Can *anyone* put an optimistic spin on this?

[Polerius]

The situation in Iraq looks pretty grim.

The background:

Shortly after Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) Middle East correspondent, sent a private email to friends with an unusually candid description of the deteriorating U.S. control over Iraq, a copy of her email began circulating on the internet. Subsequently the WSJ stated that Fassihi would not write about Iraq for the paper until after the election

The story

…
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there
were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

…
went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals.
…

America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard
units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being
murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date – and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that
almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18
billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
…

It’s a horrible mess. I guess many people know it’s a mess, but to see it spelled out in detail is pretty depressing.

It is beyond me how anyone can vote for Bush for a second term knowing all this.

It’s like going to a surgeon and he does a horrible job and leaves you a total mess, and then, when you want a follow-up surgery you go to the same surgeon, instead of going to a new one “because better the devil you know”. Come on!

And the idiotic thing is that people want to vote for Bush precisely because they think he will do a better job than Kerry on terrorism. How much worse than Iraq can anyone do? Didn’t Bush screw up as President and Commander in Chief? Why give the guy who screwed up any more chances?

[elucidator]

Whatsamatta you? Never heard of “on the job” training? This stuff is hard! Really!

What you gotta do is, think of this first term as a “Mulligan”, the President gets a “do-over”. Now that he’s getting the hang of it, he’ll do really swell job!

[PatriotX]

There’s progress being made on unifying Iraqis from all walks of life under a common banner.

[Polerius]

@SimonX

There’s progress being made on unifying Iraqis from all walks of life under a common banner.

Do you have a cite for that?

In any case, even if true, it doesn’t even come close to compensating for the horrible mess in Iraq.

Am I the only one who was horrified by Fassihi’s story?

How much of the U.S. population knows the extent of the problem?
If they did, would their vote stay the same?

[Zakalwe]

@SimonX

There’s progress being made on unifying Iraqis from all walks of life under a common banner.

Yes, there is. Unfortunately, that banner is Al Queda’s.

[PatriotX]

@Polerius

Do you have a cite for that?

I was being only a little bit facetious. I was thinking of the anti-occupation banner.

[dropzone]

@Polerius

Am I the only one who was horrified by Fassihi’s story?

Are you telling us that what she is saying is new to you? An awful lot of us have known this a long time and predicted much of it two years ago. I don’t know about the other wiseasses in this thread but I’m getting pretty burnt out on bad news from Iraq. The situation is screwed up and I can’t even get it up to make a sick joke about it. To quote Ed Grimley, “We’re as doomed as doomed can be.”

[Polerius]

@dropzone

Are you telling us that what she is saying is new to you?

In general, I knew it was a mess, and I knew some details, but she provided some details that I didn’t know. For example, I knew that reconstruction wasn’t progressing well, but, she says

As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that
almost all projects have come to a halt

Also, about the Iraqi police and National Guard, she says

the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

So, added to what I already knew, this letter makes the situation look even more grim than I had imagined.

[rjung]

Get drunk, then listen to a couple of Bush campaign speeches.

You’ll either be deluded into feeling better, or get nauseous and throw up – either one of which will give you a temporary dose of satisfaction.

[Equipoise]

@Polerius

For example, I knew that reconstruction wasn’t progressing well…

Had you read this article?

Baghdad Year Zero by Naomi Klein

[aahala]

@elucidator

Whatsamatta you? Never heard of “on the job” training? This stuff is hard! Really!

What you gotta do is, think of this first term as a “Mulligan”, the President gets a “do-over”. Now that he’s getting the hang of it, he’ll do really swell job!

There’s only one Iraq Mulligan per family, so Big George used that. However, Little George could still have one for Iran, N. Korea or Dade County, Florida.

[Aeschines]

Beheading and kidnapping is hard work. But the Iraqis is getting closer to freedom every day. They have elections.

[/talking points]

[presidebt]

@Polerius

Am I the only one who was horrified by Fassihi’s story?

