The Iraq thread 3

[Col. Kurtz 0]

From the beloved BBC comes-'Bush wants to know the facts about WMD's in Iraq'

Quote[/b] ]US President George W Bush has said he wants to "know the facts" about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The White House has been under pressure to set up an investigation into why no weapons have been found in Iraq.

In his remarks on Friday, Mr Bush did not address whether an inquiry would be set up as recommended by the ex-chief US arms inspector David Kay and others.

Those calls have been fuelled by a White House admission that the pre-war intelligence may have been flawed.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday became the first senior member of the Bush administration to acknowledge publicly that the data used as the key argument for invading Iraq may have been wrong.

President Bush said he wanted to be able to compare what was found by the Iraq Survey Group formerly headed by Mr Kay with what had been thought before the war.

"I want to know the facts," he said.

Wow, I thought he already knew the facts about Iraq's WMD's before he invaded...

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Play nice please people,

Let´s welcome him with respect and invite him to our pleasure dome of international lies, flaws and WMD´s that have an attached invisible-generator from area 51 !

HELLO !

Germany did not get any oil from Iraq. Fact.

Everybody including the USA had fluent trade with Iraq. FACT !

ALL the greedy european nations invaded Iraq to get control of the oil.

Hmm NO !

Surprise it was little bushie with all his tin soldiers going in to bring freedom justice and especially the great bombing american way.

What do you want to tell us guys from old europe ?

Did we start the war ? Do I see any european hands up ? No ?

It was little cowboy Bush with all his wizard friends from the TBA who say "Puff, Puff" and have ORIGINAL intel on WMD´s.

"OMG lock the kids to the cellar and bomb those guys back to stoneage !!"

Is this the way it had to be ? There were no alternatives ? No?

How blind can someone still be to not see the prior interests your government had when they decided to go to war.

Rice, Cheyne, Bush, Powell all are winding in "failure" , "error", "flaws" etc.

DO you really beliefe decisions like going to war are based on "flawed" intelligance info ? If so fire your government. If not and there were other reasons fire your government. There is no reason that would justify such a bad work by a government and it´s participating members.

If decisions for a war are made on fals intel in your country I would search for the emergency brake handle.

Quote[/b] ]oliver north went on tv with a homemade camera in iraq and filmed the weapons in the depots from france germany and russia for millions to see

Provide a link. I want to have a laugh about that guy again.

Haha ! Is he allowed on TV ?

[JP226 0]

you know i couldn't outright find germany given oil contracts but seeing as they took a stance much like france and russia who did recieve substantial amounts makes me wonder anyway here is the list:

http://abcnews.go.com/section....-1.html

P.S. about the economies i'm not much in the mood to argue it so i'll leave it at that but i have to throw in one last comment, that was during 2002 during the US rescession and the US economy grew by record amounts in 03 and the majority of the aticle is more of a study of energy consumption rather than overall economic strength value wealth what have you

and the reason that france germany and russia didn't invade for what i can see is that they didn't need to they alrdy controlled the oil flow

[denoir 0]

you know i couldn't outright find germany given oil contracts but seeing as they took a stance much like france and russia who did recieve substantial amounts makes me wonder anyway here is the list:

http://abcnews.go.com/section....-1.html

Check the first page of this thread, it was discussed there.

Quote[/b] ]P.S. about the economies i'm not much in the mood to argue it so i'll leave it at that but i have to throw in one last comment, that was during 2002 during the US rescession and the US economy grew by record amounts in 03 and the majority of the aticle is more of a study of energy consumption rather than overall economic strength value wealth what have you

You can check other references. There are plenty of them since it seems to be the official number. And what I posted was a US government source, I think that from your point of view there should be no more credible source

As for record growth, yes. The growth was 7.2% which puts the US GDP at 10.8 trillion, which is still far less than 14 trillion (and I havn't inluded the EU economy growth which was about 1% during 2003). So still, due to the weak dollar and the strong euro, the EU GDP is still considerably higher.

