Not A Dam Good Thing to Report Out of Iraq

[rushmc 18]

Nope Way more than 1 thing. Love our non-biased mainstreem media

From the newsmax website......

Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005 10:12 a.m. EDT
CENTCOM: Successes in Iraq

U.S. military commanders on the ground in Iraq must be scratching their heads in bewilderment over Sen. Chuck Hagel's recent comments painting their efforts as an abject failure.

A day after Hagel trotted out his message of doom and gloom on ABC's "This Week," CENTCOM officials issued a press release listing some of their recent accomplishments - a list of achievements that has somehow escaped the notice of the establishment press.

Before Sen. Hagel does anymore damage to the war effort, we'd urged him to review the CENTCOM release for the week of August 22.
Here's a few highlights:

• More reconstruction projects in Sadr City started this week, including the $13 million electrical distribution project for sectors one through eight. When complete, an estimated 128,000 people will have a reliable source of electricity. The project includes installation of power lines, 3,040 power poles, 80 transformers, 2,400 street lights, and power connections to individual homes, complete with meters.

• Construction started on the $3.8 million Al Rayash Electricity Substation project in Al Daur District of Salah Ad Din Province, located between Tikrit and Bayji. The project, which is expected to be completed in early December, will provide reliable service to 50,000 Iraqi homes and small businesses. An electric distribution and street lighting project in Daquq was completed on Aug. 17, providing new overhead distribution lines and street lighting in the community.

• Approximately two million people will benefit from the Baghdad trunk sewer line, which was completed this week. Workers cleaned and repaired the Baghdad trunk sewer line and its associated manholes and pumping stations. The $17.48 million project restored principal sewage collection elements in the Adhamiya, Sadr City and 9-Nissan districts of Baghdad, and will provide for the intended sewer flows to the Rustamiya wastewater treatment plant.

• More than 600 children will return to renovated or rebuilt schools in Maysan Province when school starts this fall. This week, renovation on the Al-Eethnar Mud School was completed, and the Al Eethar Mud School was replaced at a cost of $87,000, benefiting 500 students who attend classes there.

• Children in Dobak Tappak village of Al Tamim Province received much-needed school supplies, clothing and toys from the Nahrain Foundation, a non-governmental organization that focuses on providing proper nutrition, decent clothing and medical supplies to Iraqi women and children. The foundation received its supplies as part of a joint effort between American donations and a Coalition forces-run program known as "Operation Provide School Supplies,” which accepts donations from private citizens and corporations in the U.S.

• In Basrah, construction is complete on phase one of the $865,000 Basrah courthouse project. This five-phase project is expected to be entirely complete in October of 2005. This main courthouse in Basrah, expected to hold a number of high profile trials, continues to operate during construction. Iraqi subcontractors are working on the project, and employing an average of 70 local Iraqi workers daily.

• Iraqi security forces benefited from reconstruction projects this week as well. A patrol station in the Karkh district of Baghdad Province was completed, as was a $390,300 border-post project on the Saudi Arabian border. A division headquarters building for the Iraqi Army in Salah Ad Din Province was also completed this week. The $7 million project includes a single-story building with a concrete roof and interior office space to accommodate the unit. Additionally, a $2 million firing range in Taji was completed this week.

• To accommodate additional detainees, a new prison project was started in Khan Bani Sa’ad, a mountainous municipality in the Ba’quba District of Diyala Province. The $75 million project will house up to 3,600 inmates. The entire site is approximately 550,000 square meters, which includes an educational center, medical facilities and administration buildings. The project will employ approximately 1,000 Iraqi workers during construction.

• In another move that highlights the increasing turnover of security responsibilities to Iraqi forces, generals from Iraqi and Coalition forces joined local tribal leaders at a ceremony where Forward Operating Base Dagger in Tikrit, one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, was officially handed over to the 4th Iraqi Army Division this week.

