Arthur Chrenkoff has part 8 of Good News From Iraq. He introduces this installment by saying:
The challenges still ahead in Iraq are considerable, but the media in its manic rush from one disaster to the next and from one "quagmire" to another rarely provides the context that would help us understand the situation. Having followed the mainstream media coverage, one can be forgiven for thinking that our task in Iraq is merely to return the country to its pre-war status quo. More often than not lost in reporting is the realization that Iraq has to recover not just from the violence and destruction of the last year and a half, but of the past 30 years. Iraq of March 2003 was not a normal, well-functioning state thrown into chaos and mayhem only by the arrival of the Coalition forces. In reality, the pre-invasion Iraq was a wreck of a country whose great potential of the 1950s and 1960s has been all but completely squandered for the sake of the aggrandizement of one man and the hegemony of his party. It's important to bear that in mind before rushing to criticize the Coalition authorities for failing to rebuild in a year what took three decades to destroy.
There's lots of good information here. For example:
In oil news, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced that it plans to dig 2000 new oil wells and extend the existing oil pipelines by 3000 kilometers in 2005. In the meantime, the Iraqi authorities are planning to construct four new oil refineries in central and southern Iraq.
The media is missing this story completely. This is perhaps the greatest humanitarian undertaking in history, certainly since the Marshall Plan after WW II. One would think that the media would be cheering this effort on, but instead they act as if the only thing they want you to know about are the casualty statistics, and the only thing they want you to see are photos of rag-tag criminals and thugs strutting about with RPGs.
The news blackout will probably persist as long as the Democrats can't claim any credit for this historic accomplishment.
