| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fester" |
| Date: |
13 Mar 2006 05:31:06 PM |
| Object: |
OT: So how's Iraq REALLY coming along? |
A fact-filled article illustrating that Iraq doing much better than when
Saddam was in charge and much better than the legacy media would have us
believe.
<quote>
March 13, 2006, 8:15 a.m.
John, Meet Jack
We do have reliable information about how things are going in Iraq.
By Richard Nadler
In his article "You Don't Know Jack," John Derbyshire answers the
critics of his thesis that the democratization of Iraq will fail who
cite his lack of firsthand knowledge of Iraq. Derbyshire points out that
visits to foreign countries provide scant evidence for forming
foreign-policy decisions, even when the observer is knowledgeable,
experienced, and honest.
On the same day his article was published, a group of Iraq War vets,
speaking in the Murrow Room of the National Press Club, made the case
that the democratization is succeeding — and they explicitly endorsed
Derbyshire's caveat in making that case.
"I saw the good and the bad in Iraq — cooperation and hostility, war and
reconstruction," said Lt. Lawrence Indyk, who was awarded a Purple Heart
for his service. "But this war isn't about my personal experience. U.S.
policy in Iraq aims to replace an ultra-aggressive, terror-harboring
tyranny with a constitutional democracy, at peace with its neighbors.
And to assess our progress on that track, we need metrics that are
impersonal."
Look Who's Coming to Dinar
For the next hour and a half, Lt. Indyk, Marine Corporal Richard Gibson,
and Marine Sergeant J. D. Johannes laid out their case. Lt. Indyk
reported Iraqi growth in GDP and personal income. He contrasted the
dinar's stabilization under the Coalition with the savings-wrecking
inflations under the Baathist regime. He chronicled the increase in
electrical supply, and the doubling of oil revenues in the post-Saddam
era. He put numbers to the enormous increase in cell phones, cars, and
satellite TVs.
Indyk discussed advances in services as well: the 60 percent decline of
infant mortality in post-Saddam Iraq, and the improved access to
schooling and medical care. And he described the explosion in business
formation that has followed in the overthrow of one of the most
regulated economies on earth.
Next he laid out metrics of democratization. First among these is
surging participation of all segments of the Iraqi populace in
elections, not only in the national government, but in Iraq's city and
state elections as well. He enumerated, too, the growth of political
parties, and proliferation of a free press in print and broadcast.
Then he admitted that facts like these, taken on their own, were
insufficient for forming an accurate assessment of progress in Iraq.
"If material and institutional circumstances are really improving," he
said, "this will be reflected in the attitudes of the Iraqi people
themselves. The polls will either confirm what the official statistics
tell us, or they will contradict those statistics."
Indyk then proceeded to describe the findings of the most extensive and
scientific polls of Iraq opinion, performed by Arabic speakers for
Oxford Research International near the beginning of 2004, then at the
end of 2005. These polls covered all of Iraq's major regions and
demographic groups.
Asked to compare their current lives with their lives under Saddam,
Iraqis reported an improvement in availability of necessities, and an
improvement in overall economic wellbeing. They reported superior access
to clean water, health care, and education. Iraqi respondents believed
that their local governments had improved. Asked what form of government
they hoped to live under going forward, democracy won handily:
four-to-one over the rule of one-man, and ten-to-one over totalitarianism.
Iraqis list security as their most pressing problem. But a plurality of
Iraqis feel safer now than under Saddam, and a majority feel safer from
ordinary crime. Moreover, better than 60 percent feel personally safe in
their neighborhoods.
Marine Corporal Gibson's presentation sorted out these seemingly
contradictory findings. The problem most Americans have, he said, in
understanding Iraqi opinions on security, is that we operate from a
different baseline. Iraq under Saddam was an incredibly violent place.
Iraq Body Count, an antiwar group that keeps a running tally of Iraqi
civilian deaths, reports that the daily toll under the occupation falls
in the range of 25 to 28 per day. But under Saddam's rule, the death
toll averaged three times that, including 600,000 civilian executions
recorded by the Documental Center for Human Rights, and the 100,000
Kurds killed during the Anfal operation. A violent day under the
coalition would be just a routine day under Saddam.
"History is being written by the losers."
"Today," Gibson said, "the terrorists attack the government. In Saddam's
day, they ran it."
Using the same methodology as Lt. Indyk, Corporal Gibson assessed the
decline of the insurgency, first in hard numbers, then in the opinions
of Iraqis themselves.
Coalition casualties declined by 27 percent in 2005. They have declined
by 62 percent in 2006, measured against the comparable period of 2005.
The insurgent strategy of targeting Iraqi police and army units peaked
in July of 2005. Since then, casualties among those units have declined
by 33 percent.
Attacks on other soft targets are also down. For instance, there were
146 strikes against the oil infrastructure in 2004, compared to 101 in 2005.
The tipping point, Gibson contends, occurred last March, when the number
Iraqi boots on the ground — police and army units — surpassed those of
Coalition forces. From that point on, the new Iraqi government has
proved increasingly able to hold and garrison areas that have been
cleared on insurgents.
