Someone wanna help me debunk this quote?

[Massacure]

Today marks the second year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. And a lot has happened on the road to freedom for the Iraqi people. And even though terrorists continue to do their best to upset the peace, Iraqis are holding out for hope. One Iraqi was quoted this week as saying..."Things are 1 million times better than Saddam’s days. Freedom is the essence of life." If history tells us anything, freedom does come with a price. But if you look at the big picture, Iraq now has free elections, a free press, and a right of the people to voice their opinions. The terrorists use the excuse they are killing Iraqis and others because the US led coalition is occupying Iraq. The solution would be to stop with the attacks, let peace reign over the country, and then the military troops can go home. I'm a born optimist, and I truly believe stability can be achieved in time.

I'm looking for polls that Iraqis believe other wise. Of course any other ammo will be welcomed too. :)

edit: oh, and i also want a link to that U.N. rule that elections under foreign occupation don't count.

[havocmom]

1. Gee, all that shooting and exploding stuff would seem to make the case

that things are NOT better. They used to have schools, running water, power, hospitals. Now there isn't much of any of that.

Yeah, SOME of them had an election, but they still do not have a democratically elected government.

And the dying goes on, the dying which is a result of the US invasion & occupation.

That is not an improvement over how things were before we invaded and blew the shit out of the infrastructure, to say nothing of the population.

[Career Prole]

2. A million times better? What a crock of shit.

O'BRIEN: They were frustrated. We've seen many reports about the lack of gas, the lack of some of the daily items they needed. But when it comes to the violence, do they feel hopeful that it's going to be resolved? Or have they just sort of come to terms with this is the way it's going to be?

ROBERTSON: I think they've come to terms with it. You find this in any war situation that people will get used to the environment that they're in. They recognize that there are places that are going to be dangerous, perhaps outside some of the recruitment stations, perhaps around government offices. But a lot of places they can probably go with a degree of safety.

They worry about the kidnappings. People still kidnap, perhaps a successful businessman in Iraq, because they can make money from his family.

But by and large, people are putting the violence to one side, just because they know they have to. They know that they have to continue with their lives.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3293706&mesg_id=3293706

"a lot of places they can probably go with a degree of safety."

Talk about damning with faint praise.

[LynnTheDem]

3. Hard to do polls in Iraq right now, what w the raging war.

But here's the latest;

Iraq Split 2 Years After U.S.-Led Invasion

"But now, I walk down the street and all I see is death — innocent people blown up by terrorists and others shot by the Americans," said the 32-year-old chauffeur. "I'm fed up with life. We pinned our hopes on the Americans but they let us down."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=2&u=/ap/20050318/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_hope_and_despair_1

[EVDebs]

4. McCain says we'll be stuck in Iraq for '10 to 20 years' in a CNN quote

and since we're on the 'road to freedom' for Iraqis, who don't seem to want to free themselves, until the Iraqis tell the US to leave...we'll never be sure that they are free, now will we ?

They need to get off their 'freedom' training wheels and roll on their own, just like we'd wished the South Vietnamese would have some time ago. When they didn't, well, that wasn't our fault now was it ? We're going to have to pull out sometime or keep paying the bills.

As with Vietnam, ten years of paying those bills was 58K lives and about $200 billion dollars ('73 dollars). What will that compute to nowadays ?

[kevinmc]

5. Here are some Iraqi Blogs..............

http://ayadrahimtriptoiraq.blogspot.com/

http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com/

http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info/

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

http://moslawi.blogspot.com/

http://kurdo.blogspot.com/


Bottom of this Page from my blog has a whole list of Iraqi Blog links:

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2005_01_30_freedemocracy_archive.html

This should help. I believe what the people that live there say about what's going on.

[LdyGuique]

6. Putting on my fire retardent equipment . . .

Frankly, during this interim "lull," I think most Iraqis do believe that they are better off than under Saddam. At least they can visualize a future that they might control themselves as Saddam was too well entrenched to be taken out by a simple revolution from the bottom.

1) The Kurds have never been in a better position for creating their own homeland, either as an sub-autonomous region or as an outright nation. They have paid with their lives for years and are willing to continue to pay if the Sunnis in the Triangle continue to up the ante. They hold over half of the oil resources and have moved from a refugee mentality to one of control over their destiny (at least to some degree).

2) The Shiiites have never had so much power in Iraq as now. One reason that Fallujah has failed to engender as much reaction from within Iraq as from outside of Iraq is that it's part of the Sunni Triangle and while it benefitted greatly from Saddam's regime, it doesn't engender as much sympathy amongst the Shiite majority.

However, I don't believe that Iraq will avoid an all out civil war or conversely, a long term occupation. Either future will likely bring a bloodbath that will wipeout any of the current gains.

Mesopotamia has a long history of empire-building and occupation. The region includes Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan and Lebanon (and sometimes Israel and Turkey). There are a whole lot of people who are watching current instabilities with an eye on future empire-building as oil remains a powerful attraction to all involved, whether western or middle-eastern. Vultures have been circling the ME for a long time.

[Make7]

7. Free elections? A free press?

I don't know about the UN, but here is someone else speaking about that very issue:

Bush said:
All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections, for those elections to be free and fair. The elections in Lebanon must be fully and carefully monitored by international observers. The Lebanese people have the right to determine their future, free from domination by a foreign power. The Lebanese people have the right to choose their own parliament this spring, free of intimidation.

Source: President Discusses War on Terror

Perhaps he could explain how this does not apply to Iraq. The administration even hailed the elections as a success precisely because Iraqis came out despite the intimidation of the "terrorists". But still it was "free"?

There is so much information about how the elections were not free, that I don't even want to start. But, at the very least, I figure that the president should be able to live up to the standards he sets for others.

Iraq sets up committee to impose restrictions on news reporting by Nicolas Pelham, July 27, 2004:

Iyad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister, has established a media committee to impose restrictions on print and broadcast media, a government official announced yesterday. The step underlines an aggressive new attitude towards press freedoms, in spite of US efforts to nurture independent media.

Ibrahim Janabi, appointed to head the new Higher Media Commission, told the FT the restrictions - known as "red lines" - had yet to be finalised, but would include unwarranted criticism of the prime minister. He singled out last Friday's sermon by Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand Shia cleric, who mocked Mr Allawi as America's "tail".

Outlets that broadcast the sermon could be banned, he said.

The formation of Mr Janabi's committee appears to mark a step back from Washington's democratic vision for postwar Iraq.

Source: Financial Times

Apparently the press is free to agree with the government. If they don't, they could be banned.

---

Freedom is on the march.

:) Make7

[Massacure]

9. Nice sources. This will work well.

[Make7]

10. More info on the run up to the elections:

Iraqi elections: Human rights concerns

-Make7

[applegrove]

8. yeah look at the big picture.. but not so big that you see Rumsfield

& Cheney under Nixon, Reagan & Bush Sr. giving Saddam Hussein power, encouraging the development of chemical weapons and starting war with Iran. PULL IN PULL IN PULL IN!