And in Afghanistan, our afghani allies just kicked some major Taliban XXX today.

How can the economy be booming with over 100,000 dead civilian victims, daily carnage from car bombs, thousands missing in black site torture prisons? The U.S. won't hire Iraqis because they are security risks so they are importing personnel from other countries. The unemloyment rate for Iraqis is over 90%.

Damon,

How can it be booming?

Man, step away from the MSM and Daily Kos...time to rejoin the real world.

"How can it be booming?
Man, step away from the MSM and Daily Kos...time to rejoin the real world."
-----------
Good analysis Mark... huh?

Damon wrote:

"How can the economy be booming with over 100,000 dead civilian victims, daily carnage from car bombs, thousands missing in black site torture prisons? The U.S. won't hire Iraqis because they are security risks so they are importing personnel from other countries. The unemloyment rate for Iraqis is over 90%."

Exactly where do these statistics come from Damon? I can believe 100,000 dead (ostensibly) civilian citizens - although how many of them are in actuality enemy combatants is questionable.

As for "daily carnage from car bombs," it is true that car bombs are going off in places in Iraq. But despite what the jihad media would have you believe, they are not going off everywhere, around the clock, with increasing frequency.

Where do you get the information about "thousands missing in black prisons?" And this "importing of personnel" because the Iraqis are security risks is the first I'm hearing on this issue. Again, give me a solid reference to support your contention.

Unemployment over 90%?! I distinctly remember during the earlier phase of conflict in Iraq hearing reports from FOX News, CNN and other media outlets that unemployment was hovering around 50%, but that was in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Again, please supply some link or reputable reference that can corroborate your assertion.

Here's a link than puts the unemployment at 30 to 60%.

Good article too. An exerpt:

"Security for the average Iraqi is now worse than it was under Saddam Hussein, who focused really on political dissidents. The living standards of the average Iraqi are far worse. There's far more unemployment. The distribution of income is terrible. And though you can make a paper case that some macroeconomic measures have improved, in the real world, Iraqis are worse off, on average, as individuals, than they were before we invaded."

Well, if this is the "Worst Economy Since The Great Depression," and George W. Bush is "the very worst president in the history of the United States," and America herself is a "corporatist, militarist, imperialist, Christo-fascist, and terrorist nation," then, yeah, Iraq is "a debacle."

SOL,

Better than you get at Daily Kos...

But the plain fact of the matter is that the analysis is in the post...and if you look past the MSM's "bomb a day" coverage, you can see a vibrant and growing Iraq...

Extramedium,

Your link is to the Old Gray Hag (New York Times). It requires registration, which I refuse to do for that corrupt organization.

Of course, since they are one of the vanguards of the jihad media, I am inclined to not believe anything they print. They've proven to me time and again, that there's no depth to which they won't stoop to paint a gloom-and-doom scenario of whatever the issue is. They are so openly hostile to the President and his administration, that it comes out in each and every article that they publish. You couldn't pay me enough to put that paper in the bottom of a bird cage. (I wouldn't want to offend the birds!)

I'll just take your word for it, OK... but I appreciate the effort. Is there any other organization that might have statistics whose veracity I don't automatically question? Even with that, the percentage you quote from the NYT doesn't come anywhere near 90%, so I ask again, Damon: where did you get this information?

The problem I have with the Old Gray Hag and the jihad press in general on this issue is that they consistently point to our own economic statistics and keep trying to convince us that our economy sucks. Why, there must be a soupline on every corner, if you listened to them. Personally, my income has gone up 50% since 2000, and I'm far better off than I was even a few years ago. But to hear the jihad media report on economic statistics here in the US of A, things are worse than they were during the height of the great depression... so I am very wary of believing anything - especially economic analysis - that I hear comes from the NYT...

