Today’s headline in the BBC: “Triple Baghdad bombing kills 36″

“At least 36 people have been killed in three car bomb attacks in Baghdad, bringing the total killed in the day to more than 55, Iraqi officials say.”

How do you live with yourself, pedro?

FACTBOX-Developments in Iraq, March 12
12 Mar 2006 16:13:04 GMT
Source: Reuters

SECURITY INCIDENTS

* BAGHDAD – At least 40 people were killed and 95 wounded in three car bombs that exploded almost simultaneously in two markets in the Shi’ite Sadr district of Baghdad on Sunday. Police dismantled a fourth bomb in the same area, they said.

* LATIFIYA – Gunmen ambushed and killed a local football player (Mohammad Najah) in Latifiya 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, local police said.

* BAGHDAD – Two civilians were killed and four wounded when a mortar round landed on a paint shop in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD – Eight bodies were found with their hands tied and gun shot wounds to the head in Rustamiya, a suburb in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD – Six people were killed and 14 wounded, including policemen, when a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S convoy passed by in southern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD – Gunmen killed two police officers in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD – Two soldiers were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD – Five soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD – Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad received at least twenty bodies overnight, some with gun shot wounds, a source in the hospital said.

DHULUIYA – Gunmen killed two army officers who work in the Joint Coordination Centre in Dhuluiya, 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad, the Joint Coordination Centre of Dhuluiya said.

Pedro,

You are on record as supporting a policy of holding out innocent Iraqi civilians as decoys so that we can “fight the terrorists there, as opposed to over here.”

 It also keeps them locked up in Iraq, not wandering the streets of NYC shooting at unarmed, un body-armored civilians& .

Don’t pretend you care about Iraqis when you clearly believe that the life and well-being of the avergae Iraqi is worth less than the life of an American.

Okay. Pedro has totally checked out. Apparently stopped he reading the news around November 2003.

And naturally Pedro cares so much more about the Iraqi people and their safety and the anti-war crowd. Which why he defends the war as a way to fight terrorists over there rather than over here:

 It also keeps them locked up in Iraq, not wandering the streets of NYC shooting at unarmed, un body-armored civilians& .

Yes, Pedro doesn’t seem to think that innocent Iraqi lives are as important as innocent American lives. That’s why it’s okay to turn Iraq into a warzone so we can fight the terrorists there, where the lives of innocent people don’t really matter.

And how about those statistics Pedro. Come on, you’re a scientist. Got any hard numbers on the monthly “random” violence rates in the three years before our invasion that we can compare to death rates in the aftermath? Bush himself cited 30,000 as the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion. That’s about 10,000 dead Iraqis a year. That’s 27 violent deaths a day.

But who cares. Taking 9-11 as our benchmark, that puts current exchange rate between American and Iraqi lives at around 1 American life for every 3,000 Iraqi lives. Ya, Pedro, you really give a shit about the Iraqis.

Further, you think that having random bombings in an insurgency that is slowly being put down, while improving the safety of the Iraqis and allowing them a say in their own government is no different that state sponsored killings and terrorism that included poaching money and medical supplies while the population died off. And this going on for 30 some odd years.

Like I said, I think your rationalization and BDS is great for the republican party, and I wish more of you would shout it from the rooftops….it makes it even more clear what raving moonbats you are to joe-sixpack democrats…

Here’s a little thing you might want to check out, Dr. P and Frame.

See, this why I would not make a good judge. You both make very good points, in your own way.
I have to change my answer. Is life better in Iraq now that Saddam is out? Yes and no. Not better, just different.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Your disingenuousness knows no bounds but of course that’s tobe expected. You are dishonest from your username on down.

Your claim that state sponsored terror is worse than insurgent sponsored terror is utterly inherently inane and only someone whose brain has been turned to mush by his own state’s propaganda would assert it. I should have my head examined for even dignifying it with a response.