But this is all irrelevant to the Iraq case if we can all agree that the opposition to the war was not based on that "everybody hates the rich kid on the block", as you put it.

[turms 0]

I found a nice article about us economy.

Reuters

Quote[/b] ]The weaker-than-expected GDP figures spurred a sharp rise in U.S. Treasury prices while the dollar initially weakened after the report was issued, as investors weighed whether U.S. economic activity might not be as vigorous as thought.

Analysts noted the fourth-quarter performance was above the economy's long-term sustainable rate of 3 percent but was likely to raise questions whether consumers, whose spending has led the recovery from the 2001 recession, might be flagging.

[denoir 0]

Here are two very interesting articles, the first one from TIME magazine and talks about Cheney's refusal to face reality and the second is from Slate, talking about the history of mr David Kay.

Quote[/b] ]

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'> President Bush's Naked Envoy

Dick Cheney still insists against the evidence that Saddam was a WMD menace</span>

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'><span style='font-family:Times New Roman'>Somebody, please tell Dick Cheney to put on some clothes. Like the naked emperor of the fairy tale, the Vice President is on a sweep through Europe asking for help in Iraq, at the same time as insisting that the Iraq invasion had maintained U.S. credibility: "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are," Cheney told a polite but skeptical audience of power brokers at Davos. "At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve."

Cheney's John Wayne posturing -- "direct threats require decisive action" -- suggests that he must think the Europeans hadn't noticed that the Bush administration has been forced to concede that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The "gathering danger" of which Cheney continues to speak was but a phantom menace. When the fall of Saddam's regime and the occupation of Iraq had failed to reveal the massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of which the Bush team had warned - nor the nuclear weapons program that Cheney insisted had been reconstituted - the Bushies insisted that given time, they would provide the evidence to back up the extravagant prewar claims of the unconventional weapons threat from Iraq. Last week, however, they appeared to quietly give up the ghost. David Kay, the CIA weapons inspector put in charge of the hunt by the Bush and told National Public Radio that Iraq had no stockpiles of banned weapons when the war began last March.

Some in the administration, like Secretary of State Colin Powell,graciously acknowledged the egg on their faces. Powell told reporters aboard his plane that his indictment of Iraq at the UN Security Council a year ago was based on what U.S. intelligence believed to be true at the time - a prospect rendered rather frightening by rereading Powell's presentation, widely hailed at the time as making the most credible case for war, of which remarkably little bears up. A comprehensive analysis of the fate of various prewar claims by the British American Security Information Council (http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Research/2004WMD3.htm#01) suggests that Bush and Blair may have done better to listen more carefully to chief UN weapons inspector Dr. Hans Blix. The UN never actually claimed that Iraq still had stockpiles of banned weapons; merely that it had not provided the evidence to vouch for its claim to have destroyed all of those weapons. Treated like an ineffectual appeaser by most of the U.S. media before the war, Blix suddenly looks like the only one who had it right and quite a few publications, and politicians, owe him an apology.

Kay's comments, of course, are a refreshing departure for a man, who as Slate's Fred Kaplan notes, had mastered the art

of building castles out of thin air, artfully choosing his words to allow administration sound-bite authors to imply that WMD evidence was imminent. Kay did, of course, do his former employers the service of trying to pin the blame for going to war under false pretenses onto the CIA.

That seems to be the White House fallback position, too, although Press Secretary Scott McClellan gamely suggests that Kay's conclusion may be "premature" - in other words, don't expect us to confirm the obvious until after November.

To be sure, there's no doubt that the intelligence community got it badly wrong on Iraq. But there's also plenty of evidence, well documented in a study by the Carnegie Endowment,  to suggest that the intelligence community was placed under considerable pressure to provide the answers on Iraq that the administration's hawks wanted to hear.

