8 Americans dead
 

Ooooh. Good one.

:rolleyes:

8 Americans dead
 

Now you're insensitive. bilmore had a "mentor" relationship with a towel boy in Phuket a few years back, and it really helped him over the "middle aged crazies." He's been trying to come up with a business reason to go again, but now who knows what the situation is.

8 Americans dead
 

no one in a book discussion group will be drinking merlots for the next few years.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

Yeah, see, people were talking about it. Then 60 fucking thousand people died.

aV

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

Seems to me it would make more sense for people to be talking about the Yukos oil auction (latest AP story here). People at least know that the Ukriane elections were happening. There has been far less attention paid to the oil takeover and yet it seems like Putin will actually pull that one off. One of Putin's own economic advisers is calling that the fraud of the year, although to be fair Ukraine would have won that award except for the whole public outcry thing ruining it all.

8 Americans dead
 

Let me clarify here, as I think we're fighting at cross-purposes for reasons that go beyond the subject at hand:

Yes, it is sort of unseemly that the american press is so Ameri-centric in its reporting. Sixty thousand dead do overshadow the relatively few dead Americans. A quick glance can lead to the impression of "sixty thousand dead, and eight of them matter."

And yet, I am personally glad that they are concentrating their specific attentions on the Americans over there, simply because of my personal interest and worry.

That's all I meant. I don't think that's a sign of insensitivity.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

It's a great story, so far, and there's been some good reporting about it (e.g., a piece from Kiev in The New Yorker a few weeks ago). The contrasts with Iraq are fairly glaring, alas, and point to profound weaknesses in the way that we ostensibly are trying to promote democracy around the world.

If Ukraine is the heart-warming, feel-good story about the triumph of democracy, Russia is the flip side, the cautionary tale about how democracy can go bad. Notwithstanding that he is turning the country into an authoritarian regime and removing any viable opposition to him, or perhaps because of it, he has strong support. Weimar Germany was a democracy, too.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

If the elections happen, with high turnout and a clean result, such that it is clear that the will of the Iraqi people has been expressed, how can that be a bad thing? Are you speaking of the protracted fighting being the bad, or something else?

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

While we're dealing in hypotheticals here, would you see an election where a large number of Sunnis either were not able to register and vote (because they are living in restive areas or have become refugees from their homes in such areas) or chose to boycott as being reflective of the will of the people? In other words, that the government was representative of the segment of the voting population who believe in the democracy we're trying to create over there and that was good enough?

Not a gotcha question here, just curious about how you'd define success in this environment.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

If Sunnis, or any significant bloc, were not able to vote because of fighting, fear, or whatever, I would call that a failure. If they choose to boycott because of their perception that they were about to lose, I'd say, tough beans. I have little sympathy for the Sunnis as it is - they gladly held all the power under their beloved leader, and pretty much did their part to ruthlessly keep the majority down for all of SH's years. Just as I would have no sympathy if the hardcore evangelicals here decided to boycott an election, I have none for the Sunnis. It's not that they object to the method - they are simply pre-objecting to the result. They know they've lost their hold. By withholding their vote, they take on no more moral weight then they presently have.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

Yes, but how will we know? If there's significant bloodshed in Sunni areas, it may not be clear whether people wanted to go but couldn't, or if they stayed home and cheered. The situation may be cloudy enough that it'll be difficult to tell where to place our disdain.

FWIW, I share your general opinion about the Sunnis, as they've profited from Saddam's rule, and seem to be taking their new status as soon-to-be-persecuted-minority with very little maturity. Joining the Insurgent Fuckheads in disproportionate numbers will not wear well on this group in the long run, either at the hands of Americans or (hopefully, someday) Iraqis.

But aren't there more worries than whether the Sunnis choose to sit it out? We only have 35 international observers (or something like that) in country to monitor the elections themselves, and almost everything I've seen focuses on physical security of polling places, and almost nothing about preventing or limiting fraud. Maybe it's easier in places like Afghanistan, where Karzai was a popular enough leader in the first place that his election was roundly accepted notwithstanding voting irregularities. Here, though, it sounds like a much more crowded field, where the only result that seems plausible to the experts I've seen is an Iranian-friendly Shia theocracy, which is hardly what Wolfowitz had in mind at the outset.

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

I agree. My neat division depends on being able to tell the difference. My fear is that some Sunni cleric issues a fatwah, hordes of Sunnis don't vote, and they claim that they don't dare out of fear, and we're left with the question of, centrality of boycott or fear? But that still, in my mind, distills the issue - if we can find some way to determine this question, we will know the validity of the election. It's not a matter of generally just claiming there might be problems, and so we can't do it this way - the problem is defined. That's closer to democracy than Iraq was last year.

(ETA - My hope would be a result so one-sided that, even if all of the people who didn't vote for whatever reason had voted for one particular Sunni candidate, that candidate still would have lost. Such a no-harm-no-foul outcome would be, in my mind, a very defensible result.)

Why Aren't We Talking About This?
 

I pretty much agree, at least as far the election goes. Which is to say, the goal to me isn't an election but a functional government which is at least on some level responsive to the will of the people. That to me can happen under a number of different election day scenarios, including one where a lot of folks can't vote due to violence or fear.

I guess the interesting thing will be to see, if a large bloc of Sunnis from a province with some concurrent violence stays home, whether those folks will be characterized as boycotters or fearers. [eta you guys are way ahead of me on this one.]

There was some talk a few weeks ago (from Allawi, among others, I think) of having rotating elections, so that different provinces would vote on different days, in order to better focus security forces. Is that still a possibility?

Too much choice
 

The source of your quote speaks volumes for its quality.

Its not the liberals who are most pissed by the autopen thing, bilmore -- its the family members and some senior military and former military officers.

As the pit viper noted, the number of KIA in Iraq is still low enough that Rumsfeld certainly could have signed all the letters personally. Why would he not do so, if he could?

If its no big thing, and if I'm wrong about the "tin ear" comment -- why did the White House immediately confirm that Bush personally signs his condolence letters, and why did Rumsfeld announce that he had instructed all future letters to be prepared for his personal signature? Why bilmore, why?

S_A_M

P.S. You never addressed the admiration question.

Silent Spring Break
 

OK. Now _that_ is funny.

S_A_M