3. Macia #130. Since this thread is not moving too quickly today, I am taking the liberty of posting this letter from one of our local talk show hosts to another in Baltimore. The link at the end goes to the website where the data was obtained.
Maryland's NEWS - TALK- SPORTS Station A great email from Sean Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - Bruce, The caller that described reconstruction efforts in Iraq can simply go to the Army Corps of Engineers website to find that he has been mislead: From page 6 of the Iraqi Reconstruction Report: Mr. Popps [Logistics Director] said it is first important to understand what the rebuilding team inherited. U.S. intelligence knew little about the actual state of Iraq's energy infrastructure and social service network. When the Army Corps of Engineers got on the ground, there was shock: The three regional sewage treatments plants in greater Baghdad did not work; raw waste poured into the Tigris River and downstream through villages. SadrCity, the impoverished Shi'iteslum repressed by the ruling Sunni Ba'athParty, lacked any sewage system. "Some slam the Americans because there is sewage in SadrCity," said an incredulous Mr. Popps. "Please." Few towns had a central supply of clean water. The electrical grid suffered under 1950s technology and disrepair. Saddam Hussein starved the rest of the country of power to give the capital of 6 million about 20 hours a day. The country lacked any primary health care facilities; hospitalsand schools were run down and lacked supplies. New hospitals had not been built in 20 years. More than half the public healthcenters remained closed. Of 13,000 schools, more than 10,000 needed significant renovations.The Pentagon in 2003 summoned American firms to get reconstruction started in the absence of Iraqi ministries that could supervise and a private sector that was in shambles under Saddam's totalitarian rule. "The ministries were jammed with people who did nothing," Mr. Popps said. "They sat around and smoked and drank tea and held 'worry beads.' It was an economy based on incompetence and corruption.“Today, the Pentagon is handing out a score sheet: Six new primary care facilities, with 66 more under construction; 11 hospitals renovated; more than 800 schools fixed up; more than 300 police stations and facilities and 248 border control forts. Added 407,000 cubic meters per day of water treatment; a new sewage-treatment system for Basra; work on Baghdad's three plants continues; oil production exceeds the 2002 level of 2 million barrels a day by 500,000. The Ministry of Electricity now sends power to Baghdad for four to eight hours a day, and 10 to 12 for the rest of the country. Iraqis are now free to buy consumer items such as generators, which provide some homes with power around-the-clock.Mr. Popps said all this was accomplished despite a concerted effort by terrorists to bomb construction sites and kill workers. Imagine if the US military had control of the Middle Eastern media like the jihadist have over the courtier press here? Our problems would've been over years ago. Best, Sean For more details:
- 2. Phsstpok #298. We have gone soft and happy in our own cosy little lives and do not want to face reality and bad things. Continuing our tradition (hey, twice is a tradition in America, we're a young country) of trading Churchill quotes, this one may apply to the current discussion: If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. Although every loss is tragic, according to this post by syriacus, we have lost fewer troops in Iraq in the years we've been there than were lost in one week in Korea. Truly, compared to the stakes, the question of victory or defeat in Iraq is not truly costly, as wars go.
- 1. Anita #180. Well said, Rod. What these MSM & dems don't understand - Dems didn't win ANY mandate to change policy decisions. If anything, House republicans lost NOT because they are conservative, but in MSM's sense behaved like moderates. 15 Republicans who voted in favor of stem cell research funding, lost. and Pelosi is tooting it as their main agenda. The reason for their loss is "distancing" from the Prersident & conservative principles, not otherwise.
