You're a little bit behind the news cycle, nanny. The snipers were there on 1 April. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks called the Iraqi fire from inside the Ali Mosque in Najaf "a detestable example of putting historical sites in danger".
These soldiers were doing a routine foot patrol with no intention of assaulting the mosque. If you are going to take out snipers, you don't saunter up the middle of a street on foot. You approach with the cover of your armored vehicles.
I believe, there is no winning the hearts and minds of these people as a whole and I don't think we have time to do it one at a time. WE have many who have lived in this country for years and still want to do us harm. WE had several who lived, trained and enjoyed the freedoms of this country and they flew aiplanes into buildings and killed 3,000 and intended to kill more. So much for learning to love us.
It is fortunate, nanny, that "Mohammed", the Iraqi that risked his life to save Pfc. Jessica Lynch was not as filled with religious hate and bigotry as you are.
When you refer to "these people", who are you referring to, nanny?
All Arabs? All Muslims? All Iraqis? All Saudis? All white American Hollywood types who pass no opportunity to spread anti-American rhetoric? "Mohammed", who saved PfC Jessica Lynch's life?
You are trying to turn Operation Iraqi Freedom into a religious war. It is not.
The Baathist thugs are secular and have brutally suppressed the Shiite Muslims in Najaf and the rest of southern Iraq. The Baathists even outlawed the traditional calls to prayer and have desecrated and destroyed Shiite mosques. By your logic, we should be on Saddam's side.
If you are going to put religion front and center for every conflict we fight, let's start with the Germans in World War One. They were Christians. So Christian, in fact, that their belt buckles had the motto "Gott mit Uns" ("God is with us") inscribed on them. Since the Germans were mainly either Catholics or Lutherans, maybe Americans should have gone out of their way to desecrate Catholic Churches in France and Belgium. That would have showed those Germans!
The French were Christians, mostly Catholic. How much do they love us now?
There is no doubt that certain radical segments of Islam do their best to spread religious hatred. There is no doubt that certain self-proclaimed "Christians" belonging to the Ku Klux Klan do their best to spread religious hatred too.
However, going out of your way to violate the Shiite religous beliefs of the Saadam-hating Shiite Muslim Iraqis that we are now liberating makes as much sense as having Jews or Catholics go out of their way to desecrate black Southern Baptist Churches in order to take revenge on Ku Klux Klan members who proclaim themselves to be "Christian".
Yes, the great people who saved that soldier are wonderful - and I am grateful to them. But you see, she was there supposedly to save them - and so are thousands of other Americans. But believe me, the sentiment will be, as expressed many times in the articles I have read. "We want Saddam gone - but we don't want you here either."
I repeat we have many, many living here, born here who have tasted freedom and been treated kindly, given jobs, loans, and many things the average American can not get and they still turn on us.
Now don't forget where the 9/11 murderers learned their deadly ability of 'steering an airplane'.
Do you not realize that many of them like the ones who falsely complained about harrassment and those who complain that someone stared at them because they wore a burka, etc., are just using the US and are laughing at us. I don't like being a chump - just goes against the grain.