From my mail box: What’s wrong with the Media?

Posted on February 16, 2005 by Sappho

Did you know that 47 coun­tries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?

Did you know that the Iraqi gov­ern­ment employs 1.2 mil­lion Iraqi people?

Did you know that 3100 schools have been ren­o­vated, 364 schools are under reha­bil­i­ta­tion, 263 schools are now under con­struc­tion and 38 new schools have been built in Iraq?

Did you know that Iraq’s higher edu­ca­tional struc­ture con­sists of 20 Uni­ver­si­ties, 46 Insti­tutes or col­leges and 4 research centers?

Did you know that 25 Iraq stu­dents departed for the United States in Jan­u­ary 2004 for the re-established Ful­bright program?

Did you know that the Iraqi Navy is oper­a­tional? They have 5– 100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller ves­sels and a navel infantry regiment.

Did you know that Iraq’s Air Force con­sists of three oper­a­tion squadrons, 9 recon­nais­sance and 3 US C-130 trans­port air­craft which oper­ate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 heli­copters and 4 bell jet rangers?

Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Com­mando Battalion?

Did you know that the Iraqi Police Ser­vice has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers?

Did you know that there are 5 Police Acad­e­mies in Iraq that pro­duce over 3500 new offi­cers each 8 weeks?

Did you know there are more than 1100 build­ing projects going on in Iraq? They include 364 schools, 67 pub­lic clin­ics, 15 hos­pi­tals, 83 rail­road sta­tions, 22 oil facil­i­ties, 93 water facil­i­ties and 69 elec­tri­cal facilities.

Did you know that 96% of Iraqi chil­dren under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations?

Did you know that 4.3 mil­lion Iraqi chil­dren were enrolled in pri­mary school by mid October?

Did you know that there are 1,192,000 cell phone sub­scribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%?

Did you know that Iraq has an inde­pen­dent media that con­sist of 75 radio sta­tions, 180 news­pa­pers and 10 tele­vi­sion stations?

Did you know that the Bagh­dad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?

Did you know that 2 can­di­dates in the Iraqi pres­i­den­tial elec­tion had a recent tele­vised debate recently?

OF COURSE, WE DIDN’T KNOW!

WHY DIDN’T WE KNOW? OUR MEDIA WOULDN’T TELL US!

Instead of shout­ing these accom­plish­ments from every rooftop, they would rather show killings and bombs.

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24 Responses to From my mail box: What’s wrong with the Media?

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  8. Brian H says:
    February 17, 2005 at 03:34

    Some of that stuff gets men­tioned, rather dis­mis­sively, in pass­ing. Here’s an old link to a one-post blog by some­one who was ticked after help­ing with a lot of that stuff: Inside View From Iraq.

  9. eddy says:
    February 17, 2005 at 06:21

    This doc­u­ment has been around for a while and has already been soundly demolished.

    Notice how all of these state­ments are not asser­tions but ques­tions. This is designed for “plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­ity”. They can­not be dis­proven because it’s not pos­si­ble to dis­prove a ques­tion, there­fore the state­ments are tech­ni­cally not lies.

    If we take the 55,000 fig­ure for “fully trained and equiped police offi­cers” for exam­ple, we find that the US states that it has trained this many peo­ple, but refuse to state how many of these offi­cers are actu­ally alive and work­ing as officers.

    Of course, the “inde­pen­dant media” includes sta­tions like “Al Ara­bia” which are largely funded by the US to pro­mote its views in “the region” and excludes Al Jazeera which has been ban­ished from Iraq altogether.

    And of course, Iraq was in fairly good shape prior to the war. Notice how none of these “state­ments” indi­cate whether the US is respon­si­ble for build­ing them. Notice how they don’t deny that these things may just have sur­vived the war.

  10. Monica-Philadelphia says:
    February 17, 2005 at 17:17

    Notice that eddy just doesn’t seem to like to hear good news!

