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opinion

Also in this section:
Bernal, the "MAMIocracy"
Leis, Panama's indigenous comarcas
What they're saying about the Iraq War and the protests against it
Cooper, The United States vs. reporters in Iraq
Armington & Birns, Roger Noriega's sorry Latin American policy legacy
Gutman, Grooming politicians for Satan
Silié, From the Cold War to the War on Terror
Avneri, Likudnik gladiators
Stimson, China's new leader isn't the right man
Sliwa, Freeing Africa's child soldiers
Jackson, Putting campus radicals to the test
Lettieri & Birns, University of Panama's mess gets worse

What they’re saying about the Iraq War and the protests against it

I recognize their good intentions, but their position is wrong. Withdrawing our troops would make the world more dangerous and make America less safe. To leave Iraq now would be to repeat the costly mistakes of the past that led to the attacks of September the 11th, 2001.

US President George W. Bush

We believe we are at a tipping point whereby the anti-war sentiment has now become the majority sentiment.

 Brian Becker - ANSWER coalition

By now it should be clear to Bush administration policymakers that their blunders in Iraq have led to the current situation in which US forces are unable to stamp out a quicksilver insurgency, parts of the country are slipping into a sectarian war between Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites, and the specter of a many-sided civil war looms over the future.

Boston Globe editorial

These groups are not coming to the nation's capital to promote "peace." They are aligned with the planet's most violent despots and killers.

William Hawkins - US Business and Industry Council

They tried to tell me that's not a human being --- that's a soft target.

Iraq veteran Hart Viges

There are those that are outside the political process and some that will never try to enter the political process and you have to deal with those individuals through force of arms. And we are working with the Iraqi people to train up their security forces to address those individuals.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack

This is not an argument about the rights and wrongs of the invasion of Iraq, about neoconservatism, al-Qaeda or the politics of oil. It is about the fate of a people who were promised a bright future and who have seen their country reduced to a battlefield. It is about the responsibility of those who took it upon themselves to offer democracy and have delivered barely a shadow of it.

The Sunday Times (London) editorial

All the dynamics are pulling the country apart…. It will draw the countries of the region into conflict and that is the main worry of all the neighbors of Iraq.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal

This doesn't happen often, but I must congratulate President Bush for standing firm. I hope he sticks to this position and doesn't cave in leading up to the 2006 midterms.

Columnist Michael Stickings

Silencing Cindy Sheehan in Union Square should show us all what we are really up against. Over 1,900 US troops have died thus far in Iraq, not to mention countless civilians. And for what? The NYPD and government officials don't want us to ask that important question, which means we have to be even more vigilant in our efforts to expose Bush's war for the fraud that it is.

Columnist Joshua Frank

We've had it with these radicals on the Left and their "poster girl" Cindy Sheehan, who are just encouraging the terrorists, endangering our men and women in uniform, and lowering troop morale with their antics.

William Greene - RightMarch.com

This is not about politics. This is not about Republican or Democrat. This is about right and wrong.

Reverend Al Sharpton

If you're going to have protesters walking back and forth in front of you, and people are driving by honking, and some people are yelling obscenities at the protesters, it's not an environment you'd want to take your kids to.

South Pasadena, CA city council member Mike Ten (R)

We need to get out of Iraq. Not just the Brits, but the entire Western force.

British Army Colonel Tim Collins

If I were to die in Iraq, I wouldn't want my parents to be like Cindy Sheehan.

US Army National Guard Specialist Julie McManus

Right or wrong? Essential or idiotic? When it comes to the war against Iraq, Americans only agree about one thing: it is no longer interesting. And so, pro or con, it is lost all the same.

Columnist Ted Rall

If we withdrew tomorrow, there would be a bloodbath in Iraq. We can't do that.

US Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND)

Enough is enough. It is now time, once again, for the British people to step forward into the streets and insist that this time we will not be ignored.

Lindsey German - Stop the War Coalition

The political protesters of the 60s didn't end their war and neither will this new generation. They will, however, achieve the same result --- they will devastate troop morale.

Jim Mueller - Veterans of Foreign Wars

Make levees, not war

Sign at the Washington antiwar march

Iraq, which we invaded and occupied supposedly in order to keep down the Islamist radical insurgencies behind 9/11, has become the training center for Islamists. And every day that American troops are there, "occupying" Arab lands, the insurgents only gain more angry adherents.

Columnist Georgie Anne Geyer

The Bush administration needs to face the reality that a growing number of Americans are becoming skeptical of our efforts, partly because they do not have the benefit of seeing the entire picture. No one I talked to during my recent trip believes we will lose the war on the ground in Iraq; it's here at home that they are concerned about.

US Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA)

How Many Lives Per Gallon?

Sign at antiwar protest in San Francisco

Honor those who serve

Banner of a counter-protester in Seattle

Withdrawal will not embolden the terrorists, as Bush says, any more than they already are. Terrorists are emboldened by Bush’s stubbornness and obsession with preserving his image as a war president. They are emboldened by an administration that fought so desperately to get us into this war with lies and now refuses to acknowledge the truth of its failures. They are emboldened by an administration willing to throw huge amounts of the national treasure at an inevitably failing effort.

Columnist Joel Wendland

Instead of winning friends for America, it has poisoned our relations with many countries in the Mideast and the Muslim world.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

There were no fascists against the Vietnam war but every fascist group is against the war in Iraq.

Writer Christopher Hitchens

The war and occupation have brought neither democracy nor peace to Iraq. We have made life harder and far more dangerous for the population of that country.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone