Congratulations for managing to do what you were accusing me of doing, as you accused me of it! That's really a new level for you...Gil Hamilton wrote: I don't recall saying who the people in question the reporters talked to or even who the source was, yet you managed to infer that they had weren't qualified and only spoke to a select few English speaking individuals when I said Iraqi people. You know, Marina, the Amazing Randi is offering alot of money for people with psychic powers and with your Jean Grey-like mind reading abilities, you could make a mint.
Anyway, since you are clearly more qualified and have many more first hand experiences than people who have actually gone to Iraq, and thus have your finger on the pulse of the Iraqi street, why don't you tell us then what Joe Q. Basra thinks of America and an American occupation as compared to a UN one? Not second hand accounts from "experts", since people who have gone over there obviously don't know a thing about what they are talking about, but rather from your vast (and I mean vast) personal experience with the Iraqi people.
I stated one thing--that I wondered if these so-called "experts" even knew Arabic. A legitimate question; it is a hard language to learn (nearly as complex as Chinese), and the average "expert", who in this case is probably a news-service pundit, is about as likely to know it as you or I am, IE, not very.
I then stated that the average person in Iraq who knows English is not representative of the whole population. Considering the official language is Arabic and English was the old colonial language, used mostly by the upper elite for trade and bureaucratic purposes, this is a bit obvious.
Now, considering your "experts" are people who, so-far, exist entirely based on YOUR word alone and without any backing whatsoever except for your reputation, I see nothing wrong in those statements. Perhaps you should care to tell us who they are, and where they learned Arabic, and why my statements are inaccurate if they did not?