These past two years, I’ve really been falling out of love with the Iraqi people, if not all Muslim people around the world, because of things like this. I really question whether its worth our time, lives and money to fix what may very well be a nation of idiotic barbarians who hate us, love genocidal dictators, and ultimately want to see us dead. And if we’re not in a position to leave the region, then at least take off the kid gloves. I’d rather see Baghdad under martial law for a year than hear about one more soldier dead by IED.

I can understand your statement..and it has gone through my mind before. I try to remember that in my mind, the war never really was about the iraqi people even though freeing them from their brutal dictator was obviously the humane thing to do. The free world countries needed to protect their interests from a tyrant that had shown what powers he had and was acquiring…WMD. THAT is what ultimately needed to be stopped and his little jig with the UN and what he pulled in kuwait and then all the mass killings he did with wmd gas to his own people, made him very alarming to a nation. As for muslims, you should be guarded. Their book teaches about how our demise must come if we do not convert. Some muslims may never go to that extreme, but don’t let the msm fool you into thinking that the amount that would go extreme is just a minority. There are countries that are under this sharia law, hardly a minority. Until there is some litmus test on which muslim will take their book literally and which ones will not, I will be keeping my distance because I value my life and my family’s lives.

Just remember, the media that people see about the USA are our liberal freaks loud mouths…that is hardly what the USA is made up of..and I’d imagine the same goes for the ones who are silenced through being beaten, maimed, etc. We are so free here in the USA we can’t comprehend the fear that some of those people have in iraq. I think it’s frankly amazing how far Iraq’s has come. I’m not sure I would have been that brave to go vote and have purple on my finger marking me as one who wanted change in iraq when there are headcutters next door.

I 300 percent agree with your last two sentences..300 percent!

William Amos on December 31, 2006 at 2:21 PM

Thank you for putting much into sorely needed perspective. Happy New Year.

It’s like the American public are alcoholics and they need to to have a major knowledge reality check.

AP, please tell us that one of your resolutions is to add an edit feature…

Yeah, that’s it.

As usual, not news reportage, but fabrication. Or to borrow Dan Blather’s method, real but inaccurate.

Wolfman, great conclusion!!!

Yahoos, indeed.

Oh, and I must say. After viewing pics of a dead Saddam I must say he never looked so good. He appears taller and slimmer.

CliffHanger on December 31, 2006 at 2:23 PM

Yes, death becomes him,

…”There could be no greater contrast than that between Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein George Bush, and word of Saddam’s death illuminated Ford’s grace and generosity even more.”

Urge to fix it addressed!

I ask Mr. Meacham “what about Saddam’s ‘grace and generosity’”? He had members of his own family executed.

Then, operation code-named Termination of Traitors

And, if you have time to skim details about the just departed monster – note to Mr. Meacham too…

I have that same TV…

Would it be bad taste to ask if I could have her tv if she blows herself up? Sorry, just asking…anybody thought of a good song yet for Saddam’s passing? One springs to mind seeing the west bank pictures…ahem…

Don’t cry for me Palestina…
the truth, I never liked you..
All through my power days
my plastic shredder days
I gave you lots of bombs
and 25K per blast..Palestina…

I’m sure the more creative among you can come up with better..I’m awash with guilt for being such a mean bugger at the end of the year…ok, done with that. Off to the Casino Royale. Cheeers.

Here’s my favorite, of one of our friends in the West Bank.

I have that same TV…

Damn, now I have an irresistible urge to go to the mall and self-detonate.

Here’s my favorite, of one of our friends in the West Bank.

Wasn’t “our friend” in Lebanon? Of course, if it’s the same person, she could be vacationing in Ipanema and still serve as a fauxtographic model.

Newsweek’s Jon Meacham, on choosing Mr. Ford’s picture on the cover, versus Saddam’s:

“I felt differently. There is much to learn from Ford’s legacy-one that we explain and explore in detail-and his brief, 29-month presidency shapes us still…”There could be no greater contrast than that between Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein, and word of Saddam’s death illuminated Ford’s grace and generosity even more.”

Mourning not exclusive to those savages…

- He rarely littered.
- He always turned the lights off when he left a room.
- He was good with children.
- He never passed wind in public areas.
- He could fire a shotgun with one hand.
- He set aside money for recently bereaved palestinian families (there were prerequisites… I’m fuzzy on the details here).
- He smiled at people, even when he was planning to kill them.

Sure, he did some bad things. But does that make him a bad person?

Its well know that its outside sources that are backing the insurgency. Iran and Syria are as much the problem as Iraqis are.

Wont even go into the democrats and their “help”

And who cares about them one iota? Only sickos. History will not give a rat’s heinie, nor will any sane people, regardless of the moping of our ‘illustrious’ media, lefties, idealists and George Gallows.

