Perhaps we should have exchanged him for Prisoner X, but you know how that ended: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ben_Zygier This guy is still available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu or, perhaps this guy ... http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.576170
quite the basketball family which involved the Middle East... http://espn.go.com/new-york/nba/sto...warriors-steve-kerr-tough-enough-nba-coaching
thanks for this...fascinating. In more sad news - http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlin...sudan-wants-to-hang-for-marrying-a-christian/
More middle eastern news: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-27408357 My thoughts are with all affected
More western Wales news, it seems. Surprised there wasn't an issue over unsupervised swimming/bathing: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-20169580
So Mosul has fallen to the ISIL. Competence isn't a charactristic of the Iraqi army. Quite ironic if the end result of the Iraq war is an AQ government in Iraq. http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/10/world/meast/iraq-violence/
Thankfully nobody drew a picture of their prophet or the death threats would be flying and rioting would be taking place....
Yes, I read more about ISIL and they don't have the strength to take non Sunni areas. Could be back to a de facto partition if the Iraqi army cannot retake the ISIL areas.
This is where we are today, after this insane Iraqi intervention, costing 4500 American lives, ten of thousands of Iraqis and a couple of trillion dollars later...Nice work & mission accomplished..Way to go, neocons! The extent of the Iraqi army's defeat at the hands of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) became clear on Wednesday when officials in Baghdad conceded that insurgents had stripped the main army base in the northern city of Mosul of weapons, released hundreds of prisoners from the city's jails and may have seized up to $480m in banknotes from the city's banks. Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers - roughly 30,000 men - simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/mosul-isis-gunmen-middle-east-states
Iran has reportedly sent Quds battalions to Iraq, so that will give the govt/shia some effective forces to counter ISIS.
It's quite embarrassing how weak the Iraqi army is (the US training obviously didn't work) ... it seems that without US & Iranian support for the Maliki government, the Sunni extremists from ISI would have an easy game. I fear the same scenario for Aghanistan (replace ISIS with Taliban) after all foreign forces had left the country.
Here is a story about the equipment the ISIS captured in/near Mosul. Lots of Humvees and some Blackhawks. But they have to find someone that can fly the Blackhawks. Maybe we trained some Sunnis to fly them when we were building up Iraq's army. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...ed-in-iraq-and-what-theyre-doing-to-claim-it/
This is what happens when you invade a country occupy it, kill hundreds of thousands of people ,create a power vacuum ,install a puppet sectarian government just to suck the resources dry just it benefit yourself and your cronies in the military-industrial complex. All based on lies of course. Iraq and the aftermath is probably geopolitically worse then Vietnam at least there you had a stable united government. What's funny is all the neocons kristol, McCain, heritage foundation, pearl, feith, wolfowitz, Cheney have the nerve to say we need to go In There and do something and that it's Obama fault for pulling out! We truly live in the world of the matrix.
Remember there is no compulsion in religion. Support for sharia law in 2012. 74% support in Egypt, 85% would execute those who leave Islam http://t.co/gNAp2nlRPx pic.twitter.com/tKEopgGWH6— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 28, 2014
So from the graphic, we can conclude that the closer your government are as an ally to the USA the less liberal you are in your views.
Yes, the US-Palestinian alliance is well known. Meanwhile, the US and Turkey have been to the brink of war dozens of times. And remember that time we bombed Kosovo to protect Serbians? Sarcasm might not work with you, given your proclivity to pursue the narrative to any degree, but for the time being it's the strategy I'll work with.
As Brummie said, plus yes the only reason Afghanistan and Pakistan are so high on the list is because they are allies with the USA. I am sure if the Taliban where in control of both countries the people would feel way more liberal.
Turkey's a rather massive exception to that, no? I mean, relations have cooled, but they're still a NATO partner and the US has helped Turkey deal with the Syrian problem.
The jump in opinions comes from Iraq and above. Of those countries, the US has taken the side of those oppressing the people (whether it is their elites as in Egypt, Pakistan or Afghanistan) or their enemies (such as israel). Is it really a surprise that in countries with a religious population where the people are disenfranchised through the propping up of people of another religion, their religious views are less cosmopolitan? I find the figures about execution of apostates to be disappointing but not surprising. The conquest of the Middle East outside the Jezira would not have occurred if apostates would have to be killed. Killing of apostates is only mandated where they actively commit treason against the state and do not repent. The treatment of the tribes who apostatised in the Ridda Wars bear this out. On a related tangent, I would actually be interested to see what the views are in Iran, where US influence is minimal. A comparison of Iran and Iraq, for instance, would be interesting. I doubt there's a big difference tbh.
No Iran, no Saudi Arabia (Gulf states), no India (one of the largest muslim populations), no Bangladesh. Now they I look at it, it is not an all encompassing sample. I guess than in Iraq we could see a difference between Shia and Sunni, one used to oppress the other and not this has reversed. I wonder if the views regarding sharia law and killing people that convert changed.