Next time try the words "Thank You"

[Alaska Darin]

Technically speaking that's not incorrrect - no invasion, no reason for them to be there, and no abduction.

 

It was certainly a most ungracious and ungrateful statement though.  Sheesh. 

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Yeah, they wouldn't have tried to advocate peace if Saddam Hussein were the one killing innocent people - instead of nameless, faceless terrorists.

 

Technically speaking, they're hypocritical idiots.

[ExiledInIllinois]

I thought you were going to sneak out to "see me".

 

Liar.

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Do contractors get mandatory POSH training?

 

 

[Johnny Coli]

It can be both.  We occupied them to liberate them.   

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Looks like the Iraqis aren't buying it any more than we are.

On Monday, Bush pointed to the Iraqi city of Tal Afar in his speech in Ohio.

Marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war with a speech in Cleveland, the president said Tal Afar was once brutally run by insurgents loyal to al-Qaida -- but was recaptured last year by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

 

Since then, schools and markets have reopened, water and power have been restored, police are again patrolling the streets -- and according to Bush, Tal Afar "is coming back to life."

 

Bush says it shows the administration's "clear, hold and build" strategy in Iraq is working.

Everything's coming up roses in Tal Afar, right?

 

Maybe he should actually ask the people of Tal Afar.

We "heart" Tal Afar

 

U.S. President George W. Bush held up the northern town of Tal Afar this week as an example of progress being made in Iraq but many residents find it hard to share his optimism.

[snip]

"I say that Bush is 100 percent a liar because the city of Tal Afar has become a ghost town rather than the example Bush spoke about," said Ali Ibrahim, a Shi'ite Turkmen laborer.

[snip]

But more than a dozen local people who spoke to a Reuters reporter on Friday said they had little faith in the future of their town, where the offensive fueled sensitivities in an ethnically and religiously mixed region.

 

Sunni Turkmen Rafat Ahmed, 35, a shop owner said: "As I'm talking now the Americans and the Iraqi army are surrounding my neighborhood. If we leave our houses we could be arrested."

[snip]

The deployment last year of Iraqi troops, who were widely perceived locally as Shi'ite Arab outsiders, prompted the Sunni mayor of Tal Afar to tender his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation. The involvement of ethnic Kurdish forces was also a source of tension, local people said.

 

"Anyone who says Tal Afar is good and safe actually knows nothing because the reality is we are unsafe, even inside our houses, because we don't know when we'll be arrested," said pensioner Abdul Karim al-Anizi, 60, a Shi'ite Turkmen

[snip]

"The situation in Tal Afar is deteriorating and the smell of death is everywhere. People never know why they are killed. They only know that the Americans are the cause of their agonies," said Hussein Mahmoud, a Shi'ite Turkmen university professor.

 

If this is Bush's example of how everything is going so swell over there, I'd hate to see an example of what's considered a bust.