<Face it. The average Iraqi ain't that miserable, the average Russian wasn't that miserable.

I'd love to see you try to sell that to some old Russian immigrant. I'd buy a ticket to see it. Apparently, this is why inhabitants of totalitarian countries streamed out of there like lemmings when the death barriers designed to keep them in finally fell.

For that matter, most slaves in the Deep South were quite well treated. Just like lions in the zoo live longer and healthier lives than those on the plains. But I don't think that's the real point, is it?

The picture of the US the ROW sees is one which imprisons it's own citizens without representation or charges and shoots the citizens of other countries at will and without provocation. That's their propaganda. As with all of it there's an element of truth.



And you and I both know that it's a relatively small percentage of people to whom those conditions are applied.



I couldn't give a rat's ass about what ignorant people around the world are thinking. A huge number of Arabs think the Israelis knocked down the World Trade Center. I can't help that either.

At last count, I think a grand total of two American citizens are being imprisoned under special wartime conditions. That IS a relatively small percentage. And Padilla is being allowed access to legal counsel now, so does that make it just one?

What happens if those Canadians, people with the courage of their convictions, people who will put themselves on the line rather than just talk about it, are in a hospital with a big Red Crescent which is bombed by the US? The outrage would be justifiable. And much more effective because someone who looks and dresses like us would have been involved.

This is, of course, exactly what Saddam has in mind. Five will get you ten he blows up the hospital himself and blames it on us.

Kinda admire their guts. Without people like them it would still be "separate but equal", with all the inequality that created. And which the conservatives loved.

Never said they didn't have guts. I said they were ignorant. They've got courage like the Lion, and heart like the Woodman. All that's missing is the brains. Ignorant people with courage make GREAT cannon fodder.

As for the "separate but equal" crack, the guy standing in the schoolhouse doorway with an axe handle was a Democrat, as were almost all the southern politicians fighting against integration, but I think I've beaten that horse to death a long time ago. It's worth noting, just as a non-partisan aside, that just under two-thirds of the whites who participated in the 1964 Freedom Rides into the Deep South were Jewish. The reward for this has been rampant anti-Jewish rhetoric from current black "leaders." The history of civil rights in America has been largely rewritten by the Left.