Read this and tell me things are getter better in Iraq....

[kentuck]

It's like reading the Stars & Stripes in 1968...

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=040424&cat=news&st=newsd8256ijg1&src=ap

<snip>
In other violence Saturday:

_ An Iraqi woman working as a translator for the U.S. military was shot and killed along with her husband as they drove to a U.S. base, a hospital official said.

_ A car bomb, apparently set off by a suicide attacker, exploded near a U.S. base on a downtown street in the northern city of Tikrit, hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and a center for anti-U.S. resistance.

Three bodies were seen in the blackened wreckage of a car. Witnesses said they believed the blast targeted a convoy of Iraqi officials heading to the mayor's office in the city. The top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, visited Tikrit a day earlier for meetings with tribal leaders.

_ Polish troops clashed overnight with Shiite militiamen in the city of Karbala, killing five, a spokesman for the multinational peacekeeping force in south-central Iraq said Saturday. A day earlier, followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr attacked Bulgarian troops in the city, killing one soldier.

etc...etc...

[4dsc]

1. Sad, sad, sad...

Daily carnage that is a QUAGMIRE!!

[soileddeeds]

2. How many schools were opened?

How many more people got water and electricity?
How much better staffed are the medical centers?
How many hungry people were fed?
How many kids were saved with medicine and aid?

When all you report is bad news then of course it looks bad.

In the end Iraq will be a much better place when the terrorists are rooted out.

[wtmusic]

3. That is really full of shit

All those terrorists. Sure. Are you choosing to fall for that party line, or are you just really, really gullible? :eyes:

[soileddeeds]

6. It's far from any party line

It's a fact only the bad news from Iraq gets reported. If you really doubt we are helping the Iraqi people I can't help you open your eyes.

[kentuck]

9. The "bad" news? Like photos of the coffins ?

Like te Army has the final word in what is shown or not shown. The Army is not a separate branch of government. They work for the people. They answer to the people - just like George Bush, Jr and the Repubs will answer to the people...

[wtmusic]

12. You are delusional about what the nature of a 'fact' is

What gets reported is what gets reported and it is seldom the truth. For you to say that only bad news gets reported and that is a 'fact' is laughable.

To somehow believe that invading another country with no provocation whatsoever, and labeling anyone who chooses to defend their own country against that invasion a 'terrorist' is merely a convenient conscience salve for despotic aggression.

I suggest you open your eyes to the fact that your government has lied to you, is lying to you, and will continue to lie to you. Or perhaps you are still waiting for news of WMD's?

[not systems]

15. Your "facts" are wrong.

I turned on on the TV this morning and saw
Paul Wolfowitz talking about the Good New TM and
then flipped to CNN and saw the CPA mouth pieces
talking about the upsides of Re-Ba'athitization.

I really doubt that we are helping the Iraqi people
unless they are named Ahmed Chalabi the wanted criminal
and CIA puppet acting as head embezzler for the Bush
crime family.

Anti-war bias in the media?

You are clueless.

[kentuck]

4. Why have schools...? All the children will be dead....

Of course, you are right.

[soileddeeds]

8. All the children will be dead?

That's BS and you know it. I'm not a doom and gloomer and I trust the goodwill within most people.

[kentuck]

11. An exaggeration perhaps, but not BS.....

Come back on June 30th and tell us how great things are going....You will need to get your head out of your butt and look at reality and listen to less Limbaugh and Hannity and right-wing media. Yes, things are going just hunky-dory but nobody wants to report the good news? Now that is BS!

[Spazito]

7. Your user name is perfect in describing bush's deeds but...

given your post, I am not sure you would agree.

Here are my answers:

Less Iraqis have power and water than before the occupation
Iraqis can't get to the hospitals because of the lack of security, closed highways, etc
Less Iraqis are being fed now than before the occupation, no more food for oil program because the oil fields are producing less than before the occupation
Again, kids are not receiving medicine and aid due to the lack of security

When you live in Fox's world, you only hear "good news" even when they are lies.

What did Iraq have to do with terrorists before the occupation?

[NightTrain]

10. Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

n/t

[Old and In the Way]

13. Good questions. We certainly know FOX and CNN would love

to be reporting all this good news. So why aren't they? Because it ain't happening.

As much as you want to wish and believe what this administration is telling you, the fighting taking place in Iraq is being done by people who have no interest in being run and occupied by the United States. At least 10% of the population is actively opposing the occupation...that's 2.5MM and more are joining the resistance everyday.

If you really support democracy there, you have to ask why we aren't letting the people of Iraq determine the government of their choosing.

[Ms. Clio]

16. When all there really is to report is bad news

Then it is bad.

The "medical centers" are hospitals that the Iraqis either can't get to (bridges blown up) or are occuped (by Salvadoran troops, in Najaf, for example).

You live in a dream world.

[Athame]

17. Good questions

If there were good answers to them, don't you think the administration would be falling all over themselves to report these worthy events? They eke out a few, to be sure, and play each one for all its worth...not much.

How many kids were saved with medicine and aid? Not even close to the 500,000 we know died during sanctions.