  11. Gene Titus says:
    February 17, 2005 at 17:49

    Good infor­ma­tion. I recently bought some Iraqi dinars. I also posted this infor­ma­tion on a Yahoo Finance mes­sage board. Iraq’s future is bright.
    Gene

  12. eddy says:
    February 17, 2005 at 18:08

    Mon­ica: BOO!

  13. Jack says:
    February 17, 2005 at 23:03

    Is there any­thing which can sub­stan­ti­ate all of these claims other then an anony­mous email?

    I would hope a few hun­dred bil­lion is going towards some­thing good, but this is a lot to take with no proof to back it up.

  14. Soldier's Dad says:
    February 17, 2005 at 23:42

    Jack,

    All the fig­ures cited are from US State Dept/DOD releases. Last June, the DOD clas­si­fied how many “untrained” Iraqi police­man there were and start­ing report­ing “trained” only.

  15. Jack says:
    February 18, 2005 at 01:27

    Soldier’s Dad, do you know where the facts are to show that all of this is going on because of U.S. efforts?

    After all, they did have a fully func­tion­ing coun­try before we bombed it.

  16. M says:
    February 18, 2005 at 04:05

    It really doesn’t take much effort look­ing around the links to Iraqi sites to know alot it going on mainly by USAID, the EU and the NGOs, admit­tedly in the north and in the south more than in the Sunni areas.

    Nice to see the opti­mism, Ladybird.

  17. Nadia says:
    February 18, 2005 at 16:38

    I think it’s good that there is full of news about all the atroc­i­ties that hap­pens in Iraq today. Had we had this sort of report­ing when Sad­dam came to power things would have been dif­fer­ent for Iraq. No instead we had reports about bet­ter salaries, schools being build, hos­pi­tals, roads etc etc which where all true by the way, but at the same time things where get­ting worse and worse with regards to tor­ture and cor­rup­tion and in the end we ended up with a dic­ta­tor. I have learned my les­son and I sure hope that all Iraqis have too. Respect­ing Iraqis human rights and Iraqi recourses to Iraqis is what needs to be on the agenda all day.

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  19. Dennis Boone says:
    February 20, 2005 at 06:36

    “After all, they did have a fully func­tion­ing coun­try before we bombed it.”

    Yes, Jack, yes, they cer­tainly did. I hear the next batch of Howard Dean’s Kool-Aid will be Lemon-Lime. Sounds like you might want to re-up for another gallon.

  20. Bob says:
    February 23, 2005 at 09:26

    I am glad to hear that you are being open minded these days! Do you mean that you actu­ally believed all the media “if it bleeds, it leads” cov­er­age and just thought all those work­ers and sol­diers from around the world, over there work­ing hard every day, were doing noth­ing but bad stuff just for the fun of it and to be the “bad guys”? There are lots of good things going on and could have been so much more if not for the terrorist’s activ­i­ties. The fig­ures change daily and aren’t hard to sub­stan­ti­ate if you are will­ing to take the time to do the research. Actu­ally much eas­ier to do with facts of jobs pro­duced than neg­a­tive media spin and lies. Thank­fully, after the elec­tions, many of the peo­ple who were buy­ing all that neg­a­tive bull­shit are start­ing to see the truth. Nobody LIKES war or hav­ing to fight the most bla­tant forces of igno­rance, hate, and oppres­sion, but at least some have the fore­sight and guts to do it when and where it rears it’s ugly head. Be thank­ful they did in WW2! It’s sad they didn’t do it much sooner and lose only com­par­a­tively few lives, instead of the mil­lions that per­ished because of the same atti­tudes of the far left con­cern­ing democ­racy in the mideast. I am not on the far right, but his­tory speaks for itself. What will be the excuse of the doom and gloom bunch when things are all cleared up and bet­ter than ever in the his­tory of the region? Hmmm…maybe just pre­tend they didn’t think or say all that crap that indi­rectly sup­ported the beauty of ter­ror­ism and it’s back­ers. It’s some­times hard to think pos­i­tive, but thank­fully, things are look­ing up lately and peo­ple are com­ing to their senses.

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