froth off the top of the pots he pours before plonking them down on his “native fauna” public bar slops-towels.
Very cute Enemy Combatant. I may ever print it & post it beside the dartboard which bears my photo.
Do you have the back of a postage stamp on which to write your knowledge of the hotel trade? Or do you prefer something else, which won’t leave so much blank space after you have finished?
Gee….sorry Steve….did I hurt you?
I defer to your expertise as a purveyor of fermentuous and spirituous beverages . “ever print” away, and may the sharpest dart in the box strike true!
The following links help to give a wider view of the Iraq War & its particpants & Enablers:
http://www.cryingwolf.deconstructingiraq.org.uk/...
&
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=home
&
an essential part of the War Machine:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
also here:
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/03/28/donald-barlett-and-james-steele/
It’s not just simply about killing terrorists.
I apologise to SATP.
I was clearly incorrect to assume that he is utterly without persuasive powers.