Iraq at the Gates of Hell

[chat_noir]

Tomgram: Iraq at the Gates of Hell

George Bush's Iraq in 21 Questions


Recently, in one of many speeches melding his Global War on Terror and his war in Iraq, George W. Bush said, "Victory in Iraq will be difficult and it will require more sacrifice. The fighting there can be as fierce as it was at Omaha Beach or Guadalcanal. And victory is as important as it was in those earlier battles. Victory in Iraq will result in a democracy that is a friend of America and an ally in the war on terror. Victory in Iraq will be a crushing defeat for our enemies, who have staked so much on the battle there. Victory in Iraq will honor the sacrifice of the brave Americans who have given their lives. And victory in Iraq would be a powerful triumph in the ideological struggle of the 21st century."

...

So what exactly does "victory" in George Bush's Iraq look like 1,288 days after the invasion of that country began with a "shock-and-awe" attack on downtown Baghdad? A surprising amount of information related to this has appeared in the press in recent weeks, but in purely scattershot form. Here, it's all brought together in 21 questions (and answers) that add up to a grim but realistic snapshot of Bush's Iraq.


How much of Bush's Iraq can now be covered by Western journalists?

Approximately 2%, according to New York Times journalist Dexter Filkins, now back from Baghdad on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. Filkins claims that "98 percent of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has now become ‘off-limits' for Western journalists." There are, he says, many situations in Iraq "even too dangerous for Iraqi reporters to report on." (Such journalists, working for Western news outlets, "live in constant fear of their association with the newspaper being exposed, which could cost them their lives. ‘Most of the Iraqis who work for us don't even tell their families that they work for us,' said Filkins.")


How is Iraqi reconstruction going?

Over three years after the invasion, the national electricity grid can only deliver electricity to the capital, on average, one out of every four hours (and that's evidently on a good day). At the beginning of September, Iraq's oil minister spoke hopefully of raising the country's oil output to 3 million barrels a day by year's end. That optimistic goal would just bring oil production back to where it was more or less at the moment the Bush administration, planning to pay for the occupation of Iraq with that country's "sea" of oil, invaded. According to a Pentagon study, "Measuring security and stability in Iraq," released in August, inflation in that country now stands at 52.5%. (Damien Cave of the New York Times suggests that it's closer to 70%, with fuel and electricity up 270% from the previous year); the same Pentagon study estimates that "about 25.9% of Iraqi children examined were stunted in their physical growth" due to chronic malnutrition which is on the rise across Iraq. (emphasis mine)


http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=125142

[oblivious]

1. May the warmongers burn in hell.