Some advocates of going to war to stop a WMD threat on U.S. soil have admitted their error: Former National Security Council official Ken Pollack, for instance, whose book "The Gathering Storm" made the case for many a liberal hawk that invasion was the only way to stop Saddam becoming a nuclear threat, provides an excruciatingly detailed explanation of how and why U.S. intelligence erred, but more importantly, concludes with a warning that Vice President Cheney might heed: "Fairly or not, no foreigner trusts U.S. intelligence to get it right anymore, or trusts the Bush Administration to tell the truth. The only way that we can regain the world's trust is to demonstrate that we understand our mistakes and have changed our ways."

Faced with an increasingly complex and messy situation in Iraq, the U.S. needs a lot more international help extricating itself than it needed going in - indeed, Washington's ability to prevent its standoff with the Shiite majority over elections from erupting into confrontation now depends on a UN team agreeing that elections by June are not practical. Mr. Cheney's mission in Europe appears to have been to mend fences in order to win European backing in Iraq and elsewhere. The problem, however, is that not only was

U.S. diplomatic influence was severely damaged on the march to war, but that the failure of the invasion to produce the evidence to back Washington's claims has further dented its credibility. That's unlikely to be repaired as long as Cheney is acting as if David Kay had proved the earth was flat.</span></span>

Quote[/b] ]

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>The Art of Camouflage</span>

David Kay comes clean, almost.

By Fred Kaplan

David Kay's remarks over the weekend-that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction before the war and that U.S. intelligence agencies missed the signs that would have told them as much-held few surprises for anyone who'd closely read his official report on the matter last October.

Kay was the CIA's chief weapons inspector until he resigned last week. The difference between his report of last fall and his statements of recent days is that he was still on the Bush administration's payroll when he wrote the former and a free agent when he made the latter. It's the difference between obfuscation and clarity-political allegiance and public candor.

The discrepancy is not so much a comment on David Kay or George W. Bush as a general caution on how to read official reports.

For example, in an interview conducted late Saturday and published in today's New York Times, Kay says, "I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction. We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on."

Iraq's weapons and facilities, he says, had been destroyed in three phases: by allied bombardment in the 1991 Gulf War; by U.N. inspectors in the half-decade after that war; and by President Clinton's 1998 bombing campaign. (Clinton's airstrikes, by now widely forgotten, were even at the time widely dismissed as a political diversion; they took place during the weekend when the House of Representatives voted for impeachment. But according to Kay, they destroyed Iraq's remaining infrastructure for building chemical weapons.) Kay adds that Saddam tried to resuscitate some of these programs, but-due to sanctions, fear of inspections, and lack of resources-he was not able to do so.

Kay made these same points in his report last October, but it was easy to overlook them-in fact, the reader was meant to. Kay didn't exactly lie in the report; the points were there if you looked carefully; but he did his best to camouflage them.

There are tried and true methods to this art of camouflage. The idea is to deploy vague rhetoric and unchallengeable facts that seem menacing at first glance but on close inspection have no significance. The hope is that, if you play this game well enough, nobody will inspect them closely enough to notice.

For instance, Kay began his report by noting that Saddam Hussein's WMD program "spanned more than two decades" and "involved thousands of people and billions of dollars."

You had to read the next several pages to realize that these thousands of people and billions of dollars also "spanned more than two decades"?that, at least since 1991, nowhere near that much money or manpower was involved at any one time. You also have to read on to realize that, whatever the level of endeavor, its results were nil. In short, Kay wasn't lying. But he was setting a diversionary tone, at the top of the report, to please his bosses and give them ammo for sound bites.

Another example: Kay wrote, in a breathless style, that Saddam had set up "a clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service." Buried in the paragraphs to follow was Kay's conclusion that these labs and safehouses didn't produce anything of note. Similarly, the report warned that Saddam "may have engaged" in "research on a possible VX-stabilizer" (italics added), but said nothing about whether he actually developed any such thing or even possessed VX.

My favorite example of Kay's attempt to trump substance with style: Saddam's scientists "began several small and relatively unsophisticated research initiatives - that could have been useful in developing a weapons-relevant science base for the long-term." This description is so vague, it would accurately describe the act of reading a textbook on nuclear physics.

