The War in Iraq is going Well; Discuss.

Great Debates
21

There hasn’t been ANY planning? Iraq is a disaster? I guess that’s the impression you might get if all you read is the New York Times, but the traditional media has a habit of only printing stories of disaster and destruction.

If you listen to what the people on the ground in Iraq are saying, you get a very different picture. And not just Bush officials. Soldiers, workers with NGOs, even Democratic Congressmen. They all say we are getting a very distorted picture of what’s going on in Iraq.

The reality is this:

[ul]
[li]The coalition had planned to have 1000 schools renovated by the start of the school year. By that time, 1500 had actually been renovated.[/li][li]Electicity output is now quite a bit higher than it was before the war (4350 MW, pre-war, 3500 MW).[/li][li]Six months ago, there were no police on duty. There are now over 40,000 Iraqi police, 7,000 in Baghdad alone. And the CPA has been thinking out of the box - they are flying thousands of Iraqis to Eastern Europe to train police en-masse in a huge ex-Soviet facility, and will have tens of thousands more police on duty in the next few months.[/li][li]Nearly all of Iraq’s 400 courts are open and functioning, and for the first time in its history, the judiciary is fully independent.[/li][li]All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes are open again, as are almost all schools.[/li][li]Teachers in Iraq earn 12 to 25 times as much as they did under Saddam.[/li][li]All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.[/li][li]Doctors earn eight times what they did under Saddam.[/li][li]Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from almiost nothing under Saddam to 700 tons in May, to a total of 12,000 tons today.[/li][li]22 million vaccines have been administered to Iraqi children.[/li][li]The commercial life is booming. Shops are full of goods. Satellite Dishes are selling like hotcakes. The streets are clogged with cars, and they are being imported into the country by the thousands.[/li][li]Over 150 independent newspapers are being published.[/li][li]The military has been doing massive amounts of reconstruction work, using their own emergency funds and funds from Saddam’s seized assets. Hundreds upon hundreds of civil construction projects. Everything from painting schools to repairing bridges and roads.[/li][li]The majority of people even in the ‘Sunni Triangle’ think they are better off today, and want the U.S. to stay. Outside of the triangle, the coalition is even more popular. A huge majority of people think they’ll be better off in five years.[/li][li]Security is improving all through the country. The curfew in Baghdad has been rolled back an hour because of improving security conditions.[/li][/ul]

I suggest you ignore the American media, and go right to the source material, which is where I’ve gotten most of this information from.

Here is the web site of Iraq-Today, an independent Iraqi newspaper.

Here’s the web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Yes, there are lots of problems. This is a country that went through 30 years of tyranny, and three major wars in the last 20 years. It’s a mess. And the reconstruction effort started very badly. But it is improving, and faster than you’d think. It is scandalous that all you hear in the popular media is stories of destruction, because that’s just one small part of the overall picture.

Several Congressman have gone to Iraq to see with their own eyes what’s going on there, and they have all come back saying that the media is grossly distorting the picture of what’s going on there.

For instance, here’s Congressman Jim Marshall (D -Ga):

This is an interesting quote, because the recently departed December suggested something similar on this board a couple of months ago, and he was accused of being a despicable hate mongering bastard for even suggesting it. Now we have Democratic Congressmen saying it.

22

I’m sure we can see this in the US media since it’s the origin of your cites.

23

Fair enough. The Democratic Congressman who said that is a despicable, hate-mongering bastard. An attempt to stifle criticism by waving the bloody shirt is a repulsive manuever with a long history in American politics. The sooner it becomes a morbid curiosity for historians, the better.

Let’s work on that, shall we?

24

Unless, of course, he happens to be right. Which he is.

Look, no one is saying the media should be censored. He’s simply pointing out that they only want to print the dramatic news (which the media always does), and neglect to cover more boring things like procedurals and stories about reconstruction. He’s just saying that this time the stakes are very high, and the media should make sure it’s doing its damned job and presenting the people with fair, balanced reporting.

25

I too think that the media is too focused on the “bad” news like US soldiers dieing on a daily basis, instead of the “good” news like how a elementary school was built in Upper Bumfuck, Iraq at the cost to the US taxpayers of only $150 million. Damn liberal media!

26

This isn’t a fair charge at all. There’s been plenty of planning.
The State Dept made many plans for dealing with post war Iraq. Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, wanted to use those plans but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered them scrapped in favor of the plans based on info from Chalabi, the INC and the OSP. “I think that it was a mistake,” Garner says.
The Pentagon just chose to go w/ the very best case scenario planning to sell the war and with the planning that called for the Iraqis to greet the troops w/ flowers. Rumsfeld said that Iraqis needed to step up to the plate because the insecurity in Iraq is Iraqis’ fault.

