click on this – it’s too big to post here. it’s a graphic which maps out all the attacks in iraq during the past 30 days. 30 days, 2,368 attacks. this is not counting fallujah or any of the other “no-go zones”.
the other really disturbing graphic i’ve run across recently was this one from juan cole. i know the blogsophere has already covered it, but i want to bring it up again because it shows that reality on the ground in iraq is not as rosy as bush would like us to believe. i mean really, does anyone believe at this point that things are getting better in iraq? i would love to believe that, but the facts just don’t support that assertion.
and just as juan cole brilliantly illustrated why elections in iraq are probably not possible by january, this entry from a few days ago just brings it all home:
If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?
President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.
What would America look like if it were in Iraq’s current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.
Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.
And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?
What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?
What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?
there’s much more to the entry and it’s hard not to just copy and paste the whole thing, so please take a few minutes and read the rest if you haven’t already.
and finally, here’s one more reality check from someone who’s actually on the ground in baghdad:
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their wars and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t….
There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It’s hard to pinpoint when the `turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a `potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to `imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess `the situation.’ When asked `how are things?’ they reply: `the situation is very bad.”
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.
In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health– which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers– has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
there’s more where that came from. go read the rest. it’s really time for america to remove it’s star-spangled blinders.
update: yet another reality check, this time from a troop on the ground.