Oh, and not to forget the truly ignorant, like the lady in the AP-chosen picture. One can’t blame them – they simply don’t know better and never will. We have plenty of them here (in the U.S.) too.

Hopefully they will never rule the world. There is always the danger, though, i.e. Venezuela, that they are bought to vote for a tyrant.

We’re fighting civilians. No uniform, no country, no organization, just civilians that could be anywhere and anyone at any time. Whether they raise an AK-47 against our troops or simply provide a safe house for al Sadr’s militia, they’re all the enemy that we need to kill. So is there any way to know where the true sympathies of the Iraqi people lie, beyond heresay and media? Because people lie just as well as the media does. The only way I think we can tell for sure whether the Iraqis are with us or against us will be told in how large their body count is – and no matter what the source – 600,000 or 100,000 or 25,000 – its already a pretty big, ugly number.

Happy New Year, all.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/26/iraq.soldier.parents.ap/index.html

Parents of slain U.S. soldiers travel to Iraq
POSTED: 12:20 p.m. EST, December 26, 2006

LYERLY, Georgia (AP) — After her son Justin was killed serving in Iraq, a grieving Jan Johnson resolved to see the place where he died and to better understand why it happened.

Johnson and her husband, Joe, who also served in Iraq, were among a group of seven parents who lost children in the war who were picked to travel to northern Iraq in November as a scout team for a bigger trip next year.

“I wanted to go see where my son died,” she said. “You hear in the news how bad Iraq is, that it isn’t worth saving. … I wanted to go find out for myself.”

Family members of U.S. casualties of war have made pilgrimages in the past to Vietnam and other war zones where their sons and daughters died.

But the fighting in Iraq was far from over, so a similar journey seemed unlikely until a nonprofit organization called Move America Forward decided to organize a trip.

By the time plans had been made, Joe had returned from an eight-month tour in Iraq and was willing to return for his wife’s sake.

The trip cost between $5,000 and $7,000 per person, but donations came pouring in from across the country, including checks from soldiers. The seven were told to keep their travel plans hidden from the Department of Defense and even their own children

The next morning, a plane flew the families into Arbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. It’s one of the safest areas of the country, where suicide bombers rarely strike and the insurgency has little support among the Kurds, a minority long oppressed under Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The Johnsons were never able to go to Sadr City, the rough-and-tumble Baghdad neighborhood where Justin Johnson was killed by a roadside bomb in April 2004.

Kurds thank parents for sacrifice
Far from the strife of Baghdad and other violent regions, the group’s members said they nevertheless found a cause worth fighting for in Arbil.

There, they said, their sons were treated as liberators and the parents welcomed as heroes.

As guests of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the parents visited a parade of politicians and government ministers who thanked them for their visit — and their sacrifice.

Many told the families their sons were martyrs, a term that at first seemed offensive to some.

“Until I understood the meaning of what a martyr was, it was kind of a slap in the face,” Jan said. “But they weren’t comparing them to suicide bombers. I realized they were comparing them to heroes.”

They traveled to outlying villages and were invited to sip tea with Kurdish dignitaries. One told them of his painstaking efforts to find mass graves and evidence of Iraqi abuse. Another took them on a tour of a prison camp that was transformed into a rose garden after Hussein’s grip on the region waned.

Wherever they traveled, fellow mother Debra Argel Bastian of Lompoc, California, handed out wallet-sized photos of her son, Derek Argel, who was killed in a May 2005 plane crash near the Iranian border.

One mother tucked the photo into a framed picture of her two sons and husband, who had also been killed during Saddam’s rule. “Now your son is my son,” the woman told Bastian.

She broke down crying.

“I needed to make that trip,” said Bastian, who traveled with her husband, Todd. “All of us were very, very disappointed in the media coverage over the war. I had so many avenues that were telling me different, that there were good things happening in Iraq, that they were just reporting the bomb of the day.”

Well, as someone once said… May piss be upon them.

Wishing a Happy and preposterous prosperous New Year to the entire Hot Air crew and all it’s commenters!

These past two years, I’ve really been falling out of love with the Iraqi people, if not all Muslim people around the world, because of things like this. I really question whether its worth our time, lives and money to fix what may very well be a nation of idiotic barbarians who hate us, love genocidal dictators, and ultimately want to see us dead.

you ought to consider the source of most of your (as well as the rest of our) information and what the ideology is that drives them and therefore where their attention is most.

If you went by most reporting you would think that not one school has been built, one hospital opened/staffed/equipped, or one city given power and water as well as security.

The left wants us to think that they hate us there so that’s what they report. I’ll grant you that many people there do, but many people there … do not as well. At least according to my friends who live and work in the middle east.

I’d trust them over the media … any day.

Yep, the son of a bitch is still dead. Not a lot of new information at this point but that doesn’t mean I can’t relish the moment a little longer. Allahpundit’s post here has been updated a couple of times…