• Iraqi Security Forces continued training this week. In Taji, Iraqi soldiers completed a Strategic Infrastructure Battalion Train-the-Trainer course. The 90 graduates will go on to serve as instructors at an Iraqi Army training base. A class of future IA non-commissioned officers graduated from their primary leadership development course on Aug. 15 in Tikrit. Iraqi Army unit training also included combat lifesaving, staff training, computer skills and weapons training.

• This week, the 1st Iraqi Army Brigade succeeded at implementing the first Non-commissioned Officer Academy in the country. Iraqi soldiers from the most recent class were the last group to be instructed by the U.S. Soldiers who had developed the training. During Saddam Hussein’s regime, an NCO corps did not exist in the Iraqi Army. The class will continue after the U.S. instructors leave, and will be taught by NCOs from the 1st IA who assisted earlier courses.

• Baghdad police continued to demonstrate their capabilities this week. Iraqi Police Service officers in the New Baghdad District conducted a variety of operations including raids involving over 450 officers. Police confiscated 30 AK-47 rifles, two hand guns, and one machine gun during the raids.

• They also arrested 30 suspected insurgents, three of whom were targeted in the raids. In addition, police at the Al Khanssa Police Station in Baghdad captured a kidnapper involved in the abduction of a local physician, whose family paid a ransom to have the victim released. Following the arrest, police officers recovered the doctor’s vehicle as well as the ransom money paid by his family.

• Iraqi Army soldiers found a weapons cache under a vehicle in Rawah this week. The cache contained two light machine guns and 3000 rounds of ammunition, nine AK-47 rifles and 500 rounds of ammunition, one NATO machine gun and 200 rounds of ammunition, four concussion grenades, one fragmentary grenade without fuses, and various other ammunition.

• Based on two separate tips from Iraqis, Coalition forces discovered weapons caches that contained rocket-propelled grenades and two launchers, 16 mortar rounds and a launcher, and five boxes of anti-aircraft ammunition hidden in northwest Baghdad.

• Another tip led Coalition forces to a large cache of artillery shells in the early hours of Aug. 16. The shells were apparently intended for use as improvised explosive devices. The 25 to 30 individual rounds, located inside a building within Al Anbar Province, were destroyed after security forces confirmed there was no one in the building.

• After a local Iraqi identified his neighbors as insurgents, Iraqi Army soldiers and Coalition forces conducted a joint cordon and search operation in northwest Fallujah and detained two suspects.

• Iraqi Security Forces killed terrorist Abu Zubair, also known as Mohammed Salah Sultan, in an ambush in the northern city of Mosul this week. Zubair, who was wearing a suicide vest when he was killed, was a known member of Al Qaeda in Iraq and a lieutenant in Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi’s terrorist operations in Mosul. He was being sought for his involvement in a July suicide bombing attack of a police station in Mosul that killed five Iraqi police officers. He was also suspected of resourcing and facilitating suicide bomber attacks against Coalition, Iraqi Security Forces and Iraqi citizens throughout the country.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[Pendejo 0]

I think this will be the part where they compare newsmax to fox news. Its AMAZING to me that the same people who are saying that we should pull our troops out now will also be saying they can't believe we would leave those poor people two or three months from when we do pull them out....

Pendejo

He who swoops the ditch and does not get out buys the BEER!!

[SkyDekker 1,147]

I think lots of good is being done in Iraq. But in all fairness, the report should include which of these projects had to be done because the US military destructed it during the invasion.

[shropshire 0]

Quote

I think lots of good is being done in Iraq. But in all fairness, the report should include which of these projects had to be done because the US military destructed it during the invasion.

Yeap, and almost exclusively given to US contractors .. not shared out between the alies

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[billvon 2,435]

>CENTCOM officials issued a press release listing some of their recent
> accomplishments - a list of achievements that has somehow
> escaped the notice of the establishment press.

Those are indeed good things. The fact remains that they are still pumping less oil, have less power and have less water available than they did before we invaded. It's great that we're trying to fix what we broke, but we're not there yet.

[Channman 2]

Ah, yes this maybe true, only because I don't wish to get into an argument with you but we are well on our way. to more Oil production, more power being provided and there is plenty of drinking water for all and the people are more free.

