Iraq is getting better and the US is getting worse. Say Hi to McCain over there. Eh.

Time magazine loves the war in Iraq almost as much as they love Shrillary.

Since I was here last, one of our Iraqi staffers has had to flee the country after receiving death threats. Two others have moved their families out, into Jordan and Syria, for their protection. Sami, who is driving me from the airport, tells me that Iraqis who are going to the airport still carry giant suitcases, stuffed to bursting point, a telltale sign they are not planning to return. My flight in had more foreigners (mostly contractors and private security men) than Iraqis -- and there were very few large suitcases on the carousel.

2 million refugess outside the country and 2 million internally displaced folks inside.

Spud wonders if any of them were included in the survey, whose results are on another thread, saying that Iraq is safer than before.

Prolly not, eh?

This isn't a question of Iraq being safer in toto it's a question of Baghdad being more pacified after the worst of the ethnic cleansing vanquished the secular neighbourhoods one by one.

And why is Baghhdad more pacified? Is it really down to teh "surge working"?

Nope.

Driving into the city, I see one of the many new concrete blast walls that have gone up since my last departure: there seeem to be miles and miles of these walls, circling off some of the most violent neighborhoods, like Dora and Amiriyah. They keep sectarian militias from marauding freely through the city, as they did before the surge.

Welcome to prison-city Baghdad.

Fuck Time magazine.

Fuck 'em with a stick.

Be Well.

Too bad 36% of the libs in this country didn't leave. They always comlain but never leave.

Back to Baghdad: Hell Reassessed

I would go back in an instant. I miss Iraq.

Cheers,
Walt

Why would I go to Iraq? There is a large number of Arabs there. I can get that in California's L.A. County.

If just must hear Arabic, visit a California 7/11 liquor store food(?) store. Half of the customers and 90% of the employee will qualify.

They sell deoderant so?

Too bad 36% of the libs in this country didn't leave. They always comlain but never leave.

If the GOPpers left, we'd have nothing to complain about. No 9-11, no deficits, no lost wars. Cheaper oil and a 100 cent dollar.

And that's just since 2001.

Here's a suggestion FW or whatever...

Why don't all you NeoConservatives move to Idaho and leave America for the rest of us moderate Dems and Reps to restore to it's former place as the most respected country in the world?

Then we'll kick Idaho out of the Union, and you assholes can hike the mountains, shoot your guns, and fuck up Idaho only. Cool?

I will bet no one fucking wanted to leave Iraq when Hussein was in charge .

AU, where are the lefty loons going to move to? Oh, Thay can move to New Hampshre or Maine or Vermont.

AU, where are the lefty loons going to move to? Oh, Thay can move to New Hampshre or Maine or Vermont

Why should lefties move anywhere?

The left still love the America the founding fathers envisioned.

It's the fightin' Righty Tighties who are seeking a theocracy like in Iran.

Hey, now there's an idea!

Why don't all you evDEVILicals and Talibaptist fuckwits convert to Islam and all go move to Iran or Saudi Arabia. Then you can stone gay people and join up with the morality police and rape young girls who dare to go outside without a male chaperone.

You know, the kinda mad-assed shit you sick fucks can only dream of doing in America.

Just a suggestion.

Be Well.

AAAAAAAAAAWWWW Spud... You are not even American, stay out of this.

Let's send our lefty loons to canada, they should feel right at home there.

Give the republivangelists Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma instead of Idaho. They are already 80% Christian theocracies so they would really enjoy it there.

On the other hand maybe they may prefer moving to Paraguay to be close to their dear leader in his retirement/exile.

Ahhh, little Socialists,

Interesting politics, to make it necessary for a war to go bad in to get support...

Fortunately, same said socialists are not doers, but talkers, so they can do nothing to bring the war to failure because, of course, they're nowhere near it....

So, it seems they can't bring about their own success....victims again....they also can not bring about a presidential election victory...

We don't really know how many widows we have in Iraq. There are no statistics about women," said Salma Jabou, an aid worker and an adviser to President Jalal Talabani on women's affairs. "We do know that these widows don't have any income, they don't have a place to live in, that they don't have gas or electricity. They have no education, maybe only primary school."

The widows are only the worst off. One year after the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Mr. Hussein, U.S. President George W. Bush claimed that "the advance of freedom in the Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women." In fact, the precise opposite has occurred in Iraq.

Mr. Hussein's Iraq, for all its flaws, was a staunchly secular society and women and men were equal before the law. Five years after the U.S. invasion, women have become a persecuted majority.

Surveys conducted by the Washington-based Women for Women International found a staggering rise in domestic abuse during the past five years, as well as a precipitous drop in the number of girls being enrolled in school. United Nations figures suggest that the number of illiterate women has jumped from just 2 per cent in the 1970s and 1980s to 27 per cent today.

Many women have hit rock bottom. Tens of thousands have been forced into prostitution, including many from the vulnerable Iraqi refugee community spread across the Middle East. In recent months, there's even been a disturbing rise in the number of women suicide bombers inside Iraq.

Because of the violence on the streets, many women in Baghdad say they only leave their homes when it's absolutely necessary, leaving even the shopping to their sons, brothers and husbands. On the occasions they do go outside, most women - even those who aren't Muslims - wear a head scarf and form-concealing Islamic dress to avoid drawing the attention of the militias, Sunni and Shia, that impose a harsh form of sharia law in many Baghdad neighbourhoods.

###
In other words, a Republican wet dream.

Who was the Roman Historian--Agricola, I think--who said of Rome's forays into Germany, "They have made a desert and called it peace?"