How can AQ, which represents a radical branch of the Sunni Sect

[WCGreen]

of Islam, find Safe Haven in Iraq when the Sunni's in Iraq don't want them and the Shi'ite, sworn enemies of the AQ group, dominate the political landscape in Iraq...

Anyone with half a brain realizes that AQ was only able to gather a foothold in Afghanistan because they were the natural military extension of Radical Fundamentalist Islam as manifested by the Taliban...

Where did AQ go to find refuge once Afghanistan became too hot to hold after 9/11...

In the Taliban sympathizing radical fundamentalist territory of Pakistan...

There is a pattern here folks...

Iraq has had a strong taste of secularism and I can't see that whole swaths of Iraqi territory would systematically reject, I don't know, say electricity and water, the 20th century...

AQ's tenuous foothold in Iraq is tolerated because they are fighting back at the American Forces...

Time and time again, when the American's leave the area, the local population rejects AQ...

In other words, Iraqi's would rather embrace the 21st century instead of turning back the clock 800 years...

That's my two cents...

[wtmusic]

1. Making far too much sense there WC nt

[Kagemusha]

2. Excuse me but, they lost electricity and water long before AQ in Iraq

Maybe those things are part of the reason why they have shown surprising toleration for such extremists. And besides that, you do recall vaguely that the country is under foreign occupation and is run by a Shiite government completely dead to their needs?

[WCGreen]

5. They were use to utilities when Saddam was running the show...

This is about before and after...

The before being Saddam and the after being when we leave...

That's the talking point of the Bush apologists, that Iraq would become a safe haven for AQ if we left...

The people saw what craziness AQ and the Taliban perpetrated on the Afghanistan people and they don't want any part of that...

Again, this is before the US invaded and after we will be gone...

[Kagemusha]

7. Um ok. Yes, you're right, if we all completely ignore the present & last 4 years

I don't see the point of ignoring all that, but yes, if we do, your argument is completely correct...

[applegrove]

3. You are right that AQ was not popular in the ME before 9/11. And they will not

be popular again in the ME as soon as the war in Iraq is over.

[Poiuyt]

4. Iraq has had a strong taste of secularism, but Iraq is mostly Shia, which is very religious

I see it going more the way Iran is.

I think you're right about al Qeada being rejected after we leave.

[WCGreen]

6. It seems to me in Iran, the fundamentalists are loosing their grip

on the people in the street...

It seems much more secular than it was after the original Ayatollah took power...