by James Glaser
December 9, 2003

Every place our President goes, he keeps telling us how well things are going in Iraq. You know what, George Bush is bullshitting us again. Many towns and cities in Iraq still do not have the electrical power they need. Here is a clue George, without electricity, you have no running water and without running water, you have no indoor plumbing. Also you have no refrigeration, so it is hard to keep many foods. That tells us that things are not going very well for the Iraqi people.

Now get this, in a Washington Post article by Ariana Eunjung Cha, the headline says, "60 South Korean contractors decide they want out of Iraq." These are the contractors that are trying to hook up the electrical grid. Oh yes, they do work for an American company called Washington Group International, out of Boise, Idaho, but no American workers.

Our country just gave 87 billion dollars to continue this Iraqi fixup and who do we hire? Not Americans, but South Koreans. Not only is this money ours, but we are borrowing it and our kids will have to pay it back. If our kids are footing the bill, shouldn't we at least hire Americans?

In the article it is written, "Angry Iraqis have pointed to many parts of the country receiving only a few hours of electricity a day as evidence that the reconstruction has failed to live up to its promises." We are telling the Iraqi people that our way is a better way. We are telling the American people that things are getting better in Iraq and only those few areas that support Saddam are a problem. We are now in the eighth month of reconstruction and we still don't have the electrical grid up and running. No matter what President Bush says, things are not all hunky-dory for the Iraqi people.

Monday an American Soldier was killed while guarding the line at a gas station. We keep hearing about all of the Iraqis that we have trained to provide security for their own country and we have American Soldiers guarding a gas station line.

"The South Koreans' departure comes as anxiety over security is increasing among the thousands of contractors in Iraq." Two Koreans were killed and two wounded last week and many large contractors concede that employees have left Iraq recently or have declined assignments because of safety concerns.

Washington is not only lying to the American people. "The South Korean electrical workers said that they were sorry to abandon the project, but that they had been led to believe the area they would be working in---the Sunni Triangle where resistance to the US led occupation has been the strongest----was stable."

We sent these electrical workers into the worst area in Iraq and told them that everything was stable. We lost over sixty guys in that Triangle last month and it has been the hot bed of the occupation since we got there. Every American assigned to that area is a high alert at all times and we tell these Koreans that everything is stable. Nice huh? George and his administration will lie to any one if they think it well help them.

Lets think about that soldier getting killed guarding the an Iraqi gas station. Was he defending America? What on earth are we doing over there? Just this week it was reported that there are now more Iraqis trained for security than there are American forces in Iraq, but we waste a fine young American by having him guard a gas station. Is that sick or what?

Saturday night a bomb derailed a train, a soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was killed and two wounded, in fact almost every day another American is killed and still George Bush is out there talking about how great things in Iraq are going. We hear about all the schools open, hospitals working, (well they better be because Iraq is still a war zone) and how shops and stores are open for business.

Think of this, President Bush went over to Iraq on Thanksgiving day and had to sneak in and sneak out of the country. He had to stay in a bunker the whole time and saw no real Iraqis. Does that sound like a country where things are looking up? Eight months after George's Mission Accomplished speech and many people in Iraq can't flush their toilets yet. Eight months later and still no safe drinking water. Eight months later and Americans are getting killed every day.

Here is the ultimate sign of just how well things are going in Iraq. This week, our military for the first time in this war started doing body counts, so that the American public can see how well we are doing. I remember another war filled with body counts. We lost that one.