Kay did his job well. His report did not tell lies. But it puffed up enough smoke to let President Bush proclaim it as a justification for the war. Bush cited, with particular enthusiasm, the bit about Saddam's "clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses" - a phrase containing four words designed to raise the hair of anyone who's ever glanced at a spy novel.

Now that Kay has quit, he can tell the same story - but without the smokescreen.

In the Times interview, Kay does add one dimension to his tale?and it is the newest, most intriguing aspect of them all. In the late 1990s, it seems, Saddam took personal control of Iraq's WMD program. As a result, Iraqi scientists started going to him directly with proposals of fanciful weapons systems, for which Saddam paid them heaps of money. As Kay puts it, the WMD program turned into a "vortex of corruption." Saddam was deluded with fantasies; the scientists pocketed the money and filed phony progress reports on fake weapons systems.

Kay says the CIA's biggest failure lay in missing this internal deception. Though the Times piece doesn't say so, it's quite likely that the CIA itself was deceived, intercepting some of these phony reports and treating them as credulously as Saddam did. In any case, in the Times interview, Kay calls for an overhaul in the way the agency processes intelligence.

It is significant that Kay wrote nothing about the Iraqi scientists' deception campaign?and issued no such call for radical reform of the U.S. intelligence community?in his report last October. The omissions are the ultimate indicators that the report's main goal was to please and protect his employer.

Even now, Kay falls short of making a full break with the Bush administration. He continues to state that Iraq was a danger to the world, worth going to war against, even if not for the same reasons that Bush claimed. He tells the Times, "We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq. And now we know that there was little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities. I think it shows that Iraq was a very dangerous place. The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing through the country -- and no central control."

This is a puzzling sequence of non sequiturs. Terrorists may have been passing through, but Kay - who bases his other conclusions on interviews with many Iraqi scientists and examination of many documents - found nothing that suggests any contact between terrorists and scientists. The disarray of Saddam's rule may have meant there was "little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities," but, as Kay says elsewhere, there was also little in the way of Iraqi weapons. Having "the technology" is not the same thing as having the weapons; "the ability to produce" is not the same thing as producing.

It will be interesting to watch where David Kay goes next. On one level, he's come clean, but on another, he's still playing his old games.

[JP226 0]

those aren't bipartisan are theywhy do you try so hard to put the US down you completely neglect the inconsistency in your own news (BBC) and that of al jazeera if i really believed what was put up on this website i'd think the US is planning to invade the rest of the world, i'd think it is good to blow myself up and kill women and children why

one comment that infuriates me is Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Bush never said he was going only after those responisible for 9/11 in my veiw that would be irresponsible AMerica is stopping something that is evil just like we helped you guys out against the Soviet Union we're helping the rest of the world and it is to our mutual benefits he is waging a global war on terror he's stopping this from happening again not to just AMerica but to the EU and Asia and everyone else who cares you guys have tounderstand these fundamentalist will kill you if they are in the very room you are in right now reading this on your computer, they will kill you because you do not think they way they do. Now ask yourself, is that right? Saddam was a threat he had the know how and he was willing to do anything and everything in his power to hurt the western world the guy killed hundreds of thousands of his own people for all we know it could have been in the millions the war is injecting a better way of life into the middle east, saddam does not threaten the countries in the region as he did US forces surround Iran on both borders and the Iranina people are beginning to show signs of revolt for a better government WHICH IS GOOD, same thing is happening in Saudi Arabia and in only a matter of time that monarchy will fall another thing saddam can no longer do is pay the families of suicde bombers to kill innocent Isrealis and once the domino effect begins in the middle east the fighting will stop statistically the chances are much lower of democratic states going to war with one another anyway i guess that is enough of my rambling

[Tex -USMC- 0]

those aren't bipartisan are they

Does it really matter whether they are or not? How about instead of complaining about the relative political slants of a given article, how about you actually try and refute their contents?

