Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 3 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
So, if say, 50,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed or wounded, and another 250,000 have had their homes destroyed, that could translate into 150,000 individuals (.5x300,000) who might be trigger pullers themselves or, at a minimum, aid insurgents with shelter, supplies, money or intelligence. (General Casey, the commanding general in Iraq, has estimated one-half of a percent, or 125,000 active opposition).
Then, add to the 150,000 revenge seekers, the 8 million who are viscerally angry at the US because it has invaded their country and made their lives much worse (there would be overlap between the two groups) but are not yet ready to build bombs or become snipers. They might, however, be willing to pay others to do so, or simply provide passive support. Hence, the insurgency has both organized elements (pre-planned Baathist guerrilla warfare, and foreigners), as reflected in the huge underground caches that have been discovered, and a local, spontaneous ad hoc element driven more by anger than ideology.
Caught in an old
game
America is caught in The Chinese Finger Trap, that little flexible woven tube that is given to children as a gag. When told to put their fingers in each end of the tube, they discover that the harder they try to pull out their fingers, the tighter the tube becomes. Similarly, the more the US is drawn into breaking furniture and lives in the Iraqi household, the more angry Iraqis it creates, and the tighter the Iraqi trap becomes. That is what seems to be happening. Iraqi security forces are undoubtedly among those who are angry at the US, but they need to eat too.
The most dangerous weapon America has is the power to offer the Iraqi people a choice about its occupation of Iraq. If the US with
97.3%