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Examples: [Collected on the Internet, 2003]Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1..... the first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is onactive duty... over 60,000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens... nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning... the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent... on Monday, October 6 power generation hit 4,518 megawatts - exceeding the prewar average... all 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools... by October 1, Coalition forces had rehab-ed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than scheduled... teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries... all 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open... doctors salaries are at least eight times what they were under Saddam... pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons... the Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccination doses to Iraq's children... a Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000Iraqi men and women... we have restored over three-quarters of prewar telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production... there are 4,900 full-service telephone connections. We expect 50,000 by year-end... the wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns... 95 percent of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily... Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses... the central bank is fully independent... Iraq has one of the worlds most growth-oriented investment and banking laws... Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years... satellite TV dishes are legal... foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for minders and other government spies... there is no Ministry of Information... there are more than 170 newspapers... you can buy satellite dishes on what seems like every street corner... foreign journalists (and everyone else) are free to come and go... a nation that had not one single element - legislative, judicial or executive - of a representative government, now does.... in Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory councils. Baghdad's first democratic transfer of power in 35 years happened when the city council elected its new chairman... today in Iraq chambers of commerce, business, school and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country... 25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business of government... the Iraqi government regularly participates in international events. Since July the Iraqi government has been represented in over two dozen international meetings, including those of the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank and IMF and, today, the Islamic Conference Summit. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today announced that it is reopening over 30 Iraqi embassies around the world... Shia religious festivals that were all but banned, aren't... for the first time in 35 years, in Karbala thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam... the Coalition has completed over 13,000 reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq... Uday and Queasy are dead - and no longer feeding innocent Iraqis to the zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq's soccer players for losing games, ormurdering critics... children aren't imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government... political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or are forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam... millions of longsuffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror... Saudis will hold municipal elections... Qatar is reforming education to give more choices to parents... Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms... the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first time to an Iranian — a Muslim woman who speaks out with courage for human rights, for democracy and for peace... Saddam is gone... Iraq is free... President Bush has not faltered or failed... Yet, little or none of this information has been published by the Press corps that prides itself on bring you all the news that's important.Iraq under US lead control has come further in six months than Germany did in seven years or Japan did in nine years following WWII. Military deaths from fanatic Nazi's, and Japanese numbered in the thousands and continued for over three years after WWII victory was declared.It took the US over four months to clear away the twin tower debris, let alone attempt to build something else in its place.Now, take into account that almost every Democrat leader in the House and Senate has fought President Bush on every aspect of his handling of this country's war and the post-war reconstruction; and that they continue to claim on a daily basis on national TV that this conflict has been a failure.Taking everything into consideration, even the unfortunate loss of our sons and daughters in this conflict, do you think anyone else in the world could have accomplished as much as the United States and the Bushadministration in so short a period of time?[Collected on the Internet, 2005]DID YOU KNOW THIS? 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 five 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!Because a Bush-hating media and Democratic Party would rather see the world blow up than lose their power.Instead of shouting these accomplishments from every rooftop, they would rather show photos of what a few perverted malcontent soldiers have done in prisons in many cases never disclosing the circumstances surrounding the events.Instead of showing our love for our country, we get photos of flag burning incidents at Abu Ghraib and people throwing snowballs at presidential motorcades.The lack of accentuating the positive in Iraq serves only one purpose. It undermines the world's perception of the United States and our soldiers.I AM ASHAMED OF MY FELLOW AMERICANS WHO WOULD RATHER SEE TERRORISM SUCCEED THAN A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT.Origins: Variations of these items chronicling U.S. accomplishments in rebuilding Iraq have been circulating since mid-2003 and have been forwarded under so many different names (most of them U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq) that it's difficult to determine who the original author was. The earliest known antecedent appears to be a Coalition Provisional Authority briefing given by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. Presidential Envoy to Iraq (the highest-ranking U.S. civilian official in Iraq) on 9 October 2003. Some of the accomplishments cited in this piece were echoed in an 8 December 2003 Forbes magazine article by Caspar W. Weinberger, who served as Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration. There is a valid point underlying the theme of these messages, that the media tends to report (and the public tends to follow) stories having to do with disaster, tragedy and misfortune far more than stories about good deeds and good works. That has always been the nature of news reporting, however; it's not a new development fostered by the Bush-hating media. (As one editorial writer put it in a commentary on this phenomenon, Reporters don't report buildings that don't burn.) These types of items are generally impossible to categorize with a single truth value because they typically contain a mixture of fact, opinion, subjective statements, inaccuracies, and literally true but often misleading claims. An Iraqi citizen whose response to the earlier piece quoted above was published on the Voices in the Wilderness web site chronicled some of the differences he saw between the claims the pieces offered and his viewpoint as an Iraqi.
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