[JP226 0]

is that your quote of i've been to 4 colleges in 7 years normally people tend to get out in 4 hehehe j/k

[shinRaiden 0]

Does anyone know where we can find reliable reports on school attendance rates, new school construction rates, utility coverage and managed blackout (ie turned off) areas and current damaged utility system capacity reports?

Of course it is 'not' going to work for the US.

If school rates are up, then they are being compelled to be in school. If they are down, Saddam was better.

If there are more new schools, its buying off the populace and padding the corrupt contractors. If there are less, Saddam was better.

If more folks have electricity, some still do not. If less have electricity, more had power with reprisal blackouts and postwar "forced due to chaos" looting of substations and power lines.

If more folks have water, it dosen't have flouride or clorination, or is flooding the ecologically sensative swamps. If less have water, Saddam gave more water to those living in the desert.

You get the point folks, that objective numbers really don't matter as long as you filter them with the proper subjective lenses. Speaking of which, I need to check the gamma filter in my Emerald City Green Glasses. I fear they are exceeding legal translucency.

[denoir 0]

one comment that infuriates me is Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Bush never said he was going only after those responisible for 9/11 in my veiw that would be irresponsible

Bush & Co tried to pin a 9/11 connection to Saddam, which failed. First they claimed that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi representative, not long before the WTC attacks. This claim was soon shown to be false as both were in different locations at the same time. In 2001 the CIA had already dismissed the connection, but before the Iraq war it was refered to by Bush administration officials. So while they were perfectly aware that no such link existed, they still tried to imply it in every possible way.

Second, Powell's briefing to the UN in 2002 included a fairly long briefing on Iraq's terrorist connections. Again, all those claims have been proven false and to this date there exist no evidence tying Saddam to AQ.

Saddam did support terrorists once upon a time, when he was fighting Iran. Those were however the "good kind of terrorists", you know, the kind that the US financed too. After the Iran war Saddam apparently lost interest in the terrorism business and could truly not be seen as a target of the so called "War on Terror". Also, the terrorists that Saddam once upon a time financed were the Arab-Communist types, not the Islamic-Funcamentalist type. As Saddam was a communist who persecuted Shia muslims, organizations like AQ loathed him.

By putting immense resources on going to war with Iraq instead of going after terrorists, Bush effectively sabotaged the "War on Terror".

Quote[/b] ]AMerica is stopping something that is evil just like we helped you guys out against the Soviet Union

This can be debated as there never was a war betwen the SU and USA. It's more like we were caught in the middle between a pissing contest between two superpowers. But, regardless, it has no bearing on the current situation.

Quote[/b] ]we're helping the rest of the world and it is to our mutual benefits

Well, we disagreed on that and the world disagreed on that. The absolute majority of the world thought it was a bad idea to invade Iraq and if you look at the post-war mess in the country, you can see that for now it looks indeed like it was a bad idea. Also, the justification that you gave (WMD) was a fairly transparent lie.

Quote[/b] ]he is waging a global war on terror he's stopping this from happening again not to just AMerica but to the EU and Asia and everyone else who cares you guys have tounderstand these fundamentalist will kill you if they are in the very room you are in right now reading this on your computer, they will kill you because you do not think they way they do.

And what has this to do with Iraq or Saddam? He was a secular dictator that had as little in common with fundamentalists as you do. Actually much less, since you financed them once upon a time to fight the naughty Soviets.

Quote[/b] ]Now ask yourself, is that right? Saddam was a threat he had the know how and he was willing to do anything and everything in his power to hurt the western world

The point is he wasn't a threat. He didn't even have control over his own territory, much less the resources to wage a war. Saddam Hussein was contained and the only people who he was a threat to were the Iraqis. This war was however not a humanitarian mission to save the Iraqi people. If Bush was looking at helping another nation, there would be at least a dozen of nations that are under worse oppression than the Iraqis were. Or he could have stayed in Afghanistan and helped the people there, instead of abandoning them.

This war was declared on the basis that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of WMD which he any second could fire or give to one of his many terrorists friends. As it was, Saddam had no WMD and he had no terrorist friends.

