Lawrence, who exactly is Iraq? Is it the Shiites? The Sunnis? The Kurds? It's a good thing you didn't own Enron stock (at least I hope you didn't). Even if you were told the company was going under you'd still hang on to the stock because Ken Lay said all is well ... The fawns are back, running like little loonies. It's a family, mom and two little guys. They're a little bigger now than they were a month ago. I read somewhere that they have turfs of about a square mile per family. In the fall sometimes the males come around by themselves, with the racks. How anybody can want to shoot them is beyond me. We also have wild turkeys that come around in groups of about a dozen. They got chased by the neighbor's dog once and they actually flew out of the way. Otherwise they only walk. I yelled at the dog and she went home, so the turkeys didn't get hurt. I wish the bears would come back. I heard gunshots when they were around, so maybe some moron killed them, even though it's illegal. Stupid dog also chased the smaller bear up a tree. She also killed a groundhog. It was a cute little thing, its little front legs kind of curled. The bunnies are back. We go a few years without any at all and then they're everywhere and then they 're gone again for a few years. Dogs are a lot more trouble than bears. Humans are the most trouble of all. Just look at the M.E. and the melting ice caps. ----- Original Message ----- From: Lawrence Helm To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 7/29/2006 5:24:22 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine Good grief, Irene. Militant Islam is huge. Removing one part of it doesn't necessarily hurt another. You'd need another argument to support that. This isn't a zero sum prospect. For example, if the USMC and the Army were fighting against nation X and you removed the Army from the Battle, would that hurt or help the USMC? In a sense there are less fighters involved and so removing the army can be said to hurt the U.S., but does it hurt the USMC? Not ruddy likely. That is the sense in which I referred to the removal of Saddam as hurting Militant Islam. He was looked up to by many Islamists. He was one of their heroes. He challenged the US and pursued pan-Arabian ambitions. It was a blow to Militant Islam that a major hero, a major force was removed. Was it a blow to Iran? Not necessarily, at least not from their standpoint, but read on. You keep denigrating the US efforts in Iraq using only anti-American sources. Ahmadinejad himself said, when he was head of the Republican guard, that the conquering of Iraq and the possibility of democracy developing there was extremely dangerous for Iran. If democracy caught on in Iraq it was sure to spread and endanger their entire revolution. For that reason Iran has opposed the efforts to inculcate democracy in Iraq, as has Al Quaeda, as have Islamists everywhere, and as have Leftists everywhere. It is a life and death struggle for Militant Islam. They dare not let democracy succeed in Iraq. The suicidal self-destructive views of the Left cause it to oppose democracy in Iraq. They want the US to abandon Iraq so it can revert to some sort of authoritarian rule after a civil war. They want the US out so that militant Islamic organizations can exert greater influence. They want the US out so that they can claim that democracy is a hopeless trick of the West and that only a government like the Islamic Republic in Iran should be emulated. After thinking it over I?ve decided to convert to Irene?s viewpoint and support the Left. Let them win. Let them get the US out of Iraq and Islamism in. Let Iran get atomic weapons. For if the Left gets all it wants then we shall have the ?war war war? that I?ve been hoping for. If on the other hand we were to support democracy in Iraq and stay there until it succeeds then it would be extremely damaging to Islamism, especially Iran and we should probably not have a war because Iran would have to worry about all the Iranians wanting democracy just like the nation next door, and I would miss out on my war war war. How boring! Lawrence