I'm sure that there are still significant challenges facing the Iraqis as they attempt to reform their economy into a capitalistic system. I did see a news report on the Iraqi stock market several months back, and it seems to be pointing toward a vibrant and growing economic base in the country. It won't happen overnight, and there are sure to be bumps in the road, but I wish them well, and hope for a brighter tomorrow...

dbogdan, Damon went and put his head back in the sandbox! I doubt he'll be back with anything but the NYtimes or Daily KOS. Of course I don't think even the NYtimes quotes Damons left loony talking points! At least not as their Bible!!1

That 100,000 civilian deaths figure is a joke ...its been tossed around since a few weeks before the 2004 election ...the time is sooo much a coincidence I am sure. It came from the Lancelot study I think and has been debunked since. The actual number is around 34k-38k deaths: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Damon was under reporting the number of dead civilians. The Lancet Medical Journal pegs it at 250,000.

The report in the British journal is based on the work of teams from the Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University in the U.S., and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.

A similar methodology was used in the late 1990's to calculate the number of deaths from the war in Kosovo, put at 10,000.

The information was obtained as Iraqi interviewers surveyed 808 families, consisting of 7,868 people, in 33 different "clusters" or neighbourhoods spread across the country.

In each case, they asked how many births and deaths there had been in the home since January 2002.

That information was then compared with the death rates in each neighbourhood in the 15 months before the invasion that toppled president Saddam Hussein, adjusted for the different time frames, and extrapolated to cover the entire 24.4 million population of Iraq.

The most common cause of death is as a direct result of a worsening 'culture of violence', mostly caused by indiscriminate U.S. co-ordinated air strikes, and related military interventions, reveals the study of almost 1000 households scattered across Iraq. And the risk of violent death just after the invasion was 58 times greater than before the war. The overall risk of death was 1.5 times more after the invasion than before. That extrapolated figure came out to about 250,000, so Damon is way under.

Man, step away from the MSM and Daily Kos...time to rejoin the real world.

Mark, slightly OT, but it's time we started calling the MSM what they are--the Drive-By Media. This movement, started by Rush, has taken hold in the MSM, and they don't like it. Did you hear any of the panel that was held recently at the Bob Schiffer School of Journalism at Texas Christian University? Schiffer, Judy Woodruff, and other members of the DBM were there, and they were none-too-pleased at this label.

The label fits--the press comes, fires a shot, or a story into the crowd of the unwashed. If the story sticks, they run with it, hoping to affect public opinion. If the story fails to resonate, they drive by and fire a new, or recycled, story into the crowd. Their agenda is simple--destroy this president, destroy his administration, destroy the GOP. Their rules are non-existent, witness Rathergate, Plamegate, Abu Grhaib, Git'mo.

Let's use it, fellow B4B'ers. Repeat after me--Drive-By Media, Drive-By Media, Drive-By Media.

Just watch 'em cower, and make excuse after excuse for their shoddy journalism. Watch 'em deny it; watch 'em step in it...

extramedium, please don't link to the NY Slimes, aka Al-Jazeera on the Hudson, if you expect to be taken seriously. They're on the board of directors of the DBM.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to a local talk show, and a caller called in to complain about how immigrants were being hired by KBR to work at the US military dining facilities in Iraq.
He said, and I paraphrase, "They're hiring Africans; how would you like to have an African making your ham and cheese omelette?"

Slightly off-topic, but I found this rhetoric appalling, and it came from a lib.

dbogdan, Damon went and put his head back in the sandbox!

bearman, I would have to disagree with you on this. The fact is, in order to put his head in the sandbox, Damon would have to pull it out of Howard al-Dean's caboose! However, judging by Damon's totally infantile post, the sandbox reference is appropriate. Semper Fi, from a fellow military man! You Marines rock!!!

According to economic forecasts, the Iraqi economy is growing at nearly 3%, which is about 3 times faster than the EU economy.

Jason,

Please describe, in precise detail, what is an "indiscriminate" US airstrike. After you have done that, please give us the dates of each such attack launched by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of people killed, what type they were (combatants or non-combatants) as well as the full context of the attack (ie, what happened in that area just before the airstrike).

