Militants Kidnap Three Iraq Officials

Associated Press ^ | January 8, 2005 | Dusan Stojanovic

[1LongTimeLurker]

How can someone start a blog, let alone maintain one, without a reliable source of electricity?

It takes all of about 5 minutes to update a blog, and you can do it via mobile phone if you can send either SMS or e-mail from the phone.

My favorite blog has been Healing Iraq - http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/ - it is written by a guy who lives in Basra but works often in Baghdad, though it isn't updated all that frequently anymore. On the right side of the page you'll see links to dozens more blogs written by people living in Iraq.

Blogs are the death of the MSM. :-)

[stylin19a]

you're using some old statistics...the AVERAGE is 13 hours a day electricity over all Iraq.

More than 7,000 reconstruction projects are under way or had been completed. Roads, rail, bridges, airports, water treatment plants, sewage and thousands of schools had been upgraded or rebuilt and large-scale public health projects were under way.

The fuel shortage IS getting worse. 18 hour lines and 50 cent a gallon for 5 cent a gallon gas.

Look at the whole picture, not just US MSM news reports.

[bozot]

"All Iraqi's are permitted to own an AK-47,..."

That is about true... If you remember the weapon's collection programs, they only asked for the heavy wepons, and not the small arms.

And I think here is an other problem... By overstating Saddam's evilness and how much of a dictator he was, sadly many people got misslead.

No question he was a dictator, but keeping beliving the the rumors on the level that he was drinking children's blood for breakfast can be missleading and strategically disatrous.

You have to consider the followings if you try to understand the situation there:
Iraq was the arab state with the highest living standard and relative freedom before the Iraq-Iran war started.
Free education and medical care, voting rights for women, non-religious government and in general comfortable life...
The only people endangering this was the kurds on the north by trying to set up their own state, and the Shiits in the south who wanted an islamic state....
This explains his tough stance against these, and the relative big opposition now against the changes...

I know that keep painting negative pictures of the enemy may raise the moral and helps to fight them, but it have the danger of underestimate it and that is no good...