150 men kidnapped today by Iraqi police:

[hedgehog]

I want our soldiers home now, but is there any way to help the Iraqis to a decent life? Is the only alternative to leave and let the bloodletting work itself out?

[acmavm]

1. Anybody got a link to that video from last week showing the

Iraqi police firing on a bunch of demonstrators and killing some of 'em? Then they just threw them in the back of a truck like.

We got a real bunch of humanitarians running that place.

[Justyce]

2. We have opened up a can of worms that

I don't see how it could end up good for the Iraqis or our soldiers. We would be leaving them much worse off than they were before we "intervened", but if we are unable to fix it, how many more soldiers have to die trying to do something that is not achievable? There is no solution to this nightmare IMO. The ass should've listened before starting this war.

[AngryOldDem]

10. Can o'worms, located at Pottery Barn

Colin Powell looks like a prophet, doesn't he? Or at least a voice of experience.

I don't think even a Bosnia solution (segmenting the country) will work now.

I can't get my mind around a kidnapping of that size.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. The 150 were targeted specifically because they were academics

working in a university, and not likely to engage in sectarian violence or political war. They represented stabilization and healing of a society. That's what made them dangerous to extremists.

[hedgehog]

4. Apparently, the Shiites were seperated from the Sunnis by the kidnappers.

We're trying to stop a slow motion ethnic cleansing with the people we put in charge engaged in some of the worst atrocities.

[ECH1969]

6. Some of the Shia who were captured have been released in Sadr City

This operation was pure Madhi Army.

[lectrobyte]

5. I think the country has to do what it must. If Saddam/Baath was the

"iron hand" holding the 3 factions together, then removing that seems to invite a certain amount of chaos. After all, we managed to have a civil war here, without the religious and ethnic differences the Iraqis face.

[hedgehog]

7. I think if we pull out, we may see the country split several ways

and/or more or less occupied by adjoining countries. If it settles things down so people can get on with their lives, I can't see how that's a bad thing. I'm afraid it would involve turning a lot of people into refugees fleeing from one region to another, though.

[lectrobyte]

8. I agree. It's a bad situation, but I don't see any positive outcome

by us staying. The longer we stay, the more they'll hate us and fight us to get us out of their country (wouldn't you if the situation were reversed?) and what will happen when we leave, sooner or later, is going to happen. Unless we prop up another dictator like Saddam or the Shah, and then we set ourselves up for the blowback in 10 or 20 years...

[hedgehog]

9. It all comes down to the fact that you can't control people

unless you are willing to be a dictator like Saddam or Stalin or Mao or Hitler. The only thing to do is to withdraw with the least damage possible, but I don't know how to do that.I don't think we have the means to stop the fighting. For starters, who is supplying all the money to keep the fighting going? I can't help but feel that various factions around the Middle East are paying surrogate fighters in Iraq. If Israel and the West weren't factors, I think there would be fighting between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle Ease.


By surrogate, I don't mean non-Iraqis, just that various factions are arming their side in the fighting.