The following TIME article was definitely NOT approved by the Ministry of Truth. This is the most pessimistic article about Iraq that I have ever seen from the MSM. Perhaps Rummy or Tony Snow would like to take a little ride with the article's author, Mr. Ghosh, and show him all of the good news that is occurring in Baghdad that he is somehow missing while dodging the suicide bombers and militia groups that commit massacres on a daily basis.
http://www.time.com/...
Surely with all of the Iraqi military and police we have been training the security situation is getting better, right?
Although a ride on the Highway of Death once exaggerated the dangers lurking in Baghdad, it now does the opposite, lulling newcomers into a false sense of security. Even as the airport route has got somewhat safer, huge portions of the Iraqi capital have become far more dangerous. I pass one of those on the drive into the city: Amariyah, the mainly Sunni suburb adjacent to Camp Victory and home to Mahmud, one of my Iraqi colleagues. (The names of most of TIME's Iraqi employees have been changed in this article for their protection; working for a foreign company makes them targets for insurgents, and many lie, even to their closest neighbors, about what they do for a living.) A couple of years ago, it was easy to visit with Mahmud's family in their sand-colored two-story home; last year it became too perilous for foreigners after insurgent groups began operating in the area. Now, even Iraqis feel unsafe in Amariyah. Mahmud began to move out his extended family earlier this year when the neighborhood was taken over by a jihadi gang that imposed an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. Women were forbidden to drive, men were ordered not to wear shorts, and shops selling Western goods were firebombed.
...
To bring me up to date with the news, Wisam rattles off a long list of recent atrocities: a high-profile kidnapping here, a massacre there, a car bombing someplace else. Long before we reach the city, I've heard so many ghastly things that the harrowing flight is already a fading memory. Sensing my sinking spirits, Wisam apologizes for the overdose of grim tidings. "You know how it is in Iraq," he says with a grin. "All news is bad news." Then he tells me about the 10 bodies that were discovered in his neighborhood in the past few days, all of them his fellow Shi'ites. The bodies were decapitated, the heads never found. He tells me how, since a suicide bombing in a nearby neighborhood, his wife has been suffering anxiety attacks when she goes shopping. I feel ashamed that a mere hour's worth of Baghdad's reality has brought me down; Wisam and his family live it all the time.
Yes, well, the militias are a bit of a problem, but at least the Iraqi police and military that we have been training are here to help:
For Sunnis in Baghdad, the sight of policemen is cause for concern rather than reassurance. Traffic checkpoints are especially perilous. Recently three TIME staff members--brothers, all Sunni--were detained at a police checkpoint for five hours. They began to worry when a Shi'ite friend who had been riding with them was allowed to leave. When the men showed their media badges, issued by the U.S. military, the cops accused them of being American spies. "We'll send you to the Interior Ministry," a cop said, obviously enjoying their discomfort as he bundled them into the back of a pickup truck. "You may be released or jailed, or maybe somebody will use an electric drill on you."
So hey, there's a bit of a security problem, everybody knows that. What about all of the progress we are making on improving the everyday quality of life?
Powerless to stop the killing, al-Maliki's government has also failed to improve the lot of the living. Crime continues to soar, especially the booming business of kidnapping for ransom. U.S. officials say as many as 40 Iraqis are kidnapped every day. Ransom demands range from thousands of dollars to millions; many victims are never heard from again. Services are a cruel joke. As summer temperatures climb to 120˚, there has been no perceptible improvement in electricity or the water supply. And at a time when people desperately need their gasoline-powered generators to operate ceiling fans and air conditioners, fuel has become scarce. The wait in a gas-station line can last all day. Last month the black-market rate for a liter of gas briefly reached $1--exactly 100 times the official price just before the war. My Iraqi colleagues are amused when I read them stories about Americans complaining of high gas prices.
Ok, so that's not going too well, but surely a political solution is falling into place that will soon allow these other trifling concerns to improve soon.
Never mind that the Prime Minister was himself a Shi'ite partisan until his nomination--whereupon he sought to reinvent himself as a nonsectarian leader--and that his party had stronger ties to Tehran than to Washington. An ornery figure, al-Maliki is a backroom politician plainly ill at ease in public; few Iraqis had even heard of him, and few are convinced that his rancorous all-party government can last the year, much less its full four-year term.
Already, U.S. officials are finding it hard to keep up the optimistic spin. Shi'ite and Sunni politicians may now sit together, but their mutual hostility is undiminished, undermining the government--and al-Maliki can only look on helplessly. A political lightweight and compromise candidate, the Prime Minister doesn't have the clout to bash heads, much less deliver on his promises to pursue insurgents with "no mercy" and crush the militias "with an iron fist." As the politicians continue to bicker, the big tent is looking shaky; there were calls last week for several ministers--including the Interior chief--to be replaced.