No, you aren’t. I learned a few things too from that e-mail. A lot of people on this board probably do know about such things, though I think it’s a safe bet that voters like my mother, who get their news from NBC/CBS/ABC commercial TV and/or their local newspaper, don’t know. The question is, how do we get this information out there? Clearly the internet is not going to be enough.

[jayjay]

@presidebt

No, you aren’t. I learned a few things too from that e-mail. A lot of people on this board probably do know about such things, though I think it’s a safe bet that voters like my mother, who get their news from NBC/CBS/ABC commercial TV and/or their local newspaper, don’t know. The question is, how do we get this information out there? Clearly the internet is not going to be enough.

Especially when the WSJ has decided that their editorial policy will be to silence their in-house voices who don’t agree with their rah-rah cheerleading for Bush, even in news stories, apparently.

“Fassihi would not write about Iraq for the paper until after the election”, indeed. Og forbid someone on the ground should actually print the truth…

[Merijeek]

@rjung

Get drunk, then listen to a couple of Bush campaign speeches.

You’ll either be deluded into feeling better, or get nauseous and throw up – either one of which will give you a temporary dose of satisfaction.

[Homer Simpson]

Hmm…endorphins…

[/Homer Simpson]

-Joe, at a hotel 250 miles from home, kinda bored

[ralph124c]

We in the USA, will finally abandon INTERVENTIONISM! Think about it, we should mind our own business! For the past 90 years, we have been so earger to get involved in every fight in the world…where has it gotten us? Lets see:
-Spanish -American War: got us embroiled in Asiatic Affairs, plus we added an intractable problem for ourselves (ownershipof Puerto Rico, protectorate over Cuba)
-WWI: we intervened and saved Allies from defeat. result: embittered Germany goes on to start WWII!
-WWII: we wind up building up former enemies (Germany, Japan)into commercial rivals for ourselves!
-KOREA: lost 36,000 lives, now, 50 years later, we still have an army of occupation in S. Korea For which the korean people hate us)
-VIETNAM: lost >55,000 lives, spent >200$ billion, achieved nothing
-GULF War I: propped up corrupt Kuwait regime, embittered mostof arab world
-ISRAEL:unconditional support for Isareali policy makes enemies in Arab world
-GULF War II: spent >85 billion $, amde enemies of all of remaining Arab world.
Quite a record of succes!

[BobLibDem]

It’s alright, ma. Iraq has a soccer team!

[jshore]

@jayjay

Especially when the WSJ has decided that their editorial policy will be to silence their in-house voices who don’t agree with their rah-rah cheerleading for Bush, even in news stories, apparently.

“Fassihi would not write about Iraq for the paper until after the election”, indeed. Og forbid someone on the ground should actually print the truth…

I’d like to understand more about why the WSJ made this decision. According to the PRWatch site that the OP linked to, the reason is presumably that “unauthorized publication of her private correspondence somehow called into question the fairness of her journalism” although a journalism professor expressed surprise on this.

In the past, I have found the WSJ news to be quite good with no obvious bias that I could detect (and they have even broken some negative stories about this administration) even though the editorial page is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. It actually made for some amusing reading since the news section sometimes seems to directly contradict what they are saying on the editorial page. But, I have always had a respect that the WSJ has managed to maintain this wall between their editorial page and their news reporting.

[jayjay]

@jshore

I’d like to understand more about why the WSJ made this decision. According to the PRWatch site that the OP linked to, the reason is presumably that “unauthorized publication of her private correspondence somehow called into question the fairness of her journalism” although a journalism professor expressed surprise on this.

In the past, I have found the WSJ news to be quite good with no obvious bias that I could detect (and they have even broken some negative stories about this administration) even though the editorial page is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. It actually made for some amusing reading since the news section sometimes seems to directly contradict what they are saying on the editorial page. But, I have always had a respect that the WSJ has managed to maintain this wall between their editorial page and their news reporting.

The point, for me, on this one is that they’re suspending her from Iraq reporting until “after the election”. If her objectivity is questionable now because of the unauthorized publication of her private correspondence, why will it be acceptable after the election? Unless the editorial board itself has decided that things are edgy enough for a Bush win already without their own news division screwing things up for him?