Brad,
We can have endless discussions (which may be fun) about what should have happened, or might have happened. Monday morning quarter backing is part of our lives.
But, you had to be there. It was a dangerous situation.
How many Americans are you willing to place in harms way trying to avoid killing heavily armed resistance. If I were an officer in charge of the operation, I'd call in a helicopter and blow the house and the Sadaamites to bits.
No doubt the Sunni wouldn't be happy, but the tens of thousands who suffered the sadism of the two would cheer.
And they did.
Harry -------------------------------------------------------
Brad wrote:
Keith Hudson wrote: [snip]As for Bush, much the same tearing apart of his case, little bit by little bit, is now beginning to happen. Unless the Americans capture/kill Saddam in the next six months and magically produce an Iraqi government that will be acceptable by the Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, then Bush will have to withdraw his troops from Iraq -- probably before the next presidential election.* It is said that General Wesley Clark is being considered as a Democratic candidate. Previously he's on record as saying that he didn't know whether he was Democrat or Republican. If he were a shrewed politician he would now make it known quietly that he is really a closet Republican and that he would withdraw from Iraq. Then we would see some interesting moves within the Republican Party!
Sounds good to me.
[snip]*The American forces were incredibly stupid -- beyond anything that the lowliest State Department official could have told them -- in carrying out the pulverising killing of Saddam's sons -- especially with their father still alive and in hiding. It was unbelievable! They should have simply surrounded the house and starved the sons out.[snip]
There was a CNN special on the Afghanistan uprising at Mazzar al Sharrif or however it's spelled: the place where that SanFrancisco young man John Walker Lind fighting with the Taliban was captured, etc. Aparently the US had gotten the Taliban to surrender on the understanding that they turn in their weapons and then they could go home. Instead the US corralled them all in a big fortress and started trying to get information out of them with their release deferred sine die. So they revolted and the US blew them to bits. The Afghans felt betrayed, although they also understood that this was war, and in war, anything goes. But they learned that, for the Americnas, anything goes and you can't trust them.
The thing wwith Saddam's sons seems straightforwardly illegal, but then this is Bush's "wanted dead or alive" frontier vigilante mentality. They were afraid Sazddam's sons might escape thru a tunnel or something, I think. They were afraid that, somehow, they would get away -- which may not have been an entirely misplaced concern, considering howw "we" miss things under our noses so often.
\brad mccormick
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