Thought provoking comments . . .

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 08:34:21 -0700
From: Severo Ornstein <severo () poonhill com>
Subject: Thought provoking comments . . .

. . . from one of my  [Severo's not IP] listmembers. Not exactly gentle, 
but . . .?

It is still possible to win the war in Iraq. In fact, there are two methods 
which bring a victory:

1.  Get out on June 30.  Since the war is over, all POWs get 
repatriated.  Turn Saddam over to al-Sadr, or al-Sistani, or one of the 
guys who had his ears cut off by Saddam's secret police. The general idea 
is that we don't want Saddam to be alive on July 2.
    Declare that the US invaded Iraq to get rid of a regime which was a 
threat to the US, and that we will invade Iraq again if they threaten us 
again.  Declare that we have withdrawn our troops from Iraq in order to 
prepare for the next invasion, of the next country that supports terrorists 
against us.


2.  Put 4 million troops into Iraq, which should be enough to pacify the 
place and install a stable democratic government.  Keep them there as long 
as needed (hint:  US occupation forces sent into Nazi Germany in 1945 are 
still there, which is 59 years and counting).


NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK.  In particular, attempting to pacify Mesopotamia 
with 135,000 US troops and a handful of Europeans will only annoy the 
Iraqis and get a lot of people killed.  Escalating by a few thousand every 
few months will work exactly as well as it worked in Viet Nam in 1966.


I can already see the stupid questions:

Q:  Who will you turn over the Iraqi government to?
A:  Who cares?  I certainly don't care.  The idea is to destroy those who 
threaten American and to deter those who were thinking about it. This is 
done by killing people and blowing things up, not by creating a CPA, or an 
IGC, or some other stupid organization which doesn't work anyway.  If you 
want to have the water system fixed, call the UN.

Q:  Didn't those 700 Americans die for nothing?
A:  Better 700 than 70,000.  Also, if we can convince the Syrians that if 
they support Hezbollah or Hamas in bringing suicide bombers to America then 
we will have Assad's head on a stake, well, maybe it won't happen. Allowing 
a howling mob of Shiites to drag Saddam's mangled corpse through the 
streets of Karbala is possibly an effective method of causing the 
government in Damascus to make nice. If killing the entire Iraqi government 
makes America safer, then those 700 did not die in vain.

Q:  Are you serious?
A:  Perfectly serious.  As serious as a heart attack.

For the record, I did not support this war, and I support an immediate 
withdrawal.  I also support killing all high-ranking members of the Iraqi 
Baath party, so as to prevent any of them from going on TV and claiming 
victory.

-

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