REPORT FROM IRAQ

by James K. Sweeney
September 4, 2003


After a lengthy vacation and a seemingly endless period of catching up from being away, we have returned to the wars, political, social and real. Labor Day, to me, is the start of the American Year. The tempo of American life becomes upbeat: school starts; business picks up; people are back to reality. I thought a bit of reality would be helpful and illuminating about our position in Iraq. Hence, the following link to comments from a Marine from Humboldt, a small town in liberal Northern California’s redwood country. There are other such articles available all over the Internet. Read this first hand account. And remember: he’s just an enlisted man; no officer propaganda, no lifers here. Then, read Newsweek, the infamous Times papers - New York and Los Angeles, where the latter is a cheap imitation of the former and neither is particularly concerned with facts. Tell me how the Big Media can have the story so wrong so often and by so much. There are but two possibilities: they’re incompetent or they’re lying. We report; you decide.

Check out this link Http://northcoastjournal.com/090403/cover0904.html

When you think about the Iraq issue, remember that the whiners were willing to give Hans Blix and his parasitic cohorts years to seek out illicit weaponry. Yet these same folks complain that the military hasn’t been able to provide Iraq’s millions with a lifestyle resembling their lives in Manhattan, D.C. or L.A. in less than 4 months. Why would any sane person blather on like that? Because they have a different agenda. They have an agenda against the President and his policies. Truth to them is irrelevant; reason is useless. Lies, half-truths and carping are their currency of which they have a full treasury. In comparison, remember that Douglas MacArthur was still in charge of Japan in 1950, 5 years after that war ended. And Japan had an infrastructure, a unified culture and other qualities lacking totally in Iraq. What would you expect? Miracles? Only if you believe in Allah which, of course, many of Bush’s secularist opponents do not.

Virtually all the Democrat’s Nine Dwarves have chimed in on this theme, including the haughty, French-looking John Kerry, who, by the way, served in Vietnam. Kerry, who was in the Navy and ran a river gun boat, alleges that his Viet Nam experience qualifies him to lead the American military world-wide. Perhaps. More likely he could manage Forrest Gump’s shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico. That crowd of Nine, which includes such masterminds as the allegedly Reverend Al Sharpton, convicted liar, and Carole Mosely Braun, endorsed (!) for president by the National Organization of Women (did you know that?) are all over the press and TV complaining that the Iraq situation is terrible and the economy is worse.

Ask them what they would do about Iraq. Silence. Or some mumbo-jumbo about giving it all to the U.N. Sure. Let France and Germany run Iraq. Of course, the French and Germans have no real military. They would want American troops and money which they would command and blame for whatever went wrong. Isn’t that where we are now anyway? This Group of Nine is brilliant; strategists extraordinaire.

In sum, we are doing better in Iraq than is reported. We have undertaken a difficult, long-term task. How difficult? Only America has ever accomplished or even tried it in the industrial age. How long? One year for all the utilities to work in the cities; two years to kill the guerillas and quiet the country-side; three years to pull out much of the military; four years to equalize the cash-flow from the oil business; five years to reasonable completion. Baghdad wasn’t built in a day. How can it be re-built in a day?

As to the economy, sorry about that, but it has rebounded nicely and that will continue to improve through the 2004 election. Unemployment is a true problem but it will recover, albeit slowly. It’s issues are less about GDP than about illegal immigrants, changes in American business and the vaporization of the Internet “bubble”, never to return. That time was reminiscent of tulipmania applied to a new technology. The stock market is doing well, interest rates, though rising, are historically low and George is pretty secure for four more years.

 

 

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