You have yet produce any actual statistics about the rates of “random” state sponsored violence under Hussein in the three years leading up to our invasion. So what’s your point of comparison? Nothing but your subjective understanding of two types of fear you’ve never experienced.

But since the cat’s out of the bag, let’s try again.

Let me ask you, was Hussein in the habit of randomly bombing town squares, markets, mosques, schools, police stations and embassies on a weekly and daily basis for years at a time? Because that’s what’s happening now in Iraq with no end in send. I don’t see any difference between a state dug mass grave with a thousand people in it and a thousand individual graves filled with people killed by terrorists. I don’t think anything has qualitatively changed for the Iraqi people except that under Hussein they could probably go the grocery store without the fear of being bombed. That’s a qualitatively different kind of fear than the fear of being rounded up if you say the wrong thing in public in part because the terror threat is both pervasive AND unpredictable. Is one fear worse than the other? I don’t know, but one can always reduce the chances of becoming a victim of state terror by simply surrendering to the state’s demands. Is that a good thing? No. Of course not. But it’s a possibility that is non-existent in Iraq as conditions exist today. The average Iraqi in Baghdad, be they Shiite, Sunnni or Kurd, could be killed in a bombing at any moment for no other reason than they were out buying groceries.

Like I said, I don’t think Iraq is any better off now than it was under Hussein. At best, it s qualitatively the same. At worse, the Iraqis are facing daily acts of random violence on the run up to a totally unpredictable civil war.

There is no fundamental difference between Iraq now and Iraq under Hussein except in that the violence under Hussein was more predictable than the violence going on now. The daily experience of this new kind of violence is qualitatively different but the end result of the violence is the same only the thousands killed are in individual graves instead of one mass grave.

Only a mush brain could make the argument that Iraqis are better off now than they were under Hussein because they are being killed by different means.Remember, the people actually doing the killing are the same ones who killed for Hussein, they’ve only switched tactics. And that’s the sum total of Pedro’s big victory.

By the way, that is the same argument I described previously used to excuse Mussolini…..”At least the trains run on time….”

You spend all your time mewling about how evil BushhitlerMcChimpy is eroding your rights, and then apologize for Saddam because things there were “routine and predictable”

You’re an idiot Frame, but thanks for making that clear to everyone here, my guess is even Ollie and he rest of the “progressives” can even see it now.

Iraq is not better off now than it was under Hussein. At best, it’s qualitatively the same.

US troops are better than the Republican Guard but that doesn’t change the fact the a majority of Iraqis view them as occupiers and another segment of that majority is trying to kill them.

Now do you want to twist that all out proportion and declare me objectively pro-terrorist?

Hussein was a tyrrant. But you forget that even if he was a tyrant, after so many decades of living under his rule, the oppression becomes, for lack of better words, routine and predictable. Yes, people’s lives could be seriously disrupted on a whim but I’ll bet that the average Iraqi (excluding perhaps the Kurds who got shit all the time and probably should have their own country) knew how to avoid trouble. Now they don’t know when they might get killed: at the market, at school, in their own homes. It’s total chaos and on top of that, they have irregular electricity, unclean water and an economy that’s totally in the tank. They are living under occupation which means that, no matter how great US troops are, they are going to get roughed up, fucked up and maybe killed by the people who say they are there to help. I sympathize with any US soldier at a checkpoint whenever an approaching car starts acting strangely. They don’t want to hurt innocent people but in a chaotic situation that’s going to happen. And when it does, no matter the intention, the whole situation gets that much worse.

What’s your response? More rank glibness?: “Duros, it also sounds like South Central LA or Cabrini Green in Chi.”

What an idiot.

I found this on Huff Post. Thought you all should know;
Let’s review SOME of the republicraps shenanigans while in office, as we know, they’re very pure and “christian.”

