[BBKing]

Xaccers has clearly been reading US and UK military press briefings rather than anything particularly accurate. No point refuting each point individually, except to say they're mostly wrong, particularly the one about the fear of the knock at the door, given the level of political assassinations at the moment, often preceded by, er, a knock at the door, and the fact that several hundred people have died violently in Iraq since that posting. Obviously it's a different, better sort of corpse than under Saddam.

Anyway, I was reviving this thread because of Matt D's comments about Uzbekistan - people may have noticed the US and UK supported Stalinist dictatorship there is in a spot of trouble - troops on the street, violence, crackdowns, systematic human rights violations. When other countries in the area (Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Georgia) overthrow Soviet throwback *******s and seek a bit of freedom we support them (the Ukrainian revolution was a carefully stage-managed one using American money, then again, the election-rigging chap on the other side was backed with substantially more cash from Russia) and send our people over to congratulate them.

So how come when it's the much bloodier Uzbekistan situation we 'call for restraint from both sides'. In Ukraine the election was rigged - in Uzbekistan the opposition aren't even allowed to stand in elections and there's no free press and people get boiled alive to make them talk or just because their face doesn't fit.

So what I'm wondering is, if Saddam was so nasty that it's better to bomb his country to bacteria and start a civil war there what's so special about Uzbekistan that we support their government as a 'stable force' and ship terrorist detainees over there to be tortured on our behalf?