Your first cite indicates that, aside from Saddam’s incredible cruelty, material conditions in Iraq had deteriorated under his reign. Many of the problems we’re coping with today are actually of long standing.
Two conclusions:
Although there are still lots and lots of challenges, things are now improving. The glass is half full, not half empty. That’s why more people are returning to Iraq than are leaving.
Most of the material shortages should be blamed on Saddam, not to the war. Had the war not occurred, these conditions would still be deteriorating, rather than being fixed.
Whatever happened to Wolowitz/Garner/Ward’s pentagon based Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq ? It shows up on google, but is entirely absent from recent news items. Did everyone get shitcanned when Bremer came in to turn things around ?
How much weight should we give to the opinions of a man who went from a failed stint managing humanitarian aid in Iraq, to a position at an organization with an antisemitic bias ?
You are weaseling. Your OP was an attempt to bolster your earlier post that Iraq was not that bad off. Now you are shifting the discussion to the point that after canning its first picked manager, the Coalition Forces are finally beginning to get a handle on helping Iraq recover. This does nothing to support your contention in either thread that things are not bad to begin with.
The utter shit-eating grins almost actually visible (thank GOD there’s no applicable smily…) in the Title (alone) of this thread, compared to the subject matter, are almost making me literally sick to my stomach.
And I watch surgery for fun. I read the TMI thread because I found it interesting, and little (if anything) grossed me out.
But this … this shit is absolutely fucking disgusting. I do not believe that someone with any measure of self-respect could post such utter garbage. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I know you won’t be, since you couldn’t find fault in yourself if your pathetic life depended on it, but you are one sick fuck.
elucidator - I work for a TV station in the Middle East, part of an Arab broadcasting organisation. We get to see all Reuters and APTN stuff, as well as material from our own correspondents. Also all the usual print wires. Plus I work with a good dozen Iraqis, nearly all of whom have friends and family back in Iraq, mainly Baghdad, with whom they’re in pretty intermittent contact with. Communications are still a nightmare.
NOTHING suggests the situation there is anything like the fuckarse OP tries to suggest “isn’t really that bad”. It IS really bad, and in some areas detiorating. It just sickens me that he tries to gloss over the genuine suffering and lack of safety of a nation of people, to prove some (unproveable, because he’s WRONG) political point. It’s immoral.
december. As Demostylus said, an op-ed piece does not truth make.
And, in the case of the one you cited, it’s written by George Ward, from the conservative dominated, inaptly named United States Institute for International Peace.
You proudly trumpet that the piece appears in the NYTIMES, and it supports your Mark Steyn column from two weeks ago. It’s an op-ed piece.
Funny how you criticize the NY Times for op-ed pieces that don’t support your warped sense of what is or isn’t true in life. But you cite them positively when they publish a view that supports your version of the truth.
Disgusting, and tiring. Do you not have any pride?
istara’s posts seem, to me, to be the most valuable in this thread, as someone who’s had direct experience with the region in question. I also know someone who lives there, and he’s described similar difficulties. They put the lie to december’s blog-spotting OP pretty quickly, in my view.
december, I note that you didn’t respond to istara’s account earlier. In fact, you flat-out ignored it. Care to attempt a cogent response to it now?
Meanwhile, the number of civilian deaths in Iraq has surpassed the number of civilians killed in the destruction of the WTC. According to the AP, the Iraqi civilian death toll stands at 3, 240.
Stripping out the insults, you say that in Baghdad, the streets are unsafe and the satellite phone is usually not working. You also say there is genuine suffering, of an unspecified nature. I accept everything you say.
However, I claimed that things in Iraq were not as bad as was being rerported. Do you know what has been reported here? A couple of weeks ago I saw articles talking about widespread starvation. I saw articles claiming that hospitals were overcrowded and they didn’t have the necessary medical supplies. I saw articles claiming that the oil infrastructure was such a shambles that it would be out of commission for a long time. I saw articles predicting that the US occupation would be a total failure, because the Iraqi people would never accept it. These things weren’t happening and they didn’t happen.
I believe that there is genuine suffering and lack of safety. I don’t mean to minimize what the Iraqi people are going through. However, the hospitals never ran out of medicine and supplies, and there never was widespread starvation. And, enough oil is already being pumped so that some is available for export, and the amount is increasing.
Not to push your buttons or anything, but that civilian toll is remarkably LOW, not high, for an invasion and conquering of an entire nation (especially one as big as Iraq).
grieny. You are assuming that the “facts” that december posted from the op-ed piece are truth. They probably are. But it should be up to you to support them with “facts.”
Just try one. Find another cite, preferrably from a neutral source, that supports the assertion that
Again, I’m not saying that it’s true or false. It should be easy to find support for the statement, since the OP and the OP-ED writer say it’s true.
Why? I never took a position on the veracity on Steyn’s eye witness accounts. I do trust the New York Times in light of recent embarassments far more than ** Istara’s** al-Jazeera.
But then if I was about to attack the integrity of someone else, particularly a fellow member of this community, then I better have some evidence to back it up or shut up.
Surprisingly, I’m with Grieny. On a message board devoted solely to Fighting Ignorance, I’m utterly appalled to see people using nothing but ad hominem attacks against someone they disagree with, even if that person does have a… “reputation”.
