swhitebull - EXCELLENT READING, especially the RAND report. MUST READ! Affirm your last! I'll tackle the Full Rand Report later. However the Report Summary, and Dr. Pipes review of Cheryl Benard's thesis(linked below), describes a promising model for action. IMO, the one underused weapon(in addition to TacNukes) in the civilized West's psychological battle against the Islamists at home & abroad, has been our lukewarm attacks on the overt male chauvanistic brutality used on muslim women & children. It is those aspects of fundamentalist/traditionalist Islam which need to be brought under relentless fire. Here is where we(and American Women especially) need to become more proactive. The battering of those defenseless family/tribe members is the rotten core of Islam. It is that cruelty which perpetuates the inculcation of a sick male dominance and lust for submissive victims. A Stockholm syndrome on steroids! Thanks for the report SW, hope to find that it addresses this Victim/Prisoner Theory in some detail. Regards, OW P.S. Read the extract/news release here: http://www.rand.org/news/press.04/03.18.html Downloaded the Report (88 page PDF) here: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1716/

Hmmm, something ate my homework! What I posted was an 'Affirm' to SW's message, and provided some hotlinks to the Rand Report. Also, threw in my .02 on the role of victimization of women & children under the Islamic scheme. And how the West should use it as a PsychOps weapon for countering the Islao-Fascists PR campaign in the US and elsewhere. OW

Here's the Rand Corp link: http://wwwrand.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1716/ swhitebull

bandeedo-what your seeing is the remnants of saddamns secret police,fayadeen etc..most iraqis are just like us in that they just want a chance to live their lives in prosperity and peace.iraq is unique amongst arab nations cus of their history and education.

I agree in principle, Dudley, but the problem is that the peaceful Iraqis have to stand up and be counted, just like the moderate Palestinians will have to do if their cause is ever to gain legitimacy. Unlike the moderates in Jericho, moderates in Iraq don't have to worry about Hamas beheading them if they say something they don't like. They *do* have to worry about being blown up by fedayeen, but that problem is decreasing. Unfortunately, it seems that these moderate Iraqis right now are either too busy keeping their heads down for fear of backing the wrong horse (they've been burned before), or just because they want someone else to do it for them. The Kurds are an exception, which is why my most radical solution of pulling out of Iraq involves pulling Coalition soldiers back to Kurd territory, and letting the Shiite and Sunni hotheads murder each other to their heart's content. And maybe suspending aid shipments "for security reasons." Maybe if these people get tired of their heroic "cousins" shooting them and start getting hungry, they'll remember who tried to restore law and order and sent them aid shipments. Of course, we'll be condemned as horrible, evil, fascist, etc., but that's about par for the course these days anyway. In the meantime, I'm enough of an optimist to hope things smooth out. Fallujah is paying a price for what happened a week ago. (The inhabitants are living in tents? Aww, poor creatures. Guess you shouldn't have drug those bodies through the street, huh? Let's see if Pavlov's lesson sinks in this time.) If we can settle Sadr's hash in the next few days, his bunch will go the way of the last Mahdi Army, though I suppose it's too much to hope that they'll charge tanks with the same suicidal aplomb as their ancestors charged Maxim-armed British infantry squares.

Thanks swhitebull but that link seems blocked, maybe this link to the extract/nes release will work? If so scroll 1/2 way down for the hotlink to the Full PDF Report - 88 pages http://www.rand.org/news/press.04/03.18.html

Try this, it's a PDF file: http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1716/MR1716.sum.pdf swhitebull - last try

its medhi the mahdi army was in the Sudan

According to MSN, Sadr's bunch is called al-Mahdi, which makes sense if he's setting himself up as some defender of Islam.