Quote[/b] ]the guy killed hundreds of thousands of his own people for all we know it could have been in the millions

Yes he was a brutal dictator, as many of America's former and current friend (not just America's, but the whole world's). That he was a murderer was very obviously already in the early 80's when he used chemical weapons against the Kurds and the Iranians. Not only did America do nothing to stop him then, but continued to give and sell him weapons, military intelligence and full political support.

So excuse me if your now sudden empathy for the victims of Saddam doesn't seem all that sincere.

Quote[/b] ]the war is injecting a better way of life into the middle east

Very very questionable. Right now it's only worse. Iraq's a mess. The quality of life for the Iraqis has dropped severely. Terrorists have gotten a new cause. The Arab world hates America more than ever. US troops are getting killed every day etc etc

Things have not gotten better. And this was what those opposed to the war warned about.

Edit: One more thing - a personal appeal: Please, please, use capital letters and punctuation to separate sentences. Right now it's very difficult to read your posts.

[denoir 0]

Does anyone know where we can find reliable reports on school attendance rates, new school construction rates, utility coverage and managed blackout (ie turned off) areas and current damaged utility system capacity reports?

No, but you can get some clues from what they're not saying. The only one in place that is able to tell the rebuilding progress in numbers is Bremer and his merry men.

They have been repeating that "progress is being made", but they have never quantified it. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

From media reporting what can be said for certain is that the availability of good has improved. The biggest problems are security and unemployment. The security problem needs no further introduction, and has led to an acute shortage of civil contractors that could rebuild Iraq. Schools have opened, but few dare to send their children, due to the security problem. Unemployment rates are disasterous.

It also very much depends on where you look. In Basra for instance things are much better than in Baghdad.

The political situation is as you described it a couple of pages back, a farce. Every faction is looking for a way of rigging the election in their favour and the biggest Shiia party is not even allowed to participate.

At the same time, USA is reducing within the next few months its military force by a third.

Here's a fairly recent (26/1 04) article on the subject from AP (American news wire)

Quote[/b] ]  

Baghdad Struggles to Reinvent Itself  

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)--There's hardly a street without a mound of festering garbage or a puddle of sewage. Crime is rampant. Gray concrete blast barriers and coils of barbed wire are everywhere. Power cuts of up to 12 hours a day are routine. Fuel shortages are common.

Traffic is gridlocked for most of the day, but the streets are deserted soon after nightfall. Sporadic gunfire is often heard late at night. Prices are soaring.

Once the capital of a glorious medieval empire and more recently a city known for its Soviet-style order, wide boulevards and grand monuments, today's Baghdad encases the pains of a nation struggling to adjust to new realities, recover from three wars and cope with fears of ongoing violence.

``This is the saddest city in the world,'' lamented one resident, Qasim al-Sabti.

Life here is not entirely bleak, especially for those who ran afoul of Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship.

``I can freely live now. I don't expect anyone to knock on my door at dawn and take me away to prison and I can sue anyone who does me an injustice,'' said Hussein al-Jaaf, an education official and newspaper columnist who spent seven months in an underground jail cell during Saddam's reign.

The defeat of the regime nine months ago and the end of U.N. sanctions have opened up Iraq to foreign consumer goods once only available to the political elite.

However, with soaring unemployment, parts of Baghdad have been taken over by armies of street hawkers, mostly children, offering anything from gasoline, to propane, American cigarettes and bananas. Armed security guards are a fixture, as are money changers doing business from behind rickety tables or men charging by the minute to use satellite phones.

``Baghdad has fallen into a dark age, but it still has a pulse,'' said painter Nouri al-Rawi, 75. ``We are being tested again.''

With garbage collection erratic, Baghdadis have taken to scrawling graffiti on outside walls urging people not to dump their refuse near their homes. Some of the messages are blunt: ``Whoever leaves rubbish here is a bastard.''

Some Baghdadis trace the city's decline to long before the arrival of the Americans. Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, followed by the 1991 defeat in the Gulf War, brought U.N. sanctions that crippled the economy and reduced most Iraqis to poverty. Crime and corruption flourished.

