The American Spectator

They know which doctors aren’t cutting it but to nothing police their own. As a result, the insurance companies passed the risk among them all and now they want a bailout by federal legislatures.

Again, accountability is thrown out the window for a government approach. That’s sad.
— Greg Barnard
Franklin, TN

THE VIEW FROM MT. BLANK
Re: “The Shiites’ Winning Picture” in Wlady’s Corner (4/24):

Before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, you could watch any number of serious politicians, historians and media people in European TV panel discussions and they all were warning about the obvious risks of removing the Saddam regime without proper international preparation. In the USA, you could also hear warning voices, but they were smeared over by the “Axis of Evil” crap.

Now that neo-conservatives are rejoicing their victory, it is time to have a cold look at the preliminary results:

With high efficiency, secular Iraq has been wiped out, the civil records of an entire nation annihilated (apart from the oil ministry’s files).

The cultural memory and national treasures of Iraq — unique in the world, preserved throughout many thousand years against other invaders — bombed, looted, destroyed completely with more success than the Taliban had in Afghanistan. Libraries, musea, everything.

The Islamic infrastructure carefully kept intact and spared from any “degradation”.

A country awash with arms of all sorts, a giveaway supermarket for any criminal gang or potential terrorist group. You don’t need to register your rocket-propelled anti-tank weapon, just pick it up, please, and take it home so the kids don’t play with it.

Thousands of common families left without their men who were poor enough to be pressed into the ditches for “cannon fodder”.

So what do you get:

An Islamic nation falling back into medieval times spiritually. Whoever believes that you can build a democracy worthy of its name with 60% of a people that revels in beating their backs with chains and cutting their bodies until the blood streams all over, is an ignorant fool.

A Kurdish faction, living much closer to modern times, striving secretly for an independent state after so many years of oppression. (And why shouldn’t they? They can’t live in a state based on the Sharia). A dangerous conflict with the Turks on the horizon.

A Sunni faction sponsored by the Saudis who are not a shining example of democracy either.

A country polluted with war chemicals, littered with cluster bombs and the like that will, long after peace is declared, maim and damage the population.

As I said: the French, the Germans, the Russians, many others warned in time. The neo-conservative Americans in their superiority mania were not willing to listen. They are going to pay the price.
— Kurt Schori
Switzerland