1. Memogate: The Senate Computer Theft
2. Doctor Detroit: The DOJ’s Bungled Terrorism Case
3. Dark Matter: The Energy Task Force
4. The Indian Gaming Scandal
5. Halliburton’s No-Bid Bonanza
6. Halliburton: Pumping Up Prices – The scandal:
In 2003, Halliburton overcharged the army for fuel in Iraq.
7. Halliburton’s Vanishing Iraq Money
8. The Halliburton Bribe-apalooza – Halliburton, is
alleged to have paid more than $100 million in bribes to
Nigerian officials, from 1995 to 2002,
9. Halliburton: One Fine Company – The scandal: In 1998 and
1999, Halliburton counted money recovered from project overruns
as revenue, before settling the charges with clients.
10. Halliburton’s Iran End Run – The scandal: Halliburton may
have been doing business with Iran while Cheney was CEO.
11. Money Order: Afghanistan’s Missing $700 Million Turns Up in Iraq
12. Iraq: More Loose Change – The scandal: July 2004 finding
that a significant portion of CPA assets had gone missing –
34 percent of the materiel controlled by Kellogg, Brown & Root –
13. The Pentagon-Israel Spy Case
14. Gone to Taiwan – The scandal: A high-ranking State
Department official, Donald Keyser, was arrested and
charged in September with making a secret trip to
Taiwan and was observed by the FBI passing documents to
Taiwanese intelligence agents in Washington-area meetings.
15. Wiretapping the United Nations
16. The Boeing Scandal: In 2003, the Air Force contracted
with Boeing to lease a fleet of refueling tanker planes at
an inflated price: $23 billion.
17. The Medicare Bribe Scandal
18. Tom DeLay’s PAC Problems
19. Tom DeLay’s FAA: Following Americans Anywhere
20. In the Rough: Tom DeLay’s Golf Fundraiser
21. Busy, Busy, Busy in New Hampshire – The scandal:
an Election Day scheme meant to depress Democratic
turnout by “jamming” the Democratic Party phone bank with
continuous calls for 90 minutes.
22. The Medicare Money Scandal
23. The Bogus Medicare “Video News Release”
24. Pundits on the Payroll: The Armstrong Williams Case
25. Ground Zero’s Unsafe Air
26. John Ashcroft’s Illegal Campaign Contributions
27. Intel Inside … The White House
28. Duck! Antonin Scalia’s Legal Conflicts
29. AWOL – The scandal: George W. Bush, self-described “war president,”
did not fulfill his National Guard duty.
30. Iraq: The Case for War
31. Niger Forgeries: Whodunit?
32. In PlameGate
33. Abu Ghraib
34. Guantánamo Bay Torture?
35. Scooter Libby Indicted
36. Yellow Cake
37. Tom DeLay’s Indictment
38. Conviction of republican representative “Duke” Cunningham
39. Terry Schiavo
40. Tax Cuts DURING war
41. U.S. MILITARY ** DEATHS** IN IRAQ: 2,271
42. U.S. MILITARY **WOUNDED** & **MAIMED** IN IRAQ: 47,400
43.IRAQI **CIVILIAN** men, women and
CHILDREN DEAD (MINIMUM): 130,000
30,000 (says dubya 12-12-05)
44.Please feel free to ADD to this list! (not you DUBYA)
45. Haliburton NO-BID contracts (HQ now off-shore, NO TAXES that way)
46. Abramoff scandal
47. Hurrican Katrina relief(?) still waiting
48. Outing a CIA agent (Plame)
49. Michael (Brownie) Brown, FEMA “head” and cronie
50. Willful INVASION of PRIVACY, SPYING on AMERICAN CITIZENS
51. Blatant Disregard for the Constitution of the USA Willful Violation of the Fourth Amendment
52. Blatant failures of the “entitlement organization” the DHS
53. Bin Ladin SITLL at large!
54. ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING, ARTICLE NUMBER TWO IN THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR NIXON
55. SPYING ON AMERICANS (NO WARRANT) Now refereed to as “Terrorists Surveillance Program”
56. ABRAMOFF INDICTED, PLEADS GUILTY
57. OPENING AND READING UNITED STATES MAIL
58. FRIST AND THE S.E.C.
59. SCOOTER LIBBY INDICTED
60. MEDICARE FIASCO
61. The DUBYA administration’s proposal to sell up to 200,000 acres of national forest land.
62. Little Tommy Dale DeLay seated on the DOJ subcommittee to oversee the Abramoff SCANDAL
63. “dr” Billy (quack, quack) Frist and House Speaker Dennis (the bastard) Hastert
engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from
lawsuits, tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the last minute without