[NMDemDist2]

20. whaaaaa???

"How many schools were opened?"
what good does that do if the school bus gets bombed?

How many more people got water and electricity?
not enough that's for sure
http://www.cidi.org/humanitarian/hsr/iraq/ixl49.html

How much better staffed are the medical centers?
very poorly according to reports, lack of antibiotics, oxygen etc
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/8128112.htm

How many hungry people were fed?
While starvation has been averted, chronic malnutrition persists among several million vulnerable people, including some 100 000 refugees and around 200 000 internally displaced people.
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1105.shtml

How many kids were saved with medicine and aid?
see links above also http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE140152004

When all you report is bad news then of course it looks bad.

In the end Iraq will be a much better place when the terrorists are rooted out
I think the proper term is "resistance fighters"

[kentuck]

23. We just moved 200,000 people out of Fallujah who are now ....

refugees....Should that not be reported? Or is that good news because if they did not move out, they could have been killed. We saved their lives!

[Norquist Nemesis]

21. So tell us.

You apparently have all the good news. Report it! Give us the fair and balanced news.

[Bridget Burke]

22. Supply us with the good news.

Please, some links would be useful. Your generalizations are quite meaningless.

I won't even ask you to use trustworthy sources. If you don't, it will be obvious.

[kalian]

25. How many neurons do you have...?

In actually believing that spew? :eyes:

[Robbien]

5. Raed has many thoughts on this

Public services? Electricity... water... telecommunication… hospitals… schools…
The only thing that has happened is “rehabilitating” some schools by Bechtel, and let me tell u more about it…
Bechtel charged around $75,000 per school, and gave the contracts to Iraqi sub-contractors, the Iraqi sub-contractors gave to other Iraqi sub-sub-contractors, and the sub-sub-contractors painted the schools, fixed the bathrooms, changed the broken windows and put some light bulbs, the thing that cannot cost more than $7,500 (around fifteen million Iraqi Dinars). Rehabilitation was poor and extremely costly; it was the first corruption story that destroyed the credibility of the plans of reconstruction. I’m sure I had already said many things about how bad the situation of hospitals, libraries (the ones that were not burned and looted), universities and gas stations are.

Infrastructure? Landmarks? Governmental buildings? Telephone exchanges?
Destroyed buildings and bridges are as they were one year ago, some buildings were brought down at Najaf and Basra (which is better than leaving them standing and adding more depression to the urban skyline), but the buildings in Baghdad were not even touched… they look sad and painful, downtown Baghdad looks like a battlefield, can you imagine all the buildings that you love… that you spent your life watching and using… being burned and partially destroyed? Can u imagine the feeling you would have if you went by the White House or the Capitol while it was burning and destroyed? Can you imagine what it would feel like to have the twin towers of the WTC standing for months burned and partially destroyed… the skyline of Baghdad reminds me of war and death, reminds me of explosions and destruction. Other smaller landmarks like status of people, pictures, small monuments and other things that were destroyed after the war, under the campaign of De-Baathification left Baghdad and the other Iraqi cities full of small destroyed icons, I mean… I don’t care about the Statue of Al-Baker (the former Iraqi president), and I don’t see his status as a sign of Evil and Baath, it is simply the landmark in front of my house!! We either put another one or remove this one completely! Leaving things partially destroyed is the worst thing to do.

And many more thoughts are blogged there also.

No, no good is being done.

[JohnyCanuck]

14. And then there's this

Who's Chaos is This Anyway?

<snip>

What's important to bear in mind here is that the U.S. can increase such chaos not just through genuine incompetence but through purposeful incompetence -- and it's normally impossible for an outsider to tell which is which. I could, for instance, feel the impact of purposeful incompetence in the conversation I had with an Iraqi architect who worked in Falluja. Having experienced the frustration of dealing with the bureaucrats inside the Green Zone and the corrupt Iraqis who increasingly surround them, he explained to me that "no honest Iraqi contractor will touch the CPA." In the early months of the occupation, he had tried to offer his help to the CPA, but despite a public pretense of accountability -- of giving all comers a chance to profit from the rebuilding of the country -- his bids, though lower than those of foreign bidders, were either ignored or someone would show up weeks later offering to help him "cement a deal" only after thousands of dollars passed under the table.

The officials of the CPA, however, were never intent on "rebuilding" Iraq in the normal sense -- not with Iraqis anyway. What they were intent on was cracking what was left of the Iraqi economy open and handing its spoils to crony capitalists and giant corporate entities allied to them. And this is why we can't simply assume, as one recent newspaper article put it, that the hemorrhaging of billions of dollars in Iraq is "yet more proof of the administration's inadequate preparation for the war, and its failure to fathom what awaited it in Iraq." Such a view misunderstands why, for example, Pentagon Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and other senior administration officials dismissed pre-war warnings that the civil rebuilding of Iraq would cost between $60 billion and $150 billion. They certainly didn't do so because they thought it could be done cheaper.