I see more good than bad. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, "nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty...when they finally grasp freedom and deside not to let go of it, they will know the cost of it and appreciate it all the more.

The Iraq people are no quitters, they have not decided its not worth it, we were better off under Sadam, nor have they turned themselves over to terriorist. The American people better develope a back bone and not listen to all the chicken littles in the world that the sky is falling, its all blue from where im looking, hot though..very hot.

[billvon 2,435]

>The American people better develope a back bone and not listen
>to all the chicken littles in the world that the sky is falling . .

Let's hope they also develop a brain and not listen to the people who say it will be a cakewalk, we'll be welcomed as liberators, it's going to take six weeks not six months, there's no doubt Saddam has weapons, we're turning the corner, the insurgency is in its final throes etc. An informed citizen is an effective one.

[Channman 2]

That Cakewalk has been littered with alot of IEDs.

[kallend 1,649]

Quote

>CENTCOM officials issued a press release listing some of their recent
> accomplishments - a list of achievements that has somehow
> escaped the notice of the establishment press.

Those are indeed good things. The fact remains that they are still pumping less oil, have less power and have less water available than they did before we invaded. It's great that we're trying to fix what we broke, but we're not there yet.

Don't forget how they showered the troops with flowers.

And they met the deadline for the Constitution. Oh, wait....

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Mockingbird 0]

Quote

A day after Hagel trotted out his message of doom and gloom on ABC's "This Week," CENTCOM officials issued a press release listing some of their recent accomplishments - a list of achievements that has somehow escaped the notice of the establishment press.

See now?--- This is what I'm talking about!

This war is so politicized that those who are against it will still find fault with one or more of these achievements. Watch.

Blue skies & happy jitters ~Mockingbird
"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

[rushmc 18]

Quote

I think lots of good is being done in Iraq. But in all fairness, the report should include which of these projects had to be done because the US military destructed it during the invasion.

Better bring up some evidence on that statement. It has been reported that they have more electricity and water than before the liberation and they are building sewage systems that never befor existed!!

Electrial consumption is going through the roof because people are owning for the first time tv's (that may be a bad thing) and air conditioners.

What is it about good news that is bad to you

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 18]

Quote

Quote

I think lots of good is being done in Iraq. But in all fairness, the report should include which of these projects had to be done because the US military destructed it during the invasion.

Yeap, and almost exclusively given to US contractors .. not shared out between the alies

Dam righ! It is as it should be. They want the gravy but none of the work and besides, Haliburton (which I assume you may be speaking of) is the only company in the world that can do what is being done over there.



0 for 2

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 2,435]

>It has been reported that they have more electricity and water than
> before the liberation and they are building sewage systems that
> never befor existed!!

Let me guess - FOX? Let's see what the Iraqis have to say. (I mean, sure, they're not FOX, but they might know a bit more about the issue than an anchor in a studio in NY.)

---------
Constitution? What about our basic needs, demands Iraq press
Tue Aug 16, 4:07 AM ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's newspapers warned of the risk of the total collapse of basic services like electricity and water, saying upgrading them was more important than drafting the constitution.

"The petrol crisis stole the spotlight from the constitution crisis," said the editorial in the leading independent daily Azaman.
-----------

[shropshire 0]

Ha fooking Ha

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Mockingbird 0]

Quote

Let me guess - FOX? Let's see what the Iraqis have to say. (I mean, sure, they're not FOX, but they might know a bit more about the issue than an anchor in a studio in NY.)

---------
Constitution? What about our basic needs, demands Iraq press
Tue Aug 16, 4:07 AM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's newspapers warned of...

LET ME GUESS--- Aljazeera.com??

Blue skies & happy jitters ~Mockingbird
"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

[Darius11 12]

You know I am beginning to hate the media so called news more and more every day. News should not follow an agenda it should report facts.

I am glad there are good things being done.
I hope I am wrong and someday Iraq will be a true democracy that will a great day for all.

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[rushmc 18]

Quote

You know I am beginning to hate the media so called news more and more every day. News should not follow an agenda it should report facts.

