re: 4 donhoop: douglas wood
Sorry, banjar, You need to read my post again. Stay back after school, go to the library, take a dictionary with you and sit quietly and read it. You'll find that a) I went through all your points, including the points in the interview with Linsday/Eleanor Hall. b) What you see as "rebuilding Iraq" is certainly not what the Iraqis see: I mean of course the Iraqis who want the foreigners -all foreigners- out, including the Kurds, so that they, the REAL Iraqis can begin the rebuilding. c) The longer the occupation takes, the worse Iraq becomes, as a city, as an economic viability, and as a "Democratic" state and the greater number of people are sacrificed for the sake of this capitulation (as they would have it) to the invaders. Iraq had a mighty culture once, hijacked by bloody-minded, oil-minded Imperialists, using house arabs like Hussein, now Kazai and Musharaf. That culture has been destroyed and, since culture=identity, everyone in that country (including the betrayers) loses his/her identity. d) If you're still determined to think that Douglas Wood was there on a benevolent mission, then you're at the very least naive.
So far as Corby is concerned, again you introduce material which has nothing to do with this particular case. Things often vary when one compares the general with the specific. One can say that the Indo legal system is "Generally" good but in Corby's "Specific" case it has failed. I don't know why, exactly but I can make certain observations which I've listed in my previous post.
What, if anything UNITES these two cases of Wood and Corby is the utter vulgarity and manifest disrespect the foreigners have for Islam, the religion of both countries where these two hostages are held. Shoving their most respected book down a toilet shows a hatred, as well as a lack of wisdom beyond belief. I can see a great many outraged muslims who would yell, in the same fashion as other fundamentalists, "death to America!" Personally, I don't care for any religious books but I do understand the value of a book in which one has placed a great deal of value and from which one derives a great deal of knowledge and spiritual comfort; one which identifies him as a part of (in his/her mind) a wise and benign group, much loved by someone whom they call God.
With all of this, I'm not shouting, "Death to Wood" or "Freedom to Corby" or "Death to America!" But I am shouting for an insistence to be given a clearer view of what is going on, in all these cases.
