Sadly, there is little good news to report from Iraq

[Barrett808]

Sadly, there is little good news to report from Iraq
By Clark Hoyt, Knight Ridder Newspapers

It's astonishing that Mark Yost, from the distance and safety of St. Paul, Minn., presumes to know what's going on in Iraq. He knows the reporting of hundreds of brave journalists, presumably including his own Knight Ridder colleagues Hannah Allam and Tom Lassetter, is bad because his Marine colonel buddy tells him so.

Yost asks why you don't read about progress being made in the power grid, which the colonel oversaw. Maybe it's because there is no progress. Iraqis currently have electricity for an average of nine hours a day. A year ago, they averaged 10 hours of electricity.

Iraq's oil production is still below pre-war levels. The unemployment rate is between 30 percent and 40 percent. New cases of hepatitis have doubled over the rate of 2002, largely because of problems with getting clean drinking water and disposing of sewage.

The "unfiltered news" Yost gets from his military friends is in fact filtered by their isolation in the Green Zone and on American military bases from the Iraqi population, an isolation made necessary by the ferocity of the insurgency. To say that isn't to argue that their perspective is invalid. It's just limited and incomplete.

Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau chief, Hannah Allam, has read Mark Yost's column. Her response, from the front, says it far better than I could:

"It saddens me to read Mark Yost's editorial in the Pioneer Press, the Knight Ridder paper that hired me as a rookie reporter and taught me valuable lessons in life and journalism during the four years I spent there before heading to Iraq. I invite Mr. Yost to spend a week in our Baghdad bureau, where he can see our Iraqi staff members' toothbrushes lined up in the bathroom because they have no running water at home. I frequently find them camping out in the office overnight because electricity is still only sporadic in their sweltering neighborhoods, despite what I'm sure are the best-intentioned efforts of people like his Marine buddy working on the electrical grid."

(more)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/krwashbureau/20050714/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_usiraq_hoyt_commentary_wa

[jedr]

1. not that I doubt you, but if things are that bad;

Those who are living in this have little to loose to a civil war. Can a mass revolution be close at hand?

[Barrett808]

2. I think we'll find out soon enough... n/t