If an American city were in the same condition as Baghdad, I have no doubt that it would be a disaster area qualified for disaster relief funds.

Do you have cites for these?

While this is nice, do you happen to know how many police are needed? Numbers w/o a reference aren’t very enlightening. If they have 40,000, but need 80,000, then things would still be kinda bad off doncha think?

And carjacked how often?

Better off today than when? This is an important factor of the question.
47% of Baghdadis polled said that they were worse off than before the invasion compared with 32% who said that they were better off compared to before the war. 70% of Iraqis said they’d be better off in the future than they are doing now. This merely means that over the next five years they don’t think things’ll get worse than they are now.

While it’s great that things are improving, it’s still relative. There’s still a curfew- something that’s imposed during a state of emergency in a disaster area.

[ul]
[li]"During September, civilian deaths by gunfire in Baghdad totalled 518. Under Saddam, deaths from gun violence in Baghdad averaged 6 per month. According to the central morgue in Baghdad, violent deaths reached 872 in August. The highest monthly toll in the previous year was 237 deaths, with just 21 from gunfire.[/li]
[li]Three out of five Iraqis depend on food aid[/li]
[li]Safe drinking water is now available to 60% of the population, compared with 85% before the war. [/li]Any American city where only 60% of the population had safe drinking water would be declared a disaster area.

[li]Infant mortality has nearly doubled since the war. An independent survey last month showed 103 child deaths per 1,000 live births compared with 57 deaths per 1,000 in 2002.[/li][/ul]"

not from American media

That’s great. I’m very pleased. But ‘getting better’ is different than ‘not bad’.

Something that’s going to come up in the near future is the drastically restructred economic framework that’s been putinto place. Imprts will be subject to a tax of only 5%. Since these imports’ll be competing on a nearly level playing field against businesses who’s infrastructure’s been recently shattered, they’ll cream the local competition. This could well serve to keep Iraq’s unemployment rate at its current high levels. Jobless men, many w/ a grudge against the US who’re subjected to Islamist propaganda… What’re the odds that some of them will cross the line from bearing a grudge to “disgruntled”, as “disgruntled postal worker”?

Dear persecuted, martyred december :rolleyes:

27

Well when comparing statistics and conditions in Iraq one must be careful for sure… especially that comparing a US “government” with Saddam government isnt the way to go. If Saddam was so bad why compare with him… ?

I will check on if there are some more positive improvements in Baghdad in the news in general… certainly there is a tendency to publish the good news in one side and the bad on the other. Now having soldiers killed everyday never seemed “normal” to me…

28

There is a great article on the front page of the Washington Post today about the so-called “Marsh Arabs” – as water is returned (that Saddam had for political purposes drained off), they are ‘getting thier lives back’.

I think the media under reports the good news on Iraq – it is only natural – a solider was killed today is news, five guys signed up to be cops in a Bagdad suburb is not …

But the bottomline is I don’t believe it is a media conspiracy – Just the fact that the administration shook up the reconcstruction effort - and apparently cut Rummy out of the mix - should tell us it is not going as well as it was hoped it would by the administration in some areas — that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a total cluster “disaster” tho …

29

[Frostillicus]
**…instead of the “good” news like how a elementary school was built in Upper Bumfuck, Iraq at the cost to the US taxpayers of only $150 million. **

Hey [Frostillicus], what’s your source for the $150 million dollar elementry school in Bunfuck?
Or is your intended irony only based on your your need to pout?
_________________________________ :slight_smile:

30

I specifically quoted a Democratic Senator who said that the 101st Airborne had used $23 million to rebuild HUNDREDS of schools. As he said, $23 million goes a long way in Iraq.

Methinks Frostillicus was engaging in more than a little hyperbole. Because after all, who cares about accuracy when you’re engaged in the important business of tearing down your own government’s achievements in something as crucial as a war you must win?

31

Actually there have been a reasonable number of stories about recontruction in the media. It’s true that the focus has been on the security situation but that is not unreasonable since security is a pre-requisite to long-term economic and political progress in Iraq.

As for the progress made so far I don’t think regurgitating talking points in the form of context-free statistics is terribly illuminating. For instance about the 1000 schools which have been renovated what does that mean in terms of the big picture? What are the total number of schools in Iraq? What exactly does the “renovation” involve?

I think the most important statistics concern oil production and employment. Oil production was about 2.5 million bpd before the war and after collapsing had recovered to just half a million bpd in July. Has it recovered further? When is it expected to reach pre-war levels? Employment also collapsed after the war. How many of those people have got their jobs back? I don’t see any talking points on these two issues probably because the news isn’t that good.

