The Walls of Baghdad, a Modern Fairytale

Great words, Elizabeth. Your article is Featured in the Triple Name Club.

Not to mention the millions of displaced Iraqis living in poverty and squalor in other countries in the Middle East. Of course, our wonderful country would only take a paltry few refugees after destroying their country and their livelihoods.

Oh, and there's the reports from the military leaders themselves on the ground in Iraq - no electricity, streets running with putrid sewage, people without food or safe water, and no hopes of securing employment or education in most areas.

Beyond tragic. I'm sure you'll get the typical Gather deluded who will come here and say that the Surge is working and the Iraqi present and future is bright and promising. They need to all be shipped over there and taste the water and stand in the sewage....then they can all dodge the random gunfire. I wish I could blink them all over the en masse.

The only problem is that the situation was no different when they were under Saddam.......! As usual the Guardian, a notarius left-wing news rag, is touting less than factual information as news!

I heard that the U.S. did not grant permanent residency to one of the official Iraqi translators because he belonged to a disreputable political group--one that sought to overthrow Saddam. But I thought that was the reason for the war...?

As always, Elizabeth, you've said it so much better than I could.

thx fro sharing................... :O)

I'm with you, Sheryl O, but even a one-hour taste of the life these poor people are living would be too much of a punishment for ignorance.

I read the same thing, J.K. Slather, and am still scratching my head.

Donald, The Guardian is definitely farther to the left, but that doesn't mean what they report isn't factual.

However, with all due respect, we couldn't know, as our American journalists are not allowed anywhere but embedded within the troops. There is so much suppression of free journalism within Iraq we may never know what is or isn't accurate. Even the flag-draped coffins are hidden from public view. That is my biggest objection above all the many others.

"Even the flag-draped coffins are hidden from public view."

Explain what you meant by that please. Are you saying that since the public can't see a soldiers coffin then it could be a myth on how many have lost lives over there?

I hope that if something were to happen to my husband it wouldn't be all over the news ...I would really hope people would show enough respect to give our family the right to mourn and time to heal.

About the wall and them being prisoners...The wall is there to keep the insurgents out. If they were not an issue then there would be no need to offer protection, but again, the truth doesn't sound as good as conspiracy theorys and propaganda. If the American public would allow the military to do their job without being so PC then this all could of been over with a long time ago but because that will never happen this will never be finished ....don't blame the government for this ...blame the "Public oppinion of the US"..

opinion*

thanks for sharing

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Cherish, my comment about the flag-draped coffin picture ban is about not being able to see the true aspects/losses of war. The Bush administration's banning of journalists from photographing most soldiering might make sense from a military standpoint, but what have the coffins of our brave fallen soldiers to do with that? This is patently anti-American. There is no reason, other than pro-war propaganda, not to honor those soldiers or to show publicly how much treasure has been lost in this misguided effort. Sometimes the price is just too horrific.

Of course I would want the families to be respected and provided privacy, the right to mourn and time to heal. This war, however, is not just a family tragedy, but a national one.

Nothing in my comments claimed the war to be a conspiracy - that is old news well verified by others. The war is, however, a complete abomination, and the cost must be measured in more than US dollars and lives. I am unclear what the military's job is in Iraq these days. The benchmarks and responsibilities continue to change from day to day as the president finds another supposed justification for us being in a war that he started when he should have spent those resources on tracking, finding and arresting Osama bin Laden and his henchmen.

Now our brave military continue to get caught in the crossfire between rival ethnic groups, corrupt Iraqi military, war lords and God only knows what else in what is now regarded by even the right-wing military as an explosive civil war and, as predicted by Dick Cheney years before he manipulated its beginnings, a quagmire.

I don't under-estimate the value of oil to our economy or our dependence on it. I do not, however, see how Bush policies - which directly led to the rise from slightly above a dollar a gallon seven years ago to four dollars a gallon - has improved life for Americans. Along with all the NAFTA issues and the corporate tax havens overseas and the shipping of so many jobs to other countries, life now sucks for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

As a matter of fact, the financial crisis Bush's mis-management has created, along with all his other economic blunders, will mean that I will never personally be able to retire after a lifetime of hard work. For that I do feel unbridled hostility which is personally directed at him and his administration.

The difference between me and a military family, however, is that I am still alive and so are all my children and my husband. No matter how hard things might get for me, it will never be equivalent to the sacrifice these families and brave soldiers are making every day.

You and I can only hope brighter, more honorable minds with better solutions soon take over the reins and Commander in Chief is once again a title we can honor and respect.

Thanks for an excellent article. I hope and pray that many people read and learn from this, because things are truly not as the government would like us to believe!

Thanks for this - Thanks for posting this to Best Original Photos, Art and Writing for 2008

Elizabeth, you wrote, "The war is, however, a complete abomination". You not only sum it up in this phrase but I found myself nodding my head to your so very clear analysis on the entire situation. Thank you for your love of our country and your efforts to help us find a way to peace.

Almost 90% of the Iraqi people want the troops to leave and view them as the catalyst for violence. Their quality of life was infinitely better under Saddam and most of the countries infrastructure has been destroyed. Two hours of electricity is a good day in Baghdad since its rarer than safe drinking water.

I share the belief that the Guardian likes to skew the news and invent facts.

Donald H. says, "...the situation was no different when they were under Saddam......!"

And I reply, so this is why we have fought in Iraq for 5 years? To reach the starting point? And how can you say that to the people that are dead as a result of the war? I suppose you could say that Saddam would have had all of them killed so the end result is the same.

And to Dorine. Does that mean you believe things are really doing well in Iraq? What part of the video did you not believe?

I'm afraid that the reality of 'today's' Iraq is too painful for most of us to accept. Prior to our invasion the lifestyle for many Iraqis resembled a functioning society, but once Brewer 'liberated' Saddam's military, left munition dumps unmanned and allowed chaos to reign, it turned to something so backward even our soldiers are appalled. Of course, it is convenient to pretend that Iraq was previously a giant slum filled with 'less-than' people so that we don't feel any responsility for having destroyed their infrastructure. Sigh.

I think it's time for the "wizard" to be pulled out from behind his fancy curtain. Great article. I like you don't like the impression these fumbling 8 years have left many others with regards to our country.