from: <http://www.juancole.com/>
"*About 35 Iraqis are murdered in Baghdad alone every
day, most in gang-related violence, according to
Rosalind Russell of Reuters. That is an annual murder
rate of nearly 13,000, for this one city, population 5
million. The murder rate for the United States, a
country of over 280 million, in 2000? 16,000! Nor is
Iraq just a violent society; physicians at Baghdad
hospitals say they have never seen anything like it!
Baghdad was quite safe under Saddam as long as you
weren't involved in dissident politics. ..-clip-
^^^^^^
CB: This seems to support the position of those of us who say it is the
U.S.'s presence , not its absence or departure, that makes "chaos" ( uh oh,
better call James Bond ) in Iraq.
> From what I know of Christian Parenti, I don't have anything against him;
and I don't think polls in general are bs, rather that they must be
evaluated on a case by case basis. In this case , in evaluating , I would
wonder in this concrete circumstance about how the Iraqis would trust any
American, even if _we_ know the guy's "alright". Certainly , anybody who
was thinking about taking up arms would not likely tell an American. But as
someone else said here, most people, including probably most Iraqis,
especially civilians, wouldn't be into going on what would be a likely
suicide mission, given the Americans just demonstrated very convincingly who
has the superior fire power. In other words, that claim of Parenti's is
believable. But that doesn't seem proof that they don't in their hearts
know the U.S. is the Fourth Reich for them.