A few words of preamble on this thread. I'm posting this thread not because of some flighty frivolous desire to bash Pax American, rather this is about Iraq and the real situation there.
The War In Iraq has been a concern of mine since about one month after 9/11 when I realised what was about to happen in Iraq. Even from there I could see January 2005 as clearly as a wide-eyed deer in my headlights. Since that time I have passively studied the situation as it developed day by day, investigating from the armchair...watching it all unfold with a critical eye.
More than half the threads here melt down quickly into dems bashing reps, yanks bashing canucks and visa versa, and while it can be fun or boring, most of the arrow slinging has been said and said again. We all know who we are. I think Bush is an idiot. Others think he is a pillar of the community. These two view points will never change until hell freezes. We are stuck with each other. We are also stuck with a war. But so is Iraq, stuck.
My stake in the ground driven here is: if humanity is to form an educated opinion, they must not be kept in ignorance of the facts. This thread is about that concept.
Regardless of what side we take, the war in Iraq has occured. The War 'IS".
The Iraq War is a mess. It is tragic. It is unjustifiable. It appears unresolvable. That my friends is the world perspective, the opinion of the vast majority, note that was 'World View' . For those 59,000,000 million Americans that voted for Bush's war, they are disconnected from the global reality. They are blind to the facts, and worse they seem to care not. They have only God on their side. The rest of the world is indisagreement.
There are two Iraq realities, the one we see on CNN, and the other Iraq, the one that 'is'. The American, and the Canadian press do not report reality in Iraq because they do not even see it, never mind the issues that they mostly keep silent on.. Below is a journalist's take on Iraq's reality He was there. He saw. He wrote.
This reporter's version of realility that follows is factual because he, like Scott Taylor, was indeed there. He risked his life in order to give you this perspective. I think we owe it to him and to ourselves to at least read it. Here my friends is one man's reality.. Iraq's reality.
The War In Iraq has been a concern of mine since about one month after 9/11 when I realised what was about to happen in Iraq. Even from there I could see January 2005 as clearly as a wide-eyed deer in my headlights. Since that time I have passively studied the situation as it developed day by day, investigating from the armchair...watching it all unfold with a critical eye.
More than half the threads here melt down quickly into dems bashing reps, yanks bashing canucks and visa versa, and while it can be fun or boring, most of the arrow slinging has been said and said again. We all know who we are. I think Bush is an idiot. Others think he is a pillar of the community. These two view points will never change until hell freezes. We are stuck with each other. We are also stuck with a war. But so is Iraq, stuck.
My stake in the ground driven here is: if humanity is to form an educated opinion, they must not be kept in ignorance of the facts. This thread is about that concept.
Regardless of what side we take, the war in Iraq has occured. The War 'IS".
The Iraq War is a mess. It is tragic. It is unjustifiable. It appears unresolvable. That my friends is the world perspective, the opinion of the vast majority, note that was 'World View' . For those 59,000,000 million Americans that voted for Bush's war, they are disconnected from the global reality. They are blind to the facts, and worse they seem to care not. They have only God on their side. The rest of the world is indisagreement.
There are two Iraq realities, the one we see on CNN, and the other Iraq, the one that 'is'. The American, and the Canadian press do not report reality in Iraq because they do not even see it, never mind the issues that they mostly keep silent on.. Below is a journalist's take on Iraq's reality He was there. He saw. He wrote.
This reporter's version of realility that follows is factual because he, like Scott Taylor, was indeed there. He risked his life in order to give you this perspective. I think we owe it to him and to ourselves to at least read it. Here my friends is one man's reality.. Iraq's reality.
continued...Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.
His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The NewStandard and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald and Islam Online, to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and Arabic. On the radio, Dahr is a special correspondent for Flashpoints and reports for the BBC, Democracy Now!, and numerous other stations around the globe.
Dahr has spent a total of 6 months in occupied Iraq, and has now returned to continue reporting on the occupation. One of only a few independent reporters in Iraq, Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.
Iraq: The Devastation
by Dahr Jamail and Tom Engelhardt
January 8, 2005
Measure Iraq any way you want and it adds up to disaster: Less electricity is now being delivered than in the Saddam Hussein years; infant malnourishment has, according to a Norwegian study, doubled in the same time period ("It's on the level of some African countries," says the deputy director of the institute that conducted the study); attacks on the country's oil infrastructure are now so severe that no oil whatsoever is leaving the country heading north; there are far more insurgents and sympathizers (over 200,000 and growing) than American troops in the country, according to a recent estimate by Iraq's national intelligence chief; new plans with a distinctly Vietnam-ish ring to them are being developed to place sizeable numbers of American "advisers" with newly trained Iraqi military units that are under siege and crumbling (to "bolster the Iraqi will to fight") – and that just scratches the surface of this moment.
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