Doing Right By Iraq

Returning to the United States from Baghdad a few days before the signing of Iraq's interim constitution, I found an America more seized with failures than with the considerable successes there. Nowhere do I find Americans aware that Iraqi children hug U.S. Army sanitary engineers who repair sewer and water pipes. The U.S. press -- critical of the failure to fix the electrical system as well as oil fields and pipelines by last summer -- ignores the return of electricity and oil production to prewar levels. Even the constitutional framework provokes questions about legitimacy rather than praise for accomplishment.

This is understandable. The suicide bombings in Karbala and in Baghdad while I was there, as well as Shiite hesitation to sign the constitutional framework and continuing attacks on coalition and Iraqi security forces, have colored perceptions and raised questions about whether we are doing the right thing. The administration's prewar failure to plan adequately for postwar reconstruction has cast a pall over the entire enterprise. The reluctance of major allies such as France to join in -- despite the enlarged role for the United Nations and the commitment to early turnover of sovereignty -- has generated further doubts.

We should not, however, allow the problems of reconstruction to obscure the progress that has been made. In Baghdad I found a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) preparing for an unprecedented rapid shift of responsibility from an occupying power to an Iraqi interim administration on June 30. This shift has already occurred for most practical purposes in some areas. Schools and universities, for example, are open for business under Iraqi management, though plagued by resource shortfalls. The coalition is truly multinational, despite the absence of the French. In just a few days in the CPA mess, I ran into a Dutch naval officer, British and Italian diplomats, Australian and Polish army troops. It will be a shame if this multinational effort disappears entirely in the June 30 transition, especially since the United Nations has not sent its people back to Iraq. ...

You have to understand the motivation for the ComPost to run this story.

They want to run a positive story NOW, when it's early in the campaign and they feel everyone will forget about it later. But if pushed for reasons why they never publish positive stories, they can always point back to this one and say, "See? We do run positive stories."

Running this story now is giving it the best burial possible - on a Wednesday in March almost 8 months before the election.

Otherwise, the ComPost would have no reason to run it at all.

Michael

"The administration's prewar failure to plan adequately for postwar reconstruction has cast a pall..."

First of all, a LOT of what we're doing in Iraq is CONSTRUCTION, not RE-construction. RE-construction implies that we're rebuilding what our bimbs broke. While there is some of that, most of it is constructing stuff where there wasn't stuff before. We're not just repairing sewers, we're building sewers. And most of the stuff we're re-constructing needed work because of Sadman's neglect, not our bimbs. Communities have gotten new schools where none or maybe just one existed before. New roads are being built.

As for electricity - the infra in place before the bimbs started falling was woefully inadequate by design. Dadhbag by itself didn't have enough generating capacity, so capacity from other plants arount the country was funneled to the capital to keep the juice on 24/7 there. But elesewhere in the country, people only got a couple of hours worth a day, even if they lived in the shadow of a generating facility. The new policy is that everyone around the country including the capital gets the same amount of power as anyone else. So that means that there are now some short periodic outages in the capital, which is where all the reporters are. But - it's also where most of the people who can afford GENERATORS are.

Don't ever expect an honest accounting of what's going on over there before the election. The media has too big a stake in undermining Dubya.

Michael

What a pantload of incredible, disingenuous crapola!!! 2 different bipartisan Congressional committees have gone to Iraq and concluded that the media, itself Including the WaPo), have focused alomost SOLELY on every possible negative story they could find in Iraq and now the WaPo has the cojones to wonder why so many Americans view Iraq as a "failed" policy!!!!????

This is the most astonishing chutzpah I have ever seen. The WaPo should be ashamed.

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