When the troops are riding around in armored vehicles, live in isolated, heavily guarded camps, and there is a "Green Zone" housing an occupiers headquarters as well as a puppet government, the situation is lost.

It is not liberators who can shoot up any Iraqi at will with no consequences most of the time, who can torture and maim at will without being subject to law except at the whim of the occupier. It is not respectful liberators who employ civilians who can and do shoot up the oppressed natives without any accountability.

It is not loved liberators who have to visit secretively, who are afraid to venture where there isn't an overwhelming amount of firepower.

By any standard it's a brutal occupation, worthy of the most heinous regimes of the 20th century.

That's completely obvious. That it is more peaceful now than before is acknowledged to be because of their temporary cessation of hostilities and the progress toward ethnic cleansing.

Please touch base with reality sometime. You haven't since before this invasion. And, I realize, it's not going to happen now.

Arf