The List of What Good Works Are Being in Iraq

[SkipNewarkDE]

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I have a friend in Iraq working for one of the companies that is war profiteering, er, disposing of munitions. No, not the one that is a subsidiary of Halliburton. I will not mention her name, or publish her email message to me verbatim. Last time I did this, she was "visited" by some nice men in the army.

Anyway, there is this email going around supposedly written by a Chaplan telling of all of the good works going on in Iraq that just ISN'T being reported by the mainstream media. There are lots of nice things on this list of all that has been done in Iraq. (Please note my tone is just dripping sarcasm)

Never mind WMD's, look at the great humanitarian goals that have been reached:

====================================================

Making the rounds of GI e-mail traffic in Iraq these days is the following inspiring missive. It is reproduced below in its entirety and exactly as written:

Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1:

The first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty (~60,000 Iraqis providing security to citizens).

Nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.

The Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.

Power generation hit 4,518 megawatts (Oct), exceeding prewar output.

All 22 Universities & 43 technical institutes/colleges are open

Nearly all primary and secondary schools are open.

Coalition has "rehabbed" 1,500+ schools (500 ahead of schedule).

Teachers earn from 12-25 times their former salaries.

All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.

Doctors salaries are at least 8 times what they were under Saddam.

Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from almost zero to 12,000 tons.

Coalition has helped administer 22 million+ vaccinations to children.

Coalition has cleared 14,000+km of Iraq's 27,000km of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created 100,000+ jobs for Iraqi men & women.

Coalition has restored over 3/4 of prewar telephone services and 2/3+ of potable water production.
and 4,900+ full-service telephone connections (~50,000 by year-end).

Commerce is expanding rapidly (bicycles, satellite dishes, cars, trucks, etc) in all major cities and towns.

95% of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.

Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.

The central bank is fully independent.
Iraq has one of the world's most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.

Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.

Satellite TV dishes are legal.

Foreign journalists are not on "10-day visas" paying mandatory fees to the Ministry of Information for minders. There is no such Ministry.

There are 170+ newspapers.

Foreign journalists (and everyone else) are free to come and go.

A nation that had not one single element - legislative, judicial or executive - of a representative government, now does.

In Baghdad alone, residents have selected 88 advisory councils.

Baghdad's democratic transfer of power (1st in 35 years); city council elected its new chairman.

Iraqi Chambers of commerce, businesses, schools and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.

25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business of government.

The Iraqi gov't regularly participates in international events.

Since July the Iraqi gov't has been represented in 24+ international meetings, including UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank, IMF and the Islamic Conference Summit.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it is reopening 30+ Iraqi embassies worldwide.

Shia religious festivals (all but banned) are no longer illegal.

For the first time in 35 years, in Karbala, thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.

The Coalition has completed 13,000+ reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.

Uday and Queasy are dead, and no longer feeding Iraqis to the zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq's soccer players for losing games, or murdering critics.

Children aren't imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.

Political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.

Millions of long-suffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.

As a side effect, in neighboring countries, (1) Saudis will hold municipal elections, (2) Qatar is reforming education to give more choices to parents, (3) Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms,
(4) The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded (first time) to an Iranian (Muslim woman) who speaks out for human rights/democracy & peace.

Saddam is gone.

Iraq is free.

Little or none of this information has been published by the Press Corps that prides itself on bringing you all the news that's important.  Iraq, under US lead control, has come further in six months than Germany did in seven years or Japan did in nine years following WWII. Military deaths from fanatic Nazi's and Japanese numbered in the thousands and continued for over three years after WWII victory was declared. It took the US over four months to clear away the twin tower
debris, let alone attempt to build something else in its place.

Now, take into account that many people in our government and media continue to claim on a daily basis on national TV that this conflict has been a failure. Taking everything into consideration, even the unfortunate loss of our sons and daughters in this conflict, do you
think any other country in the world could have accomplished as much as the United States and its coalition partners have in so short a period of time?

Karl Nielson LT, CHC, Chaplin, USNR

======================================================

Now do you think this Chaplin actually wrote this thing?

[trumad]

1. This has been posted a thousand times here at DU

bottom line...How many Iraquies have died since the start of this war...and if everything is so wonderful how come they want us the fuck out?

[SkipNewarkDE]

2. Hadn't seen it before

Well, my bad, as I had not seen it on DU before.

Has this thing been debunked, so far as its source?

[EdGy]

3. irrelevant

even if these things are true they would be minor compared to the damage that Bush has done:

• to Iraq, its stability and internal cohesion
  
• to the region itself, as Al Qaeda has been pumped up big time by the Bush war on Iraq
  
• to the stability of the world, as Bush diverted massive resources away from fighting terrorism and wasted them on getting rid of a toothless Saddam Hussein
  
• to the safety of the US and the world, as the war on Iraq has made us all less safe.

