liz_marcs: Jeff and Annie in Trobed's bathroom during Remedial Chaos Theory (King_George_Banksy)
liz_marcs ([personal profile] liz_marcs) wrote2007-03-05 10:51 am

Iraq: 101

Via Crooks and Liars:

For those of you who haven't been paying attention...or for those of you who have but needed a nice little primer to help you keep track of what's what, Mother Jones has put up a well-researched and well-sourced primer called Iraq 101.

While not a lot of the information in there is news to me, I tend to get the political parties and who represents whom mixed up. For example, I tend to assign Sunnis to Shiite political parties and Shiites to Sunni political parties, which...yeah...very, very stupid and very, very bad. At least I tend to correctly match the Kurds to their correct political parties.

Even if you think you know all the Playas and all the facts, guaranteed that you'll be learnin' something new in this handy online primer.

The sources section is an especially nice collection of links.

Fellow U.S. citizens, it's been 4 years since we launched an illegal war on Iraq — a country that we not only armed back in the day, but never attacked us and also posed zero threat to our national security.

If you haven't educated yourself on the key facts, it's time to start.

[identity profile] crowgirl13.livejournal.com 2007-03-05 04:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you so much for the link, Liz. I get the various factions mixed-up far too easily... *shakes head at self*

[identity profile] liz-marcs.livejournal.com 2007-03-05 05:05 pm (UTC)(link)
*salutes*

No sweat. I read over it this morning over my bagel and clicked on a few links in the sources. It's definitely a very hand-dandy online guide, methinks, and one that's fairly well referenced.

I tend to get very, very confused with the factions myself. I think the only reason why I keep the Kurds straight is because they tend to use some variant of "Kurd" in their faction name/political party.

[identity profile] jakeexperience.livejournal.com 2007-03-05 11:29 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a funny yet sad story to tell. I sent some of my friends a long essay talking about Muslim beliefs and factions, but I had done was write about Klingons from Star Trek. Throughout the text I had replaced the word "Klingon" with the word "Muslim".

One of my friends picked up on it when I mentioned their ancestral home of Sto-Vo-Kor, but that was it. Everyone else thought I was totally serious about it ... even when I got to the part about the Honor Houses and how if the Muslim High Council disapproved of a trivial House than the very House itself could fall.

[identity profile] jakeexperience.livejournal.com 2007-03-05 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry for the typo above. In all seriousness, I am glad you posted this link because more people need to see this to understand the different factions and the true cost of this ginormous mess. Thank you.