David - that link to the conspiracy theory is not on english.aljazeera.net and therefore not published by 'Al Jazeera' - you are (deliberately or not) misleading your readers...

David,

What would you like the Iraqis to do with the thugs who are blowing up cars, shooting Iraqis and foreign troops, etc.? Perhaps we could build a flower shop to replace Abu Gawhatever.

As to the discussion of whether there is a need for more troops in Iraq regardless of the source I believe what is needed is more cooperation from the Iraqis. These terrorists/insurrgents cannot be operating in a vacumn. Someone knows and/or sees them. It seems like the Iraqis are like baby birds. All they want to do is eat, sleep and squawk. As we have all heard, "freedom isn't free." The quicker the Iraqi people understand that the fastest way to get the US and foreign troops out is to stabilize their country.

Brad Hutchings: Point well taken, but I think David's original observation has some validity. Mentioning tearing down Abu Ghraib in the speech, and then making it conditional on the construction of a new prison and the concurrence of the Iraqi government basically gutted its rhetorical impact. It shouldn't have been mentioned in that speech. It should have come out as a press release or something instead. It was just a bit of poor speech-writing.

As for "eat, sleep and squawk," my own speculation is that the Iraquis would like to be rid of the occupiers who came in on the implicit promise to make things better. Instead, at least in Iraqui opinion, they seem to have made things worse, yet they won't get out of the way (remember, Iraqui opinion is what counts).