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Old 09-30-2004, 08:26 AM   #10 (permalink)
roachboy
 
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there has been a flurry of contradictory stories in the press since last weekend about whether present troop levels are adequate. obviously this is caught up with the debates, such as they are, around the bush/allawi apperance before congress and the advancing of the pollyanna reading of the situation in iraq, which will doubtless only go away after the elections.
on indication of the contradictory nature of these stories is here:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...9EBB064787.htm

a matter that was quickly displaced onto that of the feasibility of holding elections in january. on this a riot of stories have appeared.

it is interesting that a decontextualized story from an obviously conservative source sits at the beginning of this thread, which plays to an equally decontextualized view of the situation in iraq, one oriented toward tv viewers, framed doubtless by fox news talking heads.

only from this viewpoint would the impression of a "double standard" make any sense. only from this viewpoint, of someone watching tv in america somewhere, would the idea be even rational that you can discount the fact of occupation and the meanings attributed to american occupation in particular when thinking about what is going on in iraq.

if you factor that in, even in the abstract, it should be easy to see how people there might understand resistance actions and american actions using very different scales, maybe the inverse of those used by the tv viewing analysts who try to explain away civilian casualties inflicted by americans whenever reports of them appear.

i hope that it is clear that none of this operates as justification for anything, simply as an explanation for how it might be that the non-problem at the origin of this thread might be understood.

as for the matter of chaos--it would follow as justification for opposing american occupation, not as cause, it seems to me.
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