32

Remember that you may hear about some US deaths, but you usually don’t see the wounded.
“Wounded” very often implies: amputation of feet, hands, arms, legs, shots in the guts, shots in the head.

only a handful of stories here: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/wounded/

And thats only american

Wounded Iraqis can just crawl to a hole (or overcrowded hospital) and rot.

So, who is winning?

33

It’s over 1 million barrels a day now. Contracts have been awarded to rebuild it much further.

Unemployment is still bad, but improving rapidly.

In Laura Bush’s speech to UNESCO in September, she said, “More than 80% of Iraq’s schools have now reopened”. I would suspect that that number is higher now. Another cite I found said there were 1600 schools in Iraq, so rebuilding 1500 of them would be a pretty good accomplishment.

It’s only been six months, guys. It’s annoying how the bar keeps shifting.

Consider what you would have thought about what would happen post-war if I had told you a year ago that:

  • There would be no major ethnic conflict.
  • There woudl be no massive environmental destruction. No dams dams burst, etc.
  • All major bridges would be intact.
  • There would be no humanitarian crisis. No mass starvation.
  • Within six months after the war, the economy would be roaring back, shops would be full, there would be 40,000 new Iraqi police trained in human rights and conducting hundreds of daily patrols daily, both alone and jointly with Americans.
  • All the schools, universities, and technical schools would be open and kids would be in class.
  • There would be a provisional council, and local governments fully functioning in every town and city in the country.
  • A new delegation of Iraqis would be admitted to the Arab League, representing a free Iraq.
  • Total casualties to date would be less than 500 coalition soldiers, and less than 5,000 Iraqis.
  • American soldiers would be greeted with cheers in most parts of the country, and even in Baghdad and Saddam’s home town, about 2/3 of the people think the invasion was a good thing, are optimistic of the future, and want the Americans to continue for at least two years.

What would you have said? No doubt, that I was being wildly optimistic. I could go through the litany of disasters the anti-war crowd said was going to befall Iraq. None of them came to pass. So now the bar has been raised to the point where no matter how much reconstruction there is, the war will be deemed a failure unless the place turns into Nebraska overnight.

There are a lot of challenges still in Iraq. Security is improving, but far from being acceptable. I think the U.S. may be making a mistake by allowing Turkish troops to participate against the objections of the council. Saddam’s still out there, and he still has a lot of weapons and resources. It’s by no means a done deal yet - Iraq is not out of the woods by a long shot.

But I think things are going about as well as can be expected. Sure, lots of mistakes have been made, and opportunities missed due to damn fool stupidity. But there have also been a lot of good decisions, and a lot of disasters avoided due to good thinking. It’s just that you don’t hear about those.

Much has been made of the lack of planning before the war. But that’s hindsight. Think of all the things that *could have happened that the military had to plan for - there was talk of Turkish invasions into Kurdish areas, flooding of the lower plains by blowing dams, siege warfare in Baghdad, mass starvation, intentional poisoning of water supplies, chemical warfare attacks, you name it.

War is chaotic. During contingency planning, I would imagine that looting in Baghdad after a surprisingly quick and bloodless war was probably pretty far down on the list of priorities. But because the other potential disasters never came to pass, people focused on post-war security only, and found preparation for it wanting. As I said, that’s hindsight.

34

Rummy was cout out of the mix ? He isnt involved anymore ?

Good news for Iraq I would say.

35

I too have seen a number of positive stories about Iraq recently, but admittedly they are outnumbered by negative ones. I agree with Dinsdale, I think a lot of it has to do with rising current and future costs of this operation. People who say “victory at any cost” here are naive in the extreme – the US will not pay any cost to turn Iraq around. This isn’t WWII. I think our conservative friends here understand this – they made similar points when explaining why we should attack Iraq but not North Korea, the latter being too costly a proposition.

I go back to a point I made a month or two ago, in a thread where I – quite wrongy – predicted the resistance would collapse with the death of the Hussein sons. I still think the Shia are key to any “success” of this mission. They are with us so far, particularly the rural Shia. But I’ve seen disturbing signs recently – including the large protest in Sadr City yesterday – that urban Shia are begining to turn against the US. If this happens we are truly fucked.

One more point – although “only” about 3-5 soldiers are killed each week, a much higher number have been seriously wounded.

36

“It’s over 1 million barrels a day now. Contracts have been awarded to rebuild it much further”
Source? If true that’s still only 40% of the pre-war total. And regardless of contracts awarded how much actual physical investment is going in the oil industry given the security situation?

“Unemployment is still bad, but improving rapidly”
Again source? How many are still unemployed comapared to before the war?
As for the hindsight issue many predicted widespread chaos after the fall of the Saddam regime including yours truly. It was not that difficult to foresee before the war. And though there were other dangers that didn’t happen it’s hard to see why dealing with all these potential problems was so difficult. Why can’t you have contingency plans for chemcical attacks, oilfield destruction and looting? It was an easily avoided failure with serious consequences. In fact even after the looting had started and been reported Rumsfeld was still trying to play it down.

