So far, every single journalist I’ve spoken with here has told me that they had followed the news closely prior to their arrival. But after being here even just a day, they have been astonished at how terrible the situation truly is. It has now been over 9 months since the ‘war’ ended. The country of Iraq remains in chaos, and the lack of consistent basic services such as petrol, security, electricity, and running water continue to afflict Iraqis.
The Bush administration paints a far different picture of the situation in Iraq; they tell us that services like electricity are higher than pre-war levels, they tell us the schools are all open, hospitals are operating at higher than pre-war levels, and the Iraqi people are happy - that’s obviously not the case.
Every time the Bush administration tries to spin Iraqi progress to higher levels than it actually is in order to keep the people at home happy and deluded we see media [including independent media and blogs on the ground] debunking those myths, you would think that eventually GWB would get the idea that just possibly honesty is the best policy and give his people the straight goods.
It’s a respect issue - if -p-resident Bush actually had any respect for the American people he likely would [give them the straight goods]. If he gave the American people credit for having a little bit of intelligence & common sense, and was more concerned with doing the right thing instead of spinning the news for the re-election drive, things would read differently.
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