But more subtly, the growth of native Iraqi security shattered the
coalition of Baathist recidivists and Sunni jihadists. The last thing
the Baathist factions want is all-out sectarian civil war. "The tactics
used to provoke it — mass slaughter of civilians — not only strengthens
popular support for the government," said Gibson, "but threatens to turn
that government into a blunt instrument of retribution against them."
From March of 2005 to September of 2005, the number of civilian tips
informing on insurgents increased from 483 to 4,700, as numerous Sunni
tribes declared outright war on al Qaeda. "The insurgency in Iraq," said
Gibson, "is being dismantled by the equivalent of a Tips hotline."
Gibson cited polling of Iraqi opinion to support his thesis. Fifty-eight
percent of Iraqis feel threatened by terrorists, compared with 10
percent who feel threatened by Coalition troops. And by 71 percent to 9
percent, Iraqis believe that their own security forces — Iraqi security
forces — are winning the fight against terror.
"It is fascinating to contrast the triumphant face of the insurgency in
our nightly news to the pessimistic assessments of its leaders in their
intercepted correspondence," said Gibson. "My assessment of their
prospects varies little from their own."
Former Marine Sergeant J. D. Johannes was a soldier during the first
Iraq war. He returned to his old unit as combat reporter in the second.
He offers this assessment:
Everyone knows that the history of war is written by the victors.
But the war in Iraq has shattered that truism. In Iraq, history is being
written by the losers. Baathist kidnappers and jihadist bombers are
planning their operations not to win the war in Iraq, but to win it in
America. To that end, they are assessing what American news
organizations are willing to cover, and what American reporters are
willing to risk. As an immediate result, many of the feeds on the
nightly news are coming from Arabic sources that are either
non-professional in their journalistic standards or hostile to American
policy aims. As a long-term result, the American public is broadly
misinformed on a war that Coalition arms and Iraqi democrats are, in
fact, winning.
To summarize what the Iraq veterans said on March 9: We do "know jack"
about Coalition progress in Iraq — and we know it the same way that we
know other trends in social science — by hard numbers where they are
available, cross-checked against the attitudes of those most directly
affected by those numbers. "If Iraqis listened to American media," said
Lt. Indyk, "they'd hear that their economy is wrecked and that their
services are in shambles. They'd hear that they are less safe now than
before the war, and that they are religious fanatics who demand a
theocracy. But they don't get their news on Iraq through the Western
media. They live there. And they say the opposite."
— Richard Nadler is president of America's Majority, the 501(c)(4)
policy group that sponsored the March 9 press conference of Iraq war
veterans.
</quote>
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| User: "Richo" |
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| Title: Re: OT: So how's Iraq REALLY coming along? |
13 Mar 2006 06:14:44 PM |
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Fester wrote:
A fact-filled article illustrating that Iraq doing much better than when
Saddam was in charge and much better than the legacy media would have us
believe.
<snip propaganda>
"legacy media" is an interesting term - is that repub/neocon for " the
bit we don't own yet"?
8-)
Mark.
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| User: "Fred Stone" |
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| Title: Re: OT: So how's Iraq REALLY coming along? |
13 Mar 2006 08:38:36 PM |
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"Richo" <m.richardson@utas.edu.au> wrote in news:1142295283.980217.251370
@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:
Fester wrote:
A fact-filled article illustrating that Iraq doing much better than when
Saddam was in charge and much better than the legacy media would have us
believe.
<snip propaganda>
"Propaganda" - that's liberal-speak for "truth that I don't want to hear".
"legacy media" is an interesting term - is that repub/neocon for " the
bit we don't own yet"?
8-)
No, that's reality.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." - Thomas Mann
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| User: "DanielSan" |
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| Title: Re: OT: So how's Iraq REALLY coming along? |
13 Mar 2006 08:55:17 PM |
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Fred Stone wrote:
"Richo" <m.richardson@utas.edu.au> wrote in news:1142295283.980217.251370
@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com:
Fester wrote:
A fact-filled article illustrating that Iraq doing much better than when
Saddam was in charge and much better than the legacy media would have us
believe.
<snip propaganda>
"Propaganda" - that's liberal-speak for "truth that I don't want to hear".
*ring ring*
Hello? Yes? He's here, but he's ignoring me. Yeah. Tell it to the
rest of the group? Okay.
Hey, Fred Stone. It's Pravda. They want you to be their lead editor.
"legacy media" is an interesting term - is that repub/neocon for " the
bit we don't own yet"?
8-)
No, that's reality.
The reality that Republicans/Neocons own the media? Yep.
--
****************************************************
* DanielSan -- alt.atheism #2226 *
*--------------------------------------------------*
* "In every country and in every age, the priest *
* has been hostile to liberty. He is always in *
* alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in *
* return for protection to his own." *
* --Jefferson (in a letter to H. Spafford, 1814) *
****************************************************
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| User: "Fester" |
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| Title: Re: OT: So how's Iraq REALLY coming along? |
13 Mar 2006 06:38:39 PM |
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Richo wrote:
Fester wrote:
A fact-filled article illustrating that Iraq doing much better than when
Saddam was in charge and much better than the legacy media would have us
believe.
<snip propaganda>
"legacy media" is an interesting term - is that repub/neocon for " the
bit we don't own yet"?
8-)
Propaganda is lib-speak for uncomfortable truths.
.
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