THE NEWS FROM IRAQ IS GOOD, WELL KINDA SORTA

President Bush is, as he said on his press conference this week on our economy, a “happy fellow”, so on the progress in Iraq, he must be an ecstatic guy. Consider first these stat lines: There is power for 8 hours a day, there are 2,000,000 displaced Iraqi’s in Iraq, and 2,000,000 refugees in Jordan and Syria. To continue, civilian casualties range from 85,000 to 600,000 (depending on who’s talking) while Saddam is said to have killed about 50,000 while he was in charge. There are “only” 65 attacks a day, and 30% of the workforce is unemployed, and this is the good news – plus people are out in cafes well past 10:00 p.m., whereas a year ago if they violated the 9:00 p.m. curfew, they were arrested or shot or we guess both.
We’re told the troops have to stay after 5 years because the Iraqi government still can’t provide security or basic services. A few thoughts on this, they had 24 hour power under Saddam and 29,000,000 people instead of 27,000,000 people. The percentage of fleeing Iraqis is the equivalent of 20,000,000 people having been forced from the United States. At the rate of the improvements, Mr. McCain’s 100 year war (do the 5 already spent count?) may be enough time to get back to the 2003 levels and without Saddam. Although . . . in 100 years, he’d have been gone already, right?