Riverbend has been prolific for last few days

[medeak]

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

things sound bad... must be reason for Bush/Rummy press conferences last two days?

[Jacobin]

1. I love reading her stuff

Thanks for reminding me to look her up.

I hope these poor people someday have a little peace.

[JDPriestly]

2. Vietnam all over.

Violence breeds violence -- goes for all sides. The insurgents become more violent, so we react by becoming more violent, so the insurgents increase in numbers and become more violent. I wonder if our government is figuring that, with the population of Iraq not being all that large, sooner or later, there just won't be enough Iraqis with the will to fight. Maybe it will work, but in Vietnam, if I am correct, the numbers of rebels and rebel supporters just grew and grew as the US killed more people. There are other similarities and differences. In Vietnam, we associated ourselves with the Catholics, who I believe constituted an influential minority, for a time. In Iraq, we are associating ourselves with the Shia majority, but also with the Kurdish minority. I don't know enough about Iraqi society to know how that compares to our strategy in Vietnam. Does anyone else?