the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee
64. DUBYA’S campaign promise to remove mercury from all vaccines (Oct.2004)
65. Bill Frist, Dennis Hassert and Roy Blunt slipping in legislation into the Defense Bill to
admonish vaccine makers from lawsuits (Dec 2005).
66. Republican controlled house leaders slipping in legislation to
protect Eli Lily from lawsuits in PA1.
67. Jeff Gannon, Talon News, White House press corps.
68. DUBYA continues to IGNORE the North Korean Nuclear Armaments
69. The Building of TORTURE compounds in Morocco with American TAX PAYER DOLLARS
70. Cheney “Cover-Up” of shooting his hunting buddy, and
ensuing Heart Attack due to “bird-shot” entering his heart.
71. Congressional INVASION in private medical family matters; Terry Schiavo.
72. NO ARMOR for the troops
73. Accounting of CASH sent to Iraq for “contractors”
74. The SOARING DEFICIT
75. The Bush Administration spent $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars on 137 contracts with
advertising agencies over the past two-and-a-half years, according to a Government Accountability Office
76. CIA “director” Porter Goss warned in an agency-wide e-mail that any officer suspected of leaks could be subject to an
immediate lie detector test (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)”
77. Vice President Cheney disclosed that he has the “power” to declassify
sensitive government information, via “executive order of DUBYA” authority that
could set up a criminal defense for his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
78. Foreign companies, UAE, controlling AMERICAN PORTS! DUBYA “says” he will VETO
any legislation to preempt his insanity.
79. DUBYA “claims”he was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations
at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates
80. DUBYA IGNORES PDB, dated 08-06-01 warning of IMMINENT TERRORIST THREAT,
also IGNORES warning from then NSA, RICE.
81. Defense contractor, Mitchell Wade, admitted that he paid
California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (republican) more than
$1 million in bribes in exchange for millions more in government contracts.
82. The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of
its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair
oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon’s own auditors had identified
more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.
83. VETERANS HEALTH CARE SLASHED by DUBYA’S BUDGET
84. While DUBYA is adamantly against raising “taxes”,
he’s increasingly comfortable with 2007 budget proposal would raise more
than $47 billion in FEES! “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
85. American taxpayers will fork out $500 MILLION during the next
years to fund the “Healthy Marriage Initiative”, a program of the
Department of Health and Human Service’s Administration for Children and Families.
Harriet and Mike McManus are telling us what a healthy marriage really is.
They are founders of Marriage Savers.
The money is part of President Bush’s “deficit-reduction bill”,
which cuts spending on Medicaid, student loan programs and other
vital social programs in which the president apparently has little or
no interest or compassion.
86. A review of a United Arab Emirates-owned company’s plan to take over
operations at key U.S. ports never looked into whether the company had ties
to al Qaeda or other terrorists.
87. The “alleged” criminal investigation of Pat Tillman’s MURDER
conducted by the same group that LIED and COVERED UP his MURDER by “friendly fire”

Again, I would rather take my chances with my neighbor who is trying to kill me than if the whole government is trying to kill me.

As Winston Churchill used to say…”Democracy is the absolutely worst form of government, except for all the OTHER forms of government out there…”

Is Iraq better off now than with Saddam? Yes or no, no invective, no attacks against me.

Are US troops better or worse than the republican guard. Yes or no, no invective, no attacks against me.