In fact the $100 billion-plus the U.S. is slated to spend by the end of next year on infrastructure and civilian expenses -- we can only guess how much of that will go directly and indirectly to Halliburton and Bechtel and not to Iraqis -- along with the fraud, bribery, theft and waste that are literally written into budgets under the heading of "special clauses," when combined with the $250 billion in military-related costs (all those depleted uranium bullets and high-tech napalm aren't cheap) plunked down for the invasion and military occupation, together constitute a major reason why we went to war in the first place. Looked at from a certain perspective, all of this falls under the category of planned or sponsored chaos.

Just consider the profits of the major arms, energy, and heavy engineering companies today versus three years ago. Some have more than doubled their profits, as has their share of the total profits of the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones companies; and no one with a car today can remain oblivious to the relationship between Middle Eastern chaos and higher oil prices, which naturally mean higher profits for the major oil companies. Of course, officials like Wolfowitz weren't going to tell the American people what Iraq was really going to cost them, at least not beforehand. But it's hard to imagine Cheney and his friends in the military-petroindustrial complex didn't know better, especially when it's a given that reconstruction contracts handed out to companies like Halliburton have profits built into them regardless of cost over-runs.

www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1396

[bluedog]

18. Today In Iraq

http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/


Today in Iraq

Saturday, April 24, 2004
War News for April 23 and 24, 2004

Bring ‘em on: One Bulgarian soldier killed in convoy ambush near Karbala.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed by roadside bomb near Samarra.

Bring ‘em on: Five US sildiers killed, six wounded in rocket attack near Taji.

Bring ‘em on: Explosions, firefights reported in Karbala.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi killed, three wounded after US troops open fire in Sadr City.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqi policemen killed, 16 wounded by car bomb at US base near Tikrit.

Bring ‘em on: Nine Iraqis killed in mortar attack on Baghdad market.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi translator and her husband assassinated near Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi police wounded in RPG attack near Baquba.

Bring ‘em on: One Italian soldier wounded in ambush near Nasiriyah.

CPA flip-flops on de-Baathification policy.

Chalabi gets the boot? “The US and the top UN envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of politicians who have served for the past year on the US-appointed Governing Council when a new Iraqi government is picked to assume power on June 30, The Washington Post reported today.” I wonder if Cheney and Rummy have approved this plan.

Al-Sadr threatens to retaliate with suicide bombers if US troops move into Najaf.

US issues warning to Fallujah residents while Baghdad fashion maven and incompetent administrator L. Paul Bremer talks tough on Iraqi TV.

snip

595 US troops wounded in last two weeks.
snip

Lieutenant AWOL is unhappy that Americans can see photographs of fallen soldiers’ caskets.

Support the Troops! “This is how Nicole Goodwin travels these days: with her 1-year-old daughter pressed to her chest in a Snugli, a heavy backpack strapped across her shoulders, and a baby stroller crammed with as many bags of clothes and diapers as it can hold. When you are a homeless young mother, these are the things you carry. And tucked away somewhere are the documents attesting to Ms. Goodwin's recent honorable discharge from the United States Army, as well as Baghdad memories that are still fresh.”

Commentary

Opinion: “Cronyism and corruption are major factors in Iraq's downward spiral. This week the public radio program ‘Marketplace’ is running a series titled ‘The Spoils of War,’ which documents a level of corruption in Iraq worse than even harsh critics had suspected. The waste of money, though it may run into the billions, is arguably the least of it - though military expenses are now $4.7 billion a month.”

Analysis: “Foreign policy in the Bush administration reflects a lack of experience in the real world away from a Washington overrun with armchair polemicists and ideologues. Too many of them have no experience in the military, where one learns to expect the unexpected, or in international finance, where America's insecurity also resides. This White House is known for its hostility to curiosity and intellectual debate… The failures of the Bush administration are not those of foreign intelligence but of a cerebral sort of intelligence.”

Opinion: “One of the eerie things about Bush's press conference performance was just how divorced from reality he is. Not only is he still claiming we're going to find the WMD and that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9-11, but he actually claimed we went to war to save the credibility of the United Nations. The man is living in Fantasyland.” For non-US readers the reference to a “turtle on a fence post” comes from a saying about Lieutenant AWOL: “He’s like a turtle on a fence post: You know he doesn't belong there, he can't get anything done while he's up there, he looks stupid sitting there, and you know he didn't get there by himself.”

Casualty Reports

Local story: Maine Guardsman killed in Iraq.

Local story: New York Marine dies from wounds received in Iraq.

Local story: Massachusetts soldier wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Three Florida Guardsmen wounded in Iraq.

Local story: South Carolina Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

Local story: Three Maine Guardsman wounded in Iraq.

[izzie]

19. I can not seem to get out of the blogs from Iraq

They do not seem to be in the same world as the Army news they give out each day.To me it is like that slow wake up in what the govt said about Vietnam and what we found was really going on.

[Columbia]

24. You will never know what really goes on over there

Maybe 1-2% of what goes on gets reported. That includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And yes, the news is slanted towards the bad because that is what people care about. That's how it's always been and always will be.

Everyone who thinks they know the "truth" about Iraq here, really has no clue.