Please to remember that the US is a proud country with unlimited military resources to back it.

Even with idiots at present running the show, it has the Rockefellers and Morgans behind it, proving there is unlimited finance.

So follow the strongest, follow the Big League. But not for old me, I'd rather be an activist my knowledge of history telling how it all takes time, like with the Roman Empire ruling for nearly a thousand years, but with idiot leaders returning to Rome one day to find a Germanic low-life sitting on the throne.

Let's hope the US learns the lesson quicker.

Yes, it's definitely all about propaganda.

But how on earth does one compete with Islamists in that regard?

Muslims have been so brainwashed (just take a look at the MEMRITV site for a glimpse of what their current affairs topics are - bashing women, killing infidels, and 9/11 conspiracies, not to mention an alternate universe version of Mickey 'the jihadi' Mouse) that Islamists gain by beheading infidels, and showing US soldiers strung up on bridges.

Think about what kind of people can watch that with glee.

The vast majority have been bred to be racist, intolerant, infidel-phobes.

Such crimes sell like hotcakes all across the Muslim world, so it's the common man that we're dealing with here.

Does anyone think that the west would gain propaganda by showing our soldiers killing Taliban?

Of course not, civilised cultures hate killing and only do it out of neccessity.

Even when those wife-beating, heroin selling 'capitalist pigs' (think about it: a one product economy with a totally inelastic good being sold to inflict misery) deserve it.

In Iran, the public gather and cheer as 15yr old girls, 'adulters' were told (likely raped) are hung from cranes.

Unfortunately, we will never win hearts and minds of people so damaged.

But we don't need to.

Islamists need to be 'cwushed', as Yaron Brook would say. They can't be reasoned with.

One can't do this by explaining the superiority of reason, of rationality, of enlightenment values - they are too far gone.

We must obliterate any Islamist sentiment, confront the barbarism of Islamic supremacism head on.

Muslims have enough conspiracy theories, imagined hurts and childish vendettas to last them for the next billion years.

Leaving Iraq will achieve very little in the propaganda wars.

In fact, as far as the hard core Islamists are concerned, "defeat" in Iraq will encourage them to attack us more. It's already been shown that America's perceived reluctance to strike back decisively after terrorists attacks in the 1990s, such as the attack on the USS Cole, encouraged them to go for bigger targets and ultimately paved the way for September 11.

It's seductive to think leaving Iraq will improve matters. It won't. As the infantile rantings over Salman Rushdie's knighthood show, Muslims don't need much of an excuse to hate us.

To the article author, Part I.

"Until its troops are removed from Iraq, the US will not benefit in the propaganda war from the sympathy of the majority of world Muslims who do not support attacks on civilians". Are you kidding. Most of the killing now is from one Muslim faction on another Muslim faction. The only civilians the US kill are those in the crowded market places that cowardly insurgents fire from. And in regards to Muslims killing civilians: the insurgents are Muslim and they deliberately kill as many civilians as they can, and these things are documented by the UN and Amnesty International and the Red Cross. They want to destroy mosques and churches. Also, what kind of freedom fighters kill and try to run out of town, people who have lived in the country as long as them but because they are Christain they are scum to them.

Look, to spell it out for a one year old, Iraqis themselves (and all Muslims for that matter) are implicitly aware of who their enemies and friends are, and it is something of the opposite to what you claim. If an invading army of Japanese in WWII or perhaps even Turks back in the Ottomon days were to occupy the streets of Australia, do you really think that you would let your kids go up to the soldiers and ask them for sweets? Would you, as part of an insurgency, shoot at them from crowded areas and store your weapons and bases in crowded areas knowing, and deliberately incorporating it as a tactic, that the enemy will not want to harm any civilians if possible as they apparently are not their enemy? Wouldn't instead you fully expect the invading army, who after all are all the wicked things under the sun apparently, to want to kill your women and children, or at least be bothered very little by the prospect?

To the article author Part II.

In Israel this week, there are thousands of Palestinians from Gaza piled up on Israels borders trying to get in and away from the madness of war. But wait a minute, aren't the Israelis murdering overlords who would like to see them suffer? Wouldn't you expect that these Gazans would be piled up on the Egyptian borders instead? Ever asked yourself why many insurgents shoot from mosques or why Hezbolla use hospitals and schools as bases? I know why: because 9 times out of 10 the US army will not shoot at a mosque for fear of offending Muslims. Ever asked yourself why the tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled the original war forty odd years ago are still in camps in the Arab nations and only being fed and given medicine and education from the West, and why Muslims who live in not only Western nations but also in Israel have a much, much higher living standard (with decent access to medical and education) than in any Muslim nation? The Jordanians, Lebanese and Egyptians think so little of these Palestinians that they are not even allowed to buy land, aren't allowed most jobs if they are allowed out of the camps at all. And it isn't like in Western nations where they are out in a few months if they are honest and tell us their real details; these guys have been there for forty or more years - generations.

So, the US will probably never win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world given that they can't overcome the indoctrination of their culture that perpetually "others" and "occidentalizes" the US and the West in general, so much so that their hate simply blinds them from accepting us as their friends, and it blinds them from seeing their own leaders and much of their own cultures as their enemy. As I mentioned above, this is implicitly revealed in their behavious towards us and our armies.

I don't think there is a historical precendent to an invading nation winning hearts and mind of the invaded.

Winning hearts and minds is an uphill battle now. SH is gone along with the baath regime. With a weak govt in the helm, someone have to take responsibility for the civil war, civilian casualties and the chaos. Rebuilding a bridge or a power station (which we destroyed in the first place) will not cut it. Propaganda can't fight propaganda, only actions can.