chunga1 -- 'lets ask the iraqis if their glad we came' -- including the 2+ million who are now refugees outside Iraq and the additional 2+ million who are now refugees inside Iraq? -- might be hard to find 'em to ask 'em
geez, sometimes, things you say -- unbelievably out of touch with obvious reality -- as a result of our invasion, it's not that much of an exaggeration to say that basically the whole country has been blown to shit -- infrastructure still wrecked in many cities, they've been dealing with outbreaks of cholera recently, in many cities hardly a structure not at least scarred by bullet or a piece of shrapnel or two -- at least a hundred thousand or two of innocents who otherwise would be here now are gone -- the working economy they did have, even under the sanctions, has been wrecked -- the relative freedom the vast majority who were able to stay out of Saddam's path did in fact have has been sharply curtailed, especially for women -- Baghdad in particular has at a huge cost largely been ethnically cleansed, helping set the stage and prime the pump for further conflict -- religious fanatics and tribal warlords have become much more powerful in many areas, and al Qaeda is established and active in country -- and so forth
no of course the Iraqis are not 'glad we came' -- you have got to be kidding
but I know you're not -- which literally at times leaves me just sitting here shaking my head -- I see it, I understand it, just no sense to it -- I know you have the smarts, and plenty (which I say NOT to be a condescending azz, but to be clear here) -- it's the utter disconnects from reality, then, that boggle me -- evidently resulting from your defining reality, literally what for you is or isn't real and never mind any damned obvious facts to the contrary, as what your ideological precepts require it to be
which of course is ontologically, and accordingly epistemologically, EXACTLY bass-ackwards when the goal is to actually understand reality outside the self -- when the precepts fit the facts, great -- but when the precepts do not fit the facts, it's the precepts that have to be reshaped to fit or let go, not the facts -- that's as basic and fundamental as it gets -- . . .
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