I am glad there are good things being done.
I hope I am wrong and someday Iraq will be a true democracy that will a great day for all.

You nailed it!!

I believe the people would make great and correct choices if they had the facts without the agenda.

It is so funny to listen to the left bitch about Fox now they have a small touch of what the right has been dealing with for 30 years

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[livendive 8]

Quote

But in all fairness, the report should include which of these projects had to be done because the US military destructed it during the invasion.

I agree. You don't get bragging rights for fixing the things you intentionally or negligently break. If you borrowed my car and totalled it, I hope you wouldn't expect too many atta boys when you give it back all fixed up two years later.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[shropshire 0]

Quote

I agree. You don't get bragging rights for fixing the things you intentionally or negligently break. If you Stole my car and totalled it, I hope you wouldn't expect too many atta boys when you give it back all fixed up two years later.

Yeap, I also agree with that ... except I'd like to offer the above change...

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[billvon 2,435]

>Aljazeera.com??

Close! An Iraqi independent newspaper, as reported by the associated foreign press (AFP.) But what the hell do those Iraqis know, after all? We got right wingers right here with the inside story!

[Mike111 0]

Let's hope they also develop a brain and not listen to the people who say it will be a cakewalk, we'll be welcomed as liberators, it's going to take six weeks not six months, there's no doubt Saddam has weapons, we're turning the corner, the insurgency is in its final throes etc. An informed citizen is an effective one.

[billvon 2,435]

>but wouldn;t it also fair to say it is easier to judge and say what we
>should have realised in hindsight.

Some of us have been saying this for years. We were attacked for saying it back then, too.

>im sure they wouldn't have assumed these things without good
>reason - like is happening now, to do so is political suicide.

?? They achieved their political objective, which was the removal of Saddam. That's been a goal of the PNAC for over a decade. The WMD thing was just an excuse everyone could agree on. This was pretty clear last year, and Bush still won the election - so apparently it was not suicide.

[Mike111 0]

Ok, fair enough, some people did say before th ewar started.

But, what i meant by political suicide was the fact that all these questinos are now being put forward to which Bush has to answer.

Although i think the Americans are doing well in Iraq, considering the opposition they face.

Edited to add - the Americans are making good progress under the circumstances and are doing well aginst the insurgency, whether they should be there or not, that is fair?

Thus generally, overall, IMHO although the facts were sugar coated a bit, they are making good progress.

[billvon 2,435]

>But, what i meant by political suicide was the fact that all these
>questinos are now being put forward to which Bush has to answer.

Why does he have to answer them? He has done an excellent job so far of dodging them.

>Although i think the Americans are doing well in Iraq, considering
>the opposition they face.

That may well be true. But if you were to say to a pro-war right winger back in Jan '03 "I think our troops will be doing an good job two years from now, but they will still be dying at the rate of dozens a month, and the insurgency will still be going strong" you would have been branded a hysterical america hating left winger. And if you told them that you thought we might lose thousands of US troops to the war? They'd think up some worse names to call you.

We've got some good people over there. Our problem lies not in our troops, it is in the meatgrinder we sent them into. I don't think withdrawal is the best answer either, but it is what we will be forced into. The question will not be "when can we leave and leave a peaceful, democratic Iraq behind?" the question will be "how many US troops are we willing to lose to an endless war?"

[Mike111 0]

Quote

>But, what i meant by political suicide was the fact that all these
>questinos are now being put forward to which Bush has to answer.

Why does he have to answer them? He has done an excellent job so far of dodging them.

In other words, war will have to be fought at some time, so i see no reason to delay. A lot of countries are fighting Al Q, so surely now it would be a time to take on the insurgents while other countries are doing? - a more concentrated effort

I hope that makessense ( I often express things badly)

Cos otherwise people will get tired of him dodging . Eventually the ball will come back round to his court and stay there.

Sorry to be pinicky, but whether the war is endles or not, the terrorists would still strike forcing us to fight an endless whether it be in Iraq , or any another country. Shouldn;t we face up to it and not let them get onto our (UK and USA) homelands?