"Brett" wrote in message
...
"John Mullen" wrote:
"Brett" wrote in message
...
"mut head" Mullen wrote:
"Brett" wrote in message

In March of 1991 it took Saddam's post Gulf War reduced forces, who
ignored
any of the "collateral damage" they were inflicting less than 4 days
to
put
down the insurgents contained in the Holy City of Karbala. It doesn't
that
much effort to destroy a city and the poorly supplied insurgents
contained
within it.

I think you'll find they were operating without the constraints of
democracy
or a free press. Would you suggest we get rid of those?

Which is a constraint that is removed if the forces operate without
concern
for "collateral damage" and that lack of concern was the primary part of
the
original post by Paladino.

Sure. As long as we recognise that we are in fantasy land, in alternate
universes, in what-if territory, I have no problem with that. I'm sure if we
were able to act as brutally as Saddam did, we could probably crush the
population as effectively as he did.

Trouble no 1 is that that, if successful, would simply give us back the
status quo. We were supposed to have intervened to improve things in Iraq.
(I think WMD were mentioned too, but let's not bring that up again now!)

Trouble no 2 is that Saddam's thugs were at least Iraqis. Our stormtroopers
in this 'what-if' would be furrners. Resistance would be even easier to
organise than it is now.

Trouble no 3 is that for all their many imperfections, the US and the UK are
liberal democracies with a free press. People would not accept seeing on TV
and in the press, the kind of viciousness that Saddam perpetrated, being
done by our troops. They just wouldn't. If anyone was in doubt over this,
this past week's events must surely prove it. So you would need martial law
in both countries and total news censorship. For starters. And censorship is
much harder now than it used to be.


btw. One of the answers to a BBC poll indicated that less than 10% of
those
polled even knew that US and UK troops were in Iraq.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp...iraqsurvey.pdf


Nice ref. I think you have misunderstood what the numbers mean on that
example though. I think the 98.5 % figure is the one to look at there.

I guess that depends on how you look at it. A response from 98.5% of those
polled found that less than 10% of them had even heard that US and UK
troops
were in the country and the answers to that question weeds out the
responses
to other questions they asked. Looking at the quoted numbers for
recognition
of local political figures the results probably match the level of
recognition you would expect to find close to an election in the US and UK
(damn low).

OK. I read it as meaning that only 10% answered the question, of whom 98%
expressed that view. Your reading actually makes more sense, when I think
about it. A rather surprising statistic, isn't it?

btw. sorry about the original comment.

No problem. I appreciate the apology.

John