And it's important to look at success and failure in the larger context. This war was supposed to be about "disarming Iraq" and elimanating a serious threat to the US. Everything indicates that this threat was grossly exaggerated and Iraq and the region are probably a bigger threat to the US now than before the war. From the pov. of the US national security this war has been a failure regardess of how many schools are rebuilt and how electricity produced.
37

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Wednesday he was not consulted about a White House shakeup in the US reconstruction effort in Iraq, but did not feel his authority had been diminished behind his back.

“Not at all,” Rumsfeld said.

http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/br/Qus-iraq-rumsfeld.Rwda_DO8.html

Not sure exactly what it means

38

Dear Milum and Sam: Yes, I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole when I mentioned the $150 million elementary school in Upper Bumfuck. I assumed most people would have easily figured that out by the hilarious yet fake name that I gave to the town.
However, the point I was trying to make was that the cost of reconstructing Iraq seems to be far in excess of what similar projects would cost in the US. I just read in the latest issue of Time that the administration’s request for $400 million to build two new prisons in Iraq would only cost $112 million for two comperable prisons in the US. (It is on p. 24 if anyone wants to look.) This stinks of official corruption, because of course it is going to be Bush-connected corporations that receive the no-bid contracts for this construction.

39

Actually, according to the President I’m wrong - it’s TWO million barrels a day. Almost back up to pre-war levels.

Cite: President’s weekly address

As for unemployment, I said it was bad, and it is. I think it’s running about 50% right now. But there are good reasons for that - mainly, that the place was a totalitarian dictatorship, and therefore lots and lots of people worked for the state, which no longer exists. So the coalition is working hard to privatize those state-run business and get them running again. Thousands of new businesses have started in Iraq since the end of the war.

Also, there were something like 650,000 people in the now-defunct military. I happen to think that it might have been a mistake to simply disband the military - they should have been kept employed and put to work on reconstruction at least.

But one thing to be aware of - just because everyone was employed before the war does not mean they were gainfully employed, or making much money. Wages had plummeted in Iraq, and most people were barely subsisting. The people who are being rehired are earning MUCH more money now. Police officers that were making $20/mo are now making $250. This helps them to be more dedicated and to lower corruption. Teachers and doctors get much more.

So things are moving along. Mistakes have been made, and will continue to be made. Just like they are in every large government project. I said this before the war, and I’ll say it again now - central planning sucks. My biggest reservations about the war had to do with reconstruction and an attempt by a government to re-shape an economy. I knew there would be plenty of screw-ups, and there have been.

But the fact is that the situation is getting better every day, and you can certainly see a positive future for Iraq if the U.S. doesn’t drop the ball and go home early (like the U.N. wants). If the Iraqi people are optimistic today and the majority see the occupation in a favorable light now, imagine how they’ll feel when the overall standard of living surpasses pre-war levels by a good margin.

A year from now, I predict Iraq will be in amazingly good shape - much better than people are predicting today. As the security situation improves, the pace of reconstruction will accelerate, and foreign investment will start flowing into the country.

Of course, the U.S. could still pull out early, causing a resurgence of attacks as the old regime hard-liners see an opening. Then we could see a breakdown of order, ethnic fighting, and a total disaster. I still also worry about some major attack - what if Saddam does have some chemical weapons hidden before the war, and there’s a gas attack on a place like Najaf? What would that do? And I also worry about these 10,000 Turks that are apparently going into the country. That seems like a dangerous situation. I suppose it could also be a good situation if it helps Turkey ally better with the new Iraq as a whole. But it’s a risky plan.

Overall, I’d say that my impression of the Iraq situation is one of guarded optimism, whereas the impression given by the media is one of increasing pessimism.

40

Frostillicus:

Don’t forget - It’s very expensive to bring in management and skilled workers from outside the country right now, because companies are having to pay hefty danger pay in order to attract the talent. Foreign construction workers that would earn $40,000 in the U.S. are being paid four times as much to convince them to go to Iraq and work.

In such a situation, companies are also going to tack on a pretty healthy premium for risk. Not just risk to their people (imagine how much their insurance costs, though), but risks of missing deadlines and budgets because of uncertainty.

But sure, I’ll bet you could find some instances of price gouging. I’d be the last guy to suggest that government procurement was efficient and cost-effective. Plus, there are a limited umber of companies that can do the kind of work required in that environment, and decisions have to be made quickly. If a company can’t spend the time it wants to do up a good bid, it’s going to err on the side of overbidding. And of course they are going to use their unique positions to extract every penny out of the government. Nature of the beast.