U.S. losing hearts and minds of Baghdad Shi'ites

Reuters via msnbc ^ | August 16, 2003 | Andrew Cawthorne

[PISANO]

Pacification may become necessary!! Ungrateful bas...ds!

[PISANO]

What I remember is that the administration was very vague about how long the US would stay in Iraq

I believe the administration was quite clear. They repeated over and over ad nauseum...... "We will stay as long as necessary and NOT one moment longer."

[EvilOverlord]

I believe the administration was quite clear. They repeated over and over ad nauseum...... "We will stay as long as necessary and NOT one moment longer."

I regard this as deliberate vagueness, since they did not explicitly set expectations for a timeframe (you know...days, weeks, months, years).

This was probably the right thing to do at the time, since there are a ton of groups (including the exiled Iraqis) who would have gone nuts if the President had said at the outset that we would be occupying Iraq for years.

But, as I said before, anyone with any sense knew that this was a long term thing.

[F16Fighter]

Now they face daily protests from among the two million residents as growing resentment at the occupation turned into open fury when a helicopter appeared to try to knock off a religious flag on Wednesday.

Notice the distortion of context as Reuters hopes its readers will "see" this blurb as "protests from among the two million residents."