For the record, Jason, I truly hope Iraq and Afghanistan do get to enjoy freedom and democracy.

But at this point it's difficult indeed to envision when we can't get anything approaching the truth from our leaders and our media.
Right now it looks like we are fed some fantasy of best-case interpretations of **some** of the things that are going on in those two places. Worse, it looks like our leaders are setting their policies based on those same factors.
What we're being repeatedly told is not jivving with the state of affairs and the rate of progress.



>What you're describing is horrific indeed... but I'm hard pressed to find an example of a bloodless, painless, quick, and easy revolution. This shot at freedom is going to be a hard fought and long battle, both internally (history has taught us that some revolutions are followed by a civil war) and against external forces that want nothing more than to see this fail.
>
>Personally, I'm rallying for them and think that the seemingly innate human desire to be free can overcome these obstacles. This is an historic time. We're watching while two countries take steps toward freedom. Who would have thought that in 1988 we were less than 20 years away from the Berlin wall coming down, the breakup of the USSR, and Afghanistan(!) and Iraq becoming free.
>
>While the situation looks tenuous at times, I don't feel it's even remotely lost.
>
>>That's too 'easy' a dismissal though, Jason, at least in my opinion.
>>The country has a history that was entirely discounted.
>>The fact that 3 large separate groups inhabit the country and the Kurds had already been making noise about a separate state was also ignored.
>>The rampage of looting that followed the demise of Saddam made whatever infrastructure was left unuseable.
>>
>>It's also gotta be awfully hard to concentrate on "my shot at freedom and democracy" when bombs are blasting everywhere and people are being gathered up and shot/beheaded and you have no running water and electricity is sparse at best and you can't find work and your family is starving and the price of everything is way up.
>>
>>Then there's the oil situation. I still can't fathom how it was that Saddam was able to ship a few million barrels a day with the supposedly antiquated facilities that were found yet virtually no oil is coming from Iraq today.
>>Has the smell of a get-richer-quicker scheme by Halliburton to me, 'modernizing' the oil processing facilities.
>>
>>My view is that the Iraqis **could** have had a reasonable shot at freedom and democracy but the mission was botched so badly that they have no chance now.