The Real Iraq

Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here...one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable...through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various fundamental mistakes committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the carnage and chaos in the streets as signs of the countrys impending or undeclared civil war...Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003...Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005...the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark...camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959...down...., The Real Iraq, Amir Taheri, Commentary, May 18, 2006

Just go read Amir Taheri's article. It's not the story you've been seeing on CNN or reading in the Times on either coast. That fact is a mark of disgrace for the major news media in the United States.

Luther