[link|http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=EF727E9B-D435-4041-BE0A9EE260CFEB14|An example of why they are never ever going to run the world.]

Excerpt:

The United Nations has reduced its international staff in Iraq to less than 50 because of security concerns.

Speaking to reporters in New York Monday, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard did not provide an exact number of foreign U.N. workers for security reasons. But he said the size of foreign staff in Iraq will continue to fluctuate.

The United Nations had more than 600 staff in Iraq before the August 19 bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad. The suicide car bomb attack killed 22 people, including the head of the U.N. mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

That attack prompted U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to order the staff cut back. He ordered a further cut back last week following another suicide bombing near Baghdad's U.N. office.

I say:

First they turn down protection from us, while using local Baathists, then they get bombed, now they cut and run while trying to put the best face on it. What a class act.

[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=98621|So many resolutions, so little resolve.]

I already pointed out above that we offered them security and they turned us down.

Or is your position that we should have forced it upon them? `Coz if you're gonna take that position, you have no right to complain when we force our security on others in the future. In other words, you've just argued for a more aggressive form of American hegemony.

You really should learn to read for comprehension.

[link|http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/004154.php|Once again, since you conveniently forget]

Excerpt:

At the beginning of the Iraq War, an accidental helipcopter crash killed several American soldiers. A general said about the accident: "What we do is dangerous. Even in peacetime." Indeed, year in and year out, an average of one to two American soldiers die every day, during peacetime, as a result of accidents. This casualty rate has never attracted any public attention. Accidental deaths in peacetime never make headlines, notwithstanding their relative frequency.

There have been 53 combat deaths in Iraq in the 90-plus days since May 1--roughly one every other day, about half the Army's accidental death rate during peacetime. Yet every one of these deaths has been front-page news. Why?

Not because of the strategic significance of this casualty rate, which is zero--just as the roughly equal rate of accidental deaths of troops in Iraq has no impact on the strategic situation there. And not because such an intense focus on near-zero casualty rates is a standard staple of war reporting. Past wars have, needless to say, generated vastly greater casualty rates. At the height of the Vietnam war, to which liberals longingly compare Iraq, an average of 40 American servicemen died each day--75 times the current rate in Iraq--and fatalities in World Wars I and II were far greater still. Yet in none of these conflicts was each casualty considered front-page news.