Will someone please explain to me what this phrase actually means?(second sentence, last paragraph)

"But while we're liberating their country and spreading democracy there..."

Is this an ironic turn of phrase or do the editors of the Seattle PI believe this nonsense?

I see it as cowardly truth-avoidance.

Keen observation liam. I believe the answer to your question is that the editor of this article has swallowed so much propaganda that they have internalized the language. This person is trying to climb their way up the corporate ladder and they know what and what not to say. They self-edit based on what they know will not bring them any further questioning. It's a legitimate subject but can't begin to be addressed until the war stops and some sort of normalcy returns to their daily lives.
Hoa binh

liam & namvet67, universally, the "voice" of the mainstream editorial is very calm and criticism is veiled and tepid.

it's an exercise in ridiculous bourgeois decorum. how are you supposed to describe 1.26 million dead children and millions of lives ruined? what voice can reach that level of madness?

I think the line is written with a hint of irony.
So what is the normal outlook and upbringing, anyway?
Of the radical islamists in desperately poor states that have nowhere to turn to make a decent living?

In states that have massive numbers of conversion islam in their conditions of deriliction. Islam is shown as the way out. Of course there is darfur.

What is the normal outlook and upbringing of the millions of white christian kids in this country who see a colored person and scowl?

What is the constant traumatic effect of the kids who endure the effects of this kind of behaviour from other kids? Are there no broken angry adults coming from here?

When I realize the scope, the sheer magnitude, of this crime of invasion and plunder, how it's destroyed a whole generation, I can only hope that Bush et al will some day be punished. I think as the years go by and scale of it is grasped, there will be a stronger and stronger call for that. People say, look at Nixon and Kissenger, that both will likely have lived out there days without retribution. But remember that culpability for Vietnam was spread between three administrations. Iraq is owned and operated by Bush alone.

A hint of irony? Try a bitter sarcasm. Perhaps the author should have stopped hinting so much and bluntly spell it out with the phrase in quotes. "...while we are liberating".

Children have always paid before and long lasting after the wars heavy price. And all because thier fathers think war is the answer to lasting peace. It's called adult logical thinking?

As a good all-American GI-Joe-toting, war-games and gun-toys-playing young lad, I devoured every kiddie book on war and its machinery that I had access to in my grammar school and town libraries. Having exhausted those offerings, I ventured into the high school book sections. Pulling out "Hiroshima" by John Hersey, I snapped it up, assuming it would be a great retelling of the ultimate adventure of the good war. When I finished it, the impression it left on my 10-yr-old brain changed me forever. I would never look at war in the same way after asorbing the image of young schoolgirls, facing ground zero when the bomb went off, dying in the blast with the brand of their school medallions burned into their chests. Maybe you need to see war through the eyes of a child to truly understand it.

"What is the normal outlook and upbringing of the millions of white christian kids in this country who see a colored person and scowl?"

A "COLORED" person???

"we're liberating their country and spreading democracy there," @#$%$##@#$%$

I'm speechless...which says allot, since it's almost impossible to shut me up....

Endological Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has a very poor prognosis....

Just ask concentration camp survivors of WWII or Vietnam Vets on the front line.....high suicide,drug and alcohol rates behavioral disorders etc etc etc....

Disturbingly this Iraq Catastrophe will tramatise these Iraq children for life....

Bush and his cabal of psychopathic henchmen will never comprehend the horrendous Karma they have sown....

UN-common-dreams June 19th, 2007 10:20 am

Excellent post....

I am still both shocked and appalled at the callous Condi Rice describing the "birth pangs of the new Middle East" from this sterile malodorous mountebank bitch....

As the Lebanese Red cross were retrieving dead children crushed under tonnes of concrete REAL CHRISTIANS would recognise where the first miracles occurred 2000 years ago in Qana.....

UN-common-dreams, your mention of napalm brought back some serious memories for me (and not pleasant ones) I was in the air force in Germany in the late 60's making documentaries and while standing around waiting to set up a photo shot I discovered I was leaning on a rack of bombs! The military has these little metal tags on EVERYTHING so I read the tag..it said bomb, the under nomenclature it said type: fire. That was it, but when I read about napalm and the accepting way the military describes it, I was in my early 20's at the time and the realization of what that evil thing was and what it did and it sounded so, so non-threatening, bomb, type; fire I don't know just thought I had to add that to the discussion. Thanks