November can't come soon enough.

[vulgarweed]

Not that regime change in the US will make all that much difference, but I sure don't see any improvement ever happening without it.

catbirdgirl has an eyewitness report from Fallujah here. Don't read this if you're feeling fragile or vulnerable right now, but do read it if you feel you need to know.

I see the White House PR machine network news over here is now also trying to paint Spain as giving in to terrorists because they're pulling out. Well, as I understand it, a very overwhelming majority of the Spanish people never supported this caper in the first place, and now that they've quite naturally voted out the government who went to war against their will, the new leader is just doing what he was elected to do. Go him. And tell Tony Blair to start thinking about his retirement.

Comments

[misscam.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting link. Thanks.

80-90% of the Spaniards opposed the war, yes. The previous government wasn't as much voted out for the war as the blatant attempt to use the Madrid bombings for political gain (by insisting it was ETA despite evidence to the contrary).

I don't know how much you're getting in the US about the ugly face of the war, but we're getting a great deal here. And it's not exactly making Europe feel any fonder of Bush and friends (nor is the US stance on Israel and Palestine doing the US any favours). And most importantly, it is making Iraqis angrier. The heavy-handedness of the US could end up with a general Iraqi uprising and then things are just going to go straight to hell.

I just hope the US is not stupid enough to go into Najaf as they have Falluja.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much you're getting in the US about the ugly face of the war, but we're getting a great deal here.

Ha! What do you think?

Lots of somber-toned stories about American soldiers' funerals and lots of daily updates on how many have been killed--but like murasaki99 said, not on how many wounded and certainly nothing about Iraqis. They only report the military's official figures, so you know they're reputable--NOT. Iraqis might as well not exist on most mainstream US coverage. That's horrifying in its own right.

The perception/knowledge gap between the US and Europe seems to be only getting wider, and this doesn't help, not one bit. I do read the BBC site.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Ah. I was rather expecting that to be the case. Bit like how all the Arab world sees is dead Palestinians and all Israel sees is dead Israelis. The thing about war is that there is never a moral high ground. Even during WW2 the Allies did bad, bad things (terrorbombing of Dresden, for one) and that's actually a war that had a clear bad guy. War makes victims and bad guys of everyone in the end.

I've noticed that the US also very quickly claim that Iraqi fighters are just 'thugs', but according to international law, the Iraqis do actually have some rights to take arms against the occupying force, i.e the US and others. Makes me wonder what the US would do if there was a general Iraqi uprising - call them all thungs and foreign fighters?

Yeah, the gap between the US and Europe is widening. But in Europe we don't see this as all bad. We have to some degree been in the shadow of America since WW2, just like Eastern Europe was in the shadow of Soviet (a heavier and nastier shadow, granted). Many here see this as an opportunity for Europe to rise up and be a balancing force against the US. There is a belief here that the US needs someone to balance it. Might be European arrogance, I guess, but there are those within Europe who want this rift. And there are those who don't want it. However, the Shrub is giving all the good cards to those who want the rift. Heck, even al-Quida has noticed Europe's not very fond of the US of A currently.

And hey, Honduras has decided to pull its forces from Iraq too.