sorry going to be politically incorrect!
1. The West is rapidly pulling out of Arab regimes seeing them as bad loses. 
Look at saudi, Yemen and egypt. They are not puppet regimes dancing 
automatically to the US tune.
2. No one seriously believes that there is a real chance of spontaneous 
popular uprisings leading to democratic change in any of those countries. 
Nassers regime, yemen, libya were all v popular yet routinely committed 
appalling acts of violence against there own people, sponsered terroism of 
the worst kind and waged wars freely. As for the hugely popular islamic 
iranian revolution.... say no more.
3. Israel is gulity of gross over-reaction but there is no real evidence 
that should Hamas stop suicide bombings of restaurants in Tel Aviv (some 
chance), that Israel will continue to do the horrible things on the west 
bank. One has to ask what the UK would do if PIRA had done the same in 
London.
4. the treatment of iraqi prisoners was wrong but remember what the soldiers 
had good reason to believe they had captured-islamic/saddam guerillas waging 
a nasty war. Intensive interrogation is standard practice for all NATO 
forces under such circumstances (i've supervised it and undergone it myself 
in training), but what happended was not it. The problem here is that a) it 
was probably inappropriate for the circumstances b) fall in discipline at 
middle-officer rank encouraged abuse c)the people were not professional 
interrogators who would never go to those lengths viewing it as unnecessary 
in practice and wrong in principle (u simply do not need to abuse prisoners 
to get them to cough). the soldiers and particularly the officers must be 
severely punished. Incidentally I suspect the UK soldiers photos were 
genuine.


>From: Ahmad Risk <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: GP-UK <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: When the barbarians came
>Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 22:22:29 +0100
>
>On Mon, 10 May 2004 20:55:02 +0100, David Jobson
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >1.    Prior to the Iraq war Egypt was the greatest benefactor of
> >       USA aid and largesse - in the world not just middle East.
> >       Odd priority?
>
>Second greatest benefactor, after Israel, and still is.  That is why the
>Mubarak regime is silent on the appalling abuse of Iraqi prisoners.  That
>is also why all the autocratic Arab regimes are silent.
>
>That is why the thinking cadres (not the Street) feel betrayed by what
>they believed to be a genuine desire for reform in the MidEast, and
>appalled by the continuing propping up of corrupt regimes by the US and UK.
>
>Risk
>P.S. Starter for a tenner: why did Mosad agents commit an act of terrorism
>in Yanbu (Saudi Arabia) last week, killing a couple of Americans and a
>couple of Brits?

_________________________________________________________________
FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar – get it now! 
http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/