Others, however, blame the Americans either for the current miseries or for not reversing them.

``Everywhere I go I wonder whether I will be the next victim,'' said Arman Byzant, a driver who once ferried supplies for a Baghdad restaurant devastated by a deadly car bomb on New year's Eve. ``The Americans have done nothing good here.''

Baghdad, founded by Arab conquerors in the 8th century, functioned with relative normalcy until just before U.S.-led war broke out March 20. Motorists stopped at red lights, restaurants did a relatively good business, universities and schools operated, families picnicked and frequented amusement parks.

These days, Baghdad's fabled fish restaurants by the Tigris River are shut. Motorists ignore red lights and newspapers are filled with reports of kidnappings, murder, armed robberies and burglaries.

The ubiquitous murals and portraits of Saddam are gone. In their place are images of Shiite Muslim clerics--testament to the emergence of the country's majority religious community.

City officials are trying their best to boost public morale _ but with only limited results.

``Together, we will remove the rubble of wars,'' proclaim posters across central Baghdad. They depict a burly man standing on a ladder with a mop in his hand. Next to him is a boy, smiling and carrying a bucket of soapy water.

That cheery slogan doesn't wash with many Iraqis.

Most neighborhoods in this sprawling city of 5 million now claim the grim distinction of having been the scene of one or more major acts of violence. Similarly, nearly every neighborhood bears the scars of last year's bombing.

Embassies, U.N. offices, the International Committee of the Red Cross, hotels, police stations, power stations, offices of political parties, outdoor markets and mosques are among places targeted by insurgents with rockets, roadside bombs, explosive-laden cars and mortars.

Soon after insurgent attacks began last summer, concrete barriers and barbed wire sprouted up across Baghdad to protect possible targets. The barriers also took valuable street space at a time when additional 300,000 vehicles have entered Iraq since the end of Saddam-era import restrictions.

The concrete barriers, barbed wire and sandbags reinforce the image of a city under siege.

``Those concrete walls cause me the biggest pain,'' said Mohammed Rahma Jaiyan. ``They make me feel like I am in prison--a physical and emotional incarceration.''

Officials of the U.S.-led coalition say the barriers are necessary because of the anti-American insurgency. They maintain that the number of off-limits areas are fewer now than they were months ago.

U.S. officials also insist many of the inconveniences are growing pains as the society transforms from autocracy to democracy.

In December, for example, gasoline supplies ran low, forcing Iraqis to wait for hours in mile-long lines. Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said the shortage was due in part to the influx of cars and increased economic activity.

The days of the long gas station lines are over. But traffic congestion has not abated.

``I have not moved a single centimeter in 30 minutes,'' said Khidr Nasser, his taxi stuck in traffic. ``I still make enough to feed myself, wife and two children, but I cannot afford repairs.''

AP-NY-01-26-04 1441EST

[source]

[NavyEEL 0]

Things often get worse before they get better... changing an entire nation into a democracy is quite a difficult task. Despite many peoples' desire for instant gratification, wishing Iraq was already peaceful and successful, you must realize that it will be beneficial in the end. Just give it time.

[HOBOMAN 0]

Ah the politcal warz contintue...

here is a little humor to calm you guys down

[bn880 5]

Things often get worse before they get better... changing an entire nation into a democracy is quite a difficult task. Despite many peoples' desire for instant gratification, wishing Iraq was already peaceful and successful, you must realize that it will be beneficial in the end. Just give it time.

No things get worse before they get better when you invade a country like this. What makes you think they want democracy? The most popular political system in Iraq right now is Communism. Ever seen the red flags waiving on the streets? Maybe they don't show that in the states...

[EiZei 0]

Not to mention religious fundamentalists, lets see how neoconservatives manage to wiggle out of it if Iraq becomes semi-fundamentalistic state.

