Cenk Uygur: Your Chance of Being Kidnapped or Killed in Baghdad is 100%

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9811

Your Chance of Being Kidnapped or Killed in Baghdad is 100%
by Cenk Uygur | Sep 8 2007



We were talking to Newsweek's correspondent in Baghdad, Babak Dehghanpisheh, on Friday's show. I asked him if a Westerner, journalists or otherwise, could walk around in Baghdad unprotected by the military. He said it would be "suicidal."

I don't really know what I expected. I knew it was dangerous and I suspected that no Westerner went outside of the Green Zone without protection, but I didn't get the sense of how perilous it was until we talked to Dehghanpisheh.

So, I followed up by asking him if being harmed was a certainty if you were unprotected in Baghdad. He answered that your chances of getting killed or kidnapped in Baghdad if you were an unprotected Westerner was "one hundred percent."

snip//

Imagine if someone told you of all the Americans who had died and been injured in the war, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein had no links to the 9/11 bombers, that Iraq was in a state of chaos, there was mass ethnic cleansing and sectarian warfare and Baghdad was 100% unsafe to Westerners - then imagine that the Bush administration was still talking about how we were making great progress in the war and that it was still worth doing. And then imagine that people took them seriously.

I don't think the people inside Washington have a sense of how awful this war has gone. It is an unimaginable failure. It is a historic and epic catastrophe. And here we are this far into it with politicians still talking about winning and saying it was the right thing to do to go in and that if we just stay a little longer and keep escalating the conflict we can turn it around.

I don't think any Congressman should be able to vote to continue this war unless they can take an unprotected walk in Baghdad for fifteen minutes. Put the voting booth in the middle of Baghdad, give them some purple ink and any Congressman who can make it to the voting area without a military escort and vote yes to continue the war should have their vote counted.

Even with all that we have seen, is the American public fully aware of the situation in Baghdad? Has the media done its job in making them aware? Is everyone in America aware that Baghdad is off limits to any Westerner, that you will be kidnapped or killed if you don't have protection there? How could anyone who knows this think we have made any progress in Baghdad? How could anyone conclude that the war and the so-called surge have been anything but a complete and utter failure?

[soothsayer]

1. The popsicle index. for congressmen. (what percent of the community

thinks a congressman could walk by his/her self to the store for a popsicle and back again safely. In Baghdad, zero percent!

To help people understand how the global financial system affects their neighborhood, I came up with a very simple quality of life index based on one question:

�What percentage of the people in your place believes that a child can go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or other treat, and return home alone safely?�

Your answer gives you the Popsicle Index or Solari Index of your place. The Popsicle Index is the % of people who believe a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or snack, and come home alone safely. For example, if you feel that 50% of your neighbors believe a child in your neighborhood would be safe, then your Popsice Index is 50%. The Solari Index is based on gut level feelings of the people who have intimate knowledge of a place, rather than facts and figures.

The real purpose of the Popsicle Index is to start a conversation in every neighborhood and village on earth about what it means to feel safe and secure where you live and work and the people and things that contribute or drain that feeling.


http://www.solariactionnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=3036

[Igel]

2. Keep this in mind when you read articles

written by Westerners purporting to have spoken to the "Iraqi on the street" in Baghdad and to be presenting a nice, clear, unbiased view of those who are unbiased (unless the goal of the article is to show bias in the views of Ahmed Sixpack).

Most of the time "John Smith" does the writing but silently uses material provided by stringers, Iraqis out collecting information in a thoroughly biased and sectarian world, always with the unspoken assumption that while they live in a sectarian city they are uniquely free from any taint of sectarian bias.

The rest of the time the reporter is accompanied by armed thugs, plausibly leading the interviewee to say whatever the translator or the reporter implicitly hints he wants to hear.

However, the nature of the game that Dehghanpisheh relates applies also to Dehghanpisheh, leading to a bit more indeterminacy that most people can swallow.

[truth2power]

3. About a week ago there were 4 Congresscritters,

I'm pretty sure this was on the News Hour. Brian Baird, (D. WA); Jan Schakowsky, (D. IL); Chris Shays, (R. ?); & Charles Boustany, (R. LA). They had all made trips to Iraq, separately, I believe. Schakowsky was the only one with a brain in the whole bunch.

Baird (I think it was him, because I was shocked that he, a Dem, would be shilling for the Bush Admin.) said he had seen children playing basketball on one corner and another group playing volleyball on the other corner. :rofl:

My first thought was, "Where are the pictures, Baird-O?" But then I realized that videos and photos are so easily manipulated these days that it would be meaningless anyway. In any case, have you noticed that there's never even any attempt to show PICTURES of all this progress that's going on in Iraq??

This would be in the same category as that general who said there were amusement parks in Baghdad. Are they trying to mock us? Is that it?? How stupid do they think we are?

Well, there are about 29% of Murikins who ARE that stupid, I guess!! <sigh>

And BTW - I think Uygur's suggestion is brilliant. We should all call our Congresspeople and demand that they go to the middle of Baghdad to vote if they want to support this war.