Why we have lost in Iraq...

[lindashaw]

The reason is a principle that is as old as time itself: Attitude. The pictures that were shown on "60 Minutes" display damning evidence of why we have lost the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population, to say nothing of our reputation around the world.

Attitude comes from the top down, whether its a family, a corporation, an army or a government. What the boss thinks is what his people think. If they don't think that way, they get out. And the sight of our soldiers giving a "thumbs up" to cruelty doesn't need any explanations.

It breaks my heart. Maybe it goes back to what I taught my children -- that competition is not a good thing except to compete against yourself. Someone has to win and someone has to lose, and those who MUST CONTROL someone else most often don't bring out the best part of themselves.

What folly we have wrought in wanting to control these people. My fear is that we could wind up being the ones who are controlled. Whatever happened to honor and nobility? Oh, my...

[MSgt213]

1. You absolutely right, but might I add that these people don't want us

any more then they wanted Saddam. The Bush administration seems to think that people can't hate more then one dictator at a time. Right now we are doing the same things that Saddam did. Only his people were getting jobs, only his people where not killed and fed well. We are doing the same things and expecting people to like it because we are America.

[Ripley]

4. Are they calling those "rape rooms"?

Since that is always the reason given for killing Saddam's sons...they had rape rooms.

Somehow today seems like a huge turning point. The talking heads are really desperate grasping at the most absurd ideas to say "it's working!!" (having Saddam's Generals take over security). CNN showed a poll where 3/4 of Iraqi's want us to leave NOW, yet on another channel Tim Russert said in response to rumblings about the mess that "The White House will say that 3/4 of Iraqi's are thrilled and want us to stay." And locally I saw a female soldier returning to my area and she said "we have lost control, it is horrible there."

Hopefully CBS is just the beginning of the return of the media actually doing their job.

[Jacobin]

2. The sooner we leave, the better

This "white man's burden" crap that only WE in the west can "give them democracy" is such a claptrap pretext (after no WMD, SaddamBadMan) for confiscating their resources.

I guess we'll end up fencing off the oil fields and trying to defend them for the next ten years and leave the rest of the country to do what it will.

Such a mess

[Snellius]

3. Have they lost Iraq or just been forced to show their real cards?

The chances we are going to leave a region at the geopolitical center of the Islamic world, with all the potential revenues from the second largest oil field in the world, in the hands of what we have turned into the world's largest breeding ground for anti-American terrorists, has as much chance as a snowball in Baghdad. Nothing will change, except that the veils of deceit will fall away.