[JP226 0]

you know what is sad, you'll never learn until your own people are attacked and thousands of your own die because you aren't muslim

[denoir 0]

Things often get worse before they get better... changing an entire nation into a democracy is quite a difficult task.  Despite many peoples' desire for instant gratification, wishing Iraq was already peaceful and successful, you must realize that it will be beneficial in the end.  Just give it time.

There is no more time. US troop withdrawals have started. The country is supposed to be self-governed by June.

Right now, given time, Iraq will self-destruct. Why? Because Iraq is an artificial construction created by British colonialism. The population consists of 60% Shi'as that would like nothing more than to join Iran, the Sunni (30%) who are to a large part nostalgic for Saddam and then you have the Kurds (~10%) who want a country of ther own. Each of these three groups is working against the other. It took a dictator like Saddam to force them to function together. Leaving it to the Iraqis to organize themselves in this current state is a recepie for disaster. And today, the US is not even able to provide the basic security for the people (or its own troops for that matter), much less provide a stable political climate. And now troops are being withdrawn.

To illustrate my point, news from Iraq:

60-140 dead in suicide bombing in Iraq

[denoir 0]

you know what is sad, you'll never learn until your own people are attacked and thousands of your own die because you aren't muslim

Are you talking about the WTC attacks?

1) What the hell does that have to do with Iraq?

2) Bin Laden attacked the US because of US military bases in Saudi Arabia and overall political involvement in the Mid East. Not because you're not muslim.

[JP226 0]

you know that is another thing, you guys aren't the ones worried about being attacked, you're not worried about thousands of your own being infected, infact the planes being cancelled are because the people on board maybe infected unknowingly and will pass through the US which has a little too high of a chance of getting to me, saddam was just one person responsible for this kind of crap, he can't encourage this anymore he can't give money to the families of suicide bombers and call them "just" did they send undercover scientists on new years to find dirty bombs in your cities? you guys will never understand the gravity of this until you have some of your own die binladen attacked the US because of bases in saudi arabia...ok yea right

[denoir 0]

binladen attacked the US because of bases in saudi arabia...ok yea right

You know what the most sad part is? Thosuands of your citizens have died and people like you are still completely ignorant to why it happened.

Yes, Bin Laden attacked the US becuase of bases in Saudi Arabia.

Invading countries that had nothing to do with it, like Iraq, won't prevent it from happening again. Understanding why it happened in the first place, just might. If nothing else, you owe it to the victims of the WTC attacks.

And for the love of God, please use capital letters and punctuations to mark the start and end of your sentences.  

[bn880 5]

you know that is another thing, you guys aren't the ones worried about being attacked, you're not worried about thousands of your own being infected, infact the planes being cancelled are because the people on board maybe infected unknowingly and will pass through the US which has a little too high of a chance of getting to me, saddam was just one person responsible for this kind of crap, he can't encourage this anymore he can't give money to the families of suicide bombers and call them "just" did they send undercover scientists on new years to find dirty bombs in your cities? you guys will never understand the gravity of this until you have some of your own die binladen attacked the US because of bases in saudi arabia...ok yea right

WTF... you know people from Europe know very well what war means, so I don't know what you're talking about. Right now I live in Canada and believe it or not we also have to worry about attacks due to joining the fun in Afghanistan. Don't preach your silly "we are so in danger" BS here, we know very well what's going on.

Infected?? Man we had SARS here and now the chicken flu is coming, I am 100000x more worried about dying from this than whatever magic youy are talking about. I am also 10x more worried of dying from DU radiation from US weapons systems than radiological attacks by terrorists, as it's more likely the US will invade Canada than I will be personally hit by terrorism here.

[theavonlady 2]

I am also 10x more worried of dying from DU radiation from US weapons systems than radiological attacks by terrorists, as it's more likely the US will invade Canada than I will be personally hit by terrorism here.  

That's the minimum Canada deserves for trying to infect the US with mad cow disease.

[JP226 0]

so because some editor wrote why UBL attacked america, it must be true? this is just speculative

[bn880 5]

No OBL told everyone several times why he would and why he did attack.

Don't you watch CNN?