An Iraq Going to Hell Described by the Washington Post as Making 'Slow Gains'
Iraqis' Quality of Life Marked By Slow Gains, Many Setbacks Worries Abound That Government Isn't Up to Task of Providing Services
By Amit R. Paley and Karen DeYoung Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, November 30, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Nov. 29 -- This war-battered city, according to U.S. statistics, now receives an average of 11.9 hours of electricity a day, far more than earlier this year. But don't tell that to Ghaida al-Banna.
For three straight days this week, the 50-year-old housewife's home in the once ritzy Mansour neighborhood received no power at all. Barely any water came out when she turned on the faucet. One thing Banna's area does have in abundance is uncollected garbage, piled into giant, malodorous heaps dotting the street.
"What kind of government allows its people to live like this?" Banna asked. "They don't know how to provide services. They don't know how to do anything. Everything is getting worse and worse."
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With their withered international resources ever more and more captive to "US statistics' for information, mainstream news sources in America continue to beat a soundless drum. Locked up in Green Zones (real and metaphoric), the 'news' is no more than what interested parties allow us.
Blackwater stonewalls, NGOs thieve, the State Department lies and various military 'sources' say whatever pleases their senior officers.
In the worst-case scenario since inside 1933 Germany, the interested and concerned public no longer has an even tenuous grip on truth. Meanwhile, the media play whatever latest political charade serves as 'debate' in their ratings-fearful minds.
We are a national American Idol, adoring ourselves blindly and excessively. No longer a determined and creative society in search of truth, we have become instead a material effigy that is worshipped.
Will the real America please stand up?