Here are the commonalities between "New Caprica" and Iraq:
1. The occupying force considers itself "benevolent," even though the occupied peoples resent them (for the most part).
2. The occupying force is recruiting members of the other side to police/patrol the population
3. The "natives" are using bombs and explosives to dissrupt the occupiers activities. This escalates to suicide bombing where they target people who have been recruited by the occupying force.
4. (This one seems to be a political statement) The occupiers round up people at random and place them in prisons without any habius corpus.
5. The president of the occupied forces is simply a puppet of the occupiers. The difference is, Baltar was already president (I can hardly see the cylons replace him with anyone worse though).
I realize that most of these things could happen during any occupation. But I find it a bit surprising that
suddenly the show goes in a TOTALLY new direction (During the season finale I thought I had a stroke or something in the last 10 minutes) during an election year. Maybe it's the black helecopters circling my house...
Still, the number of similarities is surprising. I feel like the show is trying to get me to sympathise with the Iraqi people... It's weird.
Interestingly, I find the show annoying (not talking about the occupation, but in general). It is better than most shows, but the entire concept of a show based on finding something (Earth) and we know that once they do, the show will be over, is kinda lame. Gee, I wonder if they'll find earth next episode... Probably not or the series would be over. I also don't care for how long they're stretching out the Cyclon's plans. We're in season 3 and we
still don't have the slightest clue what they're trying to accomplish. Only now are we even aware that they decided their original plans have changed.
Finally, I find the whole "Personality upload up death" concept to be rather stupid. I'm sure given enough technological advancement, it would be possible. Just, as a plot device, I find it as an obvious method for the main characters to kill cylons only to have them show up a week later. Blah. It's too powerful. The only way the writers are going to get around something that can beam a soul lightyears away is with some OTHER stupid plot device.
Oh, and Baltar was able to get away with what he has so far because
everyone else on the show is a moron. "Here, take this nuclear weapon. We won't ask you about it again ever." "Hey, you keep talking to yourself and acting otherwise completely strangely... Not only are we going to ignore this completely, we'll put you in charge of the only operation to identify who the cylons are. By the way, you'll need no assistants who might catch you doing your evil bullcrap." and "Hey, I just realized you've been colaborating with the cylons, but I'm not going to tell anybody because you're the president now..."
The entire series could have been resolved by someone realizing that Baltar was a nutjob (at the very least) and removing him from the ship. Via airlock.