Not worth the trade, even if all what this email is saying were true.

[Drifter]

4. Hard to debunk ...

since some of it is opinion.

"Iraq is Free"
(You can tell by the daily demonstrations against our presence)

"Political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam."
(Nope, instead of Saddam it is the US)

and here is the best one ...

"Millions of long-suffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror"
(Yep, now it covers just about everyone, not just Millions).

This is bullshit.
Life sucks in Iraq, and it is our fault.

Cheers
Drifter

[ugarte]

5. Yeah, so?? $100 billion buys a lot

Think of all the good works $100 billion could do in the USA. It would make quite a nice list, I'm sure. The Democrats should put an ad together, showing just what all the money going to Iraq could do for the poor and unemployed Americans.

[adjwilli]

6. What if we had lifted sanctions...

For such a long time, Iraq was living under UN sanctions, and before that, it was one of the more quickly developing and prosperous nations in the region. If we had never gotten involved there way long ago, or moved to impose those UN nation, all of these benefits we're touting now could have been far exceeded today.

[VolcanoJen]

7. This reeks of Astroturf.

Something tells me that if we did a quick Google of some of the key passages, we'll discover that it shows up in dozens of local newspapers, each time "written" by a different author...

[tom_paine]

Dupe.

[tom_paine]

11. Exactly. Astroturf or a forgery

The Busheviks have extensive experience with both.

[adjwilli]

8. If we never imposed sanctions...

I think we probably have to take for granted that most of those claims are true. But, there is still the issue of why they were in such bad shape in the first place. For such a long time, Iraq was living under UN sanctions, and before that, it was one of the more quickly developing and prosperous nations in the region. If we had never gotten involved there way long ago, or moved to impose those UN nation, all of these benefits we're touting now could have been far exceeded today.

[VolcanoJen]

9. This is astroturf, actually... even Paul Bremer's used it!!

trumad's right; this list has been posted at DU many times before. Is this the same piece of infamous astroturf that turned up in many "letters to the editor" sections across the country?

Here's a link containing the same basic "letter;" this seems to imply RADM Robert A. Rosen, Commander, New York Naval Militia, actually wrote the piece:

http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/nynm/news/newsletter/page1.html

In this funny link (my personal favorite), Paul Bremer seems to read most of this "list," passing it off as his own:

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/transcripts/20031009_Oct-09Bremerpresscon.htm

Here's yet another link with the same list; this time the author credited is CPT John B. Broam, Commander, A/1-1 Avn.

http://www.richmichaels.com/iraq_success.htm

And finally (for our purposes, but if you Google some key phrases, you'll turn up pages and pages of links), here's NewsMax's version, which is the same as the one posted in the original post of this thread:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/1/10/202213.shtml

[tom_paine]

12. Some more astroturf from the Imperial Sturmtruppen

http://www.strategypage.com/respect/articles/iraq_the_untold_story.asp

(this copy attributed to Lt. Col Scott A. Seitz)

http://www.coverups.com/goodnews.htm

(My Gosh and what a shock! Here's the same letter atributed to Don Harribine USN (ret.))

http://www.brookesnews.com/031512iraqtruth.html

(and yet another "from an Army Colonel")

http://www.baxterbulletin.com/news/stories/20040311/opinion/53500.html

(this copy was OBVIOUSLY independantly arrived at due the the different paragraphing style, attributed to a Dr. "Bill Smith")

Can we defeat these Orwellian Monsters? They deluge us with "Trotsky's Perpetual Revolution" and we have neither the time or money to debunk them all.

Will Civil War 2 be the only remedy possible?

I just don't know anymore.

[greekspeak]

10. Some to whom this story is attributed:

Commanding Officer at MWSS-171 to his Soldiers
http://ktts.springfield.net/showdetail/rec_id/820

Sgt. Adam Wickersham
http://www.martinworks.com/hero/goodnewssgtiniraq.html

Sent by YNCS Don Harribine, USN (Ret), NCPOA
http://www.keepingapace.com/blogarchives/war/iraq_progress_unreported.php

A Free Republic post by Ragtime Cowgirl with source info from the Coalition Provisional Authority
http://weblog.sinteur.com/archives/003385.html

This was only from page 1 of the google search I did.

[VolcanoJen]

13. You know, it's really pretty sad.

The military is held in very, very high regard by almost all Americans. They just don't need to try this hard; spin this furiously. They weaken their already-good standing in the eyes of most Americans by using this ghostwritten piece of astroturf, and then disingenuously signing their own names to it.

Hasn't anyone in the military heard of the Honor Code?

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of these soldiers, sailors and officers don't even exist, and the ones that do exist may have no idea what is being perpetrated in their name.