The right wing brain exists in Flatland. It cannot perceive a third dimension. These statements about what the left/liberals think reveal the distortions their narrow perception imposes, not only on their understanding of left/liberal views, but also on the world itself.

Here the third dimension is social and political institutions. The right cannot grasp that our actions may be affected by the structures of a society.

For the right, the world is composed of individuals who are moral or they are not. If they are moral, they will prosper; if they are not, it's ok to kill them when they get in our way. (Because, you see, then they are obstructing our unquestionably moral actions.)

Actually, political scientist Shawn Rosenberg conducted some experiments that showed cognitive limitations in conservatives. Asked to analyze the periodicity of a pendulum's swing, they couldn't reach the idea of holding one factor constant while systematically shifting the value of another to decompose their effects. This was back in the 80s; for some reason it hasn't been well-publicized.

That said, I will never be an apologist for the barbarous behavior of the warring factions in that country. If we've learned nothing else from America's ill-conceived invasion, it's that long-standing, seething hatred between Iraqis existed for a very long time, literally hundreds of years, and was kept in check only by the Ottoman Empire, France and England and later a homegrown totalitarian dictator.

I have been reading military blogs since right after 9/11 and I have found one in particular that has extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful posters who are officers, retired officers and assorted spooks, civilians and the occasional NCO.

http://www.intel-dump.com/

According to the posters at Intel-Dump, the Iraqis were very forbearing after the initial invasion and did not really start fighting each other until it became clear that the US occupation was venally incompetent and FUBARed everything it touched.

Just as a tiny example of the sheer ineptitude of the occupation, below is an image that I grabbed of the title screen of the Coalition Provisional Authority's web site early on in the occupation:

http://i17.tinypic.com/2qvdoic.jpg

I think this speaks for itself.

I'll take Western Enlightenment ideals over Medieval Muslim ideals any day. And, yes, for all its faults, Western culture is by most objective measures less oppressive and more conducive to human health, security and happiness than Middle Eastern cultures.

-- Tim W. Brown

And that is why you fail.

Damn, the flamers are pouring extra gasoline into the fuel tanks of their flame throwers today!

To those who responded negatively to my earlier post let me just say that I resent being called a racist. It's not racist to recognize thuggery, brutality and murderousness in other humans of whatever culture, my own included. I'm appalled by the scale and intensity of the violence occurring in Iraq, whether committed by Sunni, Shiite, Al Qaeda or the U.S. military.

As for it being very "white" of me to criticize the barbarity going on, I would answer that being white is a pretty distant fifth or sixth in how I identify myself. I would start with Global Citizen, followed by American, followed by vocational and geographical characteristics. I'm fortunate to belong to a culture that on paper at least is blind to color, religious belief and ethnicity. The same cannot be said of a single Middle Eastern country, including Israel (though I much prefer Israel's belief system over, say, Saudi Arabia's).

Certainly, Europe and America have done many terrible things in the past and continue to do them in the present. Yet for close to a thousand years Europe and America have tried with greater and lesser success to transcend humankind's naturally barbarous state by attempting to follow the humane ideals expressed in the Magna Carta, English Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Declaration of the Rights of Man, U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. I'm profoundly bothered that the government acting in my name is flouting the ideals contained in these documents through its actions in Iraq.

That said, I will never be an apologist for the barbarous behavior of the warring factions in that country. If we've learned nothing else from America's ill-conceived invasion, it's that long-standing, seething hatred between Iraqis existed for a very long time, literally hundreds of years, and was kept in check only by the Ottoman Empire, France and England and later a homegrown totalitarian dictator. Had the U.S. not invaded and Saddam Hussein died a natural death a decade or two in the future, the same unfathomable violence would have erupted then rather than now -- I sincerely doubt that Uday and Qusay would have kept the country together; they likely would have turned against each other. This is because of the tribalism, sectarianism and dysfunctional culture that Iraqis have historically clung to well before a nation called Iraq ever existed.

I'll take Western Enlightenment ideals over Medieval Muslim ideals any day. And, yes, for all its faults, Western culture is by most objective measures less oppressive and more conducive to human health, security and happiness than Middle Eastern cultures.

It's a matter of degree, and shooter's workin' on his GED. Welcome to Mall Wart.

I get all over LOL when I hear that bentonite, a very fine grained clay of many uses, was used only by the Iraqis as a dispersant for bioweapon-grade anthrax. It is truly a natural for the purpose. It also is widely available as a mineral supplement at health food stores. Its discovery and original source, though, is rather suspicious. From the Wikipedia:

The absorbent clay was given the name bentonite by an American geologist sometime after its discovery in about 1890 - after the Benton Formation (a geological stratum, at one time Fort Benton) in eastern Wyoming's Rock Creek area. Other modern discoveries include montmorillonite discovered in 1847 in Montmorillon in the Vienne prefecture of France, in Poitou-Charentes, South of the Loire Valley.

Most high grade commercial sodium bentonite mined in the United States comes from the area between the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Big Horn Basin of Montana. Sodium bentonite is also mined in the southwestern United States, in Greece and in other regions of the world. Calcium bentonite is mined in the Great Plains, Central Mountains and south eastern regions of the United States. Supposedly the world's largest current source of bentonite is Chongzuo in China's Guangxi province.

/

Wyoming...hmmm. But the French...the Chinese!

I first came to know it in the course of investigations into methods of producing fake Chinese antiquities. This was before 9/11, of course. Have to laugh if I weren't crying.