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From National Review comes this report on a tremendous amount of good news from Iraq, which contradicts what MSM is telling us:
For the next hour and a half, Lt. Indyk, Marine Corporal Richard Gibson, and Marine Sergeant J. D. Johannes laid out their case. Lt. Indyk reported Iraqi growth in GDP and personal income. He contrasted the dinar's stabilization under the Coalition with the savings-wrecking inflations under the Baathist regime. He chronicled the increase in electrical supply, and the doubling of oil revenues in the post-Saddam era. He put numbers to the enormous increase in cell phones, cars, and satellite TVs.
Indyk discussed advances in services as well: the 60 percent decline of infant mortality in post-Saddam Iraq, and the improved access to schooling and medical care. And he described the explosion in business formation that has followed in the overthrow of one of the most regulated economies on earth.
"If Iraqis listened to American media," said Lt. Indyk, "they'd hear that their economy is wrecked and that their services are in shambles. ... But they don't get their news on Iraq through the Western media. They live there. And they say the opposite."Next he laid out metrics of democratization. First among these is surging participation of all segments of the Iraqi populace in elections, not only in the national government, but in Iraq's city and state elections as well. He enumerated, too, the growth of political parties, and proliferation of a free press in print and broadcast.
Then he admitted that facts like these, taken on their own, were insufficient for forming an accurate assessment of progress in Iraq.
"If material and institutional circumstances are really improving," he said, "this will be reflected in the attitudes of the Iraqi people themselves. The polls will either confirm what the official statistics tell us, or they will contradict those statistics."
Indyk then proceeded to describe the findings of the most extensive and scientific polls of Iraq opinion, performed by Arabic speakers for Oxford Research International near the beginning of 2004, then at the end of 2005. These polls covered all of Iraq's major regions and demographic groups.
Asked to compare their current lives with their lives under Saddam, Iraqis reported an improvement in availability of necessities, and an improvement in overall economic wellbeing. They reported superior access to clean water, health care, and education. Iraqi respondents believed that their local governments had improved. Asked what form of government they hoped to live under going forward, democracy won handily: four-to-one over the rule of one-man, and ten-to-one over totalitarianism.
Iraqis list security as their most pressing problem. But a plurality of Iraqis feel safer now than under Saddam, and a majority feel safer from ordinary crime. Moreover, better than 60 percent feel personally safe in their neighborhoods.
Marine Corporal Gibson's presentation sorted out these seemingly contradictory findings. The problem most Americans have, he said, in understanding Iraqi opinions on security, is that we operate from a different baseline. Iraq under Saddam was an incredibly violent place.
Iraq Body Count, an antiwar group that keeps a running tally of Iraqi civilian deaths, reports that the daily toll under the occupation falls in the range of 25 to 28 per day. But under Saddam's rule, the death toll averaged three times that, including 600,000 civilian executions recorded by the Documental Center for Human Rights, and the 100,000 Kurds killed during the Anfal operation. A violent day under the coalition would be just a routine day under Saddam.
Let's recap. Iraq today vs. Iraq under Saddam:
So much success is astonishing. Our MSM propaganda system is suppressing the news and making every effort to falsely convince people that we are not winning in Iraq.
But wait, there's more. Countering MSM reports that make it sound like things are getting worse in Iraq:
Coalition casualties declined by 27 percent in 2005. They have declined by 62 percent in 2006, measured against the comparable period of 2005.
The insurgent strategy of targeting Iraqi police and army units peaked in July of 2005. Since then, casualties among those units have declined by 33 percent.
Attacks on other soft targets are also down. For instance, there were 146 strikes against the oil infrastructure in 2004, compared to 101 in 2005.
The tipping point, Gibson contends, occurred last March, when the number Iraqi boots on the ground - police and army units - surpassed those of Coalition forces. From that point on, the new Iraqi government has proved increasingly able to hold and garrison areas that have been cleared on insurgents.
But more subtly, the growth of native Iraqi security shattered the coalition of Baathist recidivists and Sunni jihadists. The last thing the Baathist factions want is all-out sectarian civil war. "The tactics used to provoke it - mass slaughter of civilians - not only strengthens popular support for the government," said Gibson, "but threatens to turn that government into a blunt instrument of retribution against them."
From March of 2005 to September of 2005, the number of civilian tips informing on insurgents increased from 483 to 4,700, as numerous Sunni tribes declared outright war on al Qaeda. "The insurgency in Iraq," said Gibson, "is being dismantled by the equivalent of a Tips hotline."
Gibson cited polling of Iraqi opinion to support his thesis. Fifty-eight percent of Iraqis feel threatened by terrorists, compared with 10 percent who feel threatened by Coalition troops. And by 71 percent to 9 percent, Iraqis believe that their own security forces - Iraqi security forces - are winning the fight against terror.
"It is fascinating to contrast the triumphant face of the insurgency in our nightly news to the pessimistic assessments of its leaders in their intercepted correspondence," said Gibson. "My assessment of their prospects varies little from their own."
..."If Iraqis listened to American media," said Lt. Indyk, "they'd hear that their economy is wrecked and that their services are in shambles. They'd hear that they are less safe now than before the war, and that they are religious fanatics who demand a theocracy. But they don't get their news on Iraq through the Western media. They live there. And they say the opposite."
Again, to recap:
While MSM propaganda is so widespread that many are concerned that we can't win in Iraq, the facts are that we are winning spectacularly.
I often get the feeling that people are so used to seeing movies, that they want to measure life by the same standards of success people are held to in the theater. They want everything wrapped up in a neat little bow in two hours. Real life isn't like that. Real life requires sacrifice and, often, tragedy. Changing world history, as we are doing in Iraq, takes years, sacrifice, and tragedy to complete. But the people of Iraq feel it's worth it for them. And a democratic, capitalistic Iraq, means a safer world for us as well.