Unless you can come up with all of this information - right now, without looking it up - they you are just believing anti-American propaganda at face value without the slightest bit of independent thought on your part.

Unless you can come up with all of this information - right now, without looking it up - they you are just believing anti-American propaganda at face value without the slightest bit of independent thought on your part.

Uh, sorry. That's absurd. I could as well say that since you can't (and you can't) provide excruciating detail to back up everything YOU say that you're just spouting the administration line.

Oh, wait...

Didn't you hear our military eats babies and kicks dogs also?

Mark, thanks for dealing with the invented claims of Jason. One you missed is the definition of "civilian", as in "civilan casualties". It's late, and I am not going to take the time to search out the reference, but the claim of "cilvian causalties" is very misleading because of the percentage of those causualties that reflects men of fighting age.

True "civlian casualties" would span the demographics, including a predictable percentage of women and children. But calling men between, say, 18 and 35 "civilians" merely becaue they were not wearing uniforms---in a war in which most of the enemy do NOT wear uniforms---is not only misleading, it has to be purposely misleading. And men in this age group provide the vast majority of the numbers quoted.

But my favorite quote is this: "....Saddam Hussein, who focused really on political dissidents."

Really? I guess in LibSpeak, if you classify anyone remotely suspected of not being eager to lick your boots as a "political dissident" and then you "focus" on him by kidnapping his wife and young children and forcing you to watch them being raped and tortured and then killed in front of you, you are better than liberators. Good to see who can swallow that without gagging. NOt surprised, though.

So glad to have the Saddamite Defense Team make that point.

As far as I can tell, from reading the posts from libs here and on other sites, and spending some time listening to the pathological rantings on Air America, what passes for intellectual political discourse on the Left is dependent on a few clearly defined components.

One is the Crystal Ball---because wihtout the claimed ability to KNOW the true motives of people, in spite of what they say or the facts surrounding a given event, many if not most of the biggest "causes" of the Left would simply not exist. Without, for example, the psycho---ooops, psychic---conviction that Scooter Libby said whatever it was he said OUT OF SPITE, TO DESTROY WILSON/PLAME, FOR REVENGE, the non-scandal wouldn't have had any legs at all. It was the absolute belief in something that no one could possibly know that made it possible for the outrage to seethe and erupt. Without this absolute unassailable cosmically-generated "knowledge" of the deepest emotions of man none of them has ever met or talked to, this would have been a minor blip hurriedly covered up by those seeking to hide the truth about Wilson.

In the same vein is the type of claim spouted by Joe and Sick and their ilk---they happen to KNOW, for example, what Rumsfeld did NOT think about. Forget the old wisdom that it's impossible to prove a negative--whoever said that had clearly never met a liberal. Hey, without negativity, they got nothing.

And part and parcel of this is the linked ability/determination to simply dismiss logic or reason. As I pointed out, nearly every living room in the country hosted a spirited discussion about the warring religious factions in Iraq, the likelyhood of an intense resistance as the fanatics tried to retain or regain their lost power, the obvious problems lying ahead of us as we were going to be faced with trying to reconcile groups which had never played nice together in the past, etc. But the Liberal Dogma says that the experts somehow just didn't ever bother to have those conversations, or listen to anyone who did. And the faithful do not challenge dogma.

And then, of course, is the Invented Fact. If challenged, you simply cite whoever invented it. Need an argument? Invent some irresponsible and poorly planned air strikes and an equally invented casualty count from them, invent a crisis here and an emergency there, throw in a few invented outrages, and all of a sudden you have the Wednesday outline for Air America, or the talking points for libs eager to shoot down the fact with their new inventions. Truth? Truth, like sin, morality, and John Kerry's military record, is all relative, and flexible enough to be shaped to meet the demands of the moment.

Take away the Crystal Ball, the ability to invent whatever seems expedient at the time, and the attitude that consistency and logic just get in the way, and you effectively silence the Left.