News of the day seem to have come from Congressman John Murtha. Republicans were not so thrilled, they say it's nothing but deja vu. I think Murtha's News Conference is worth reading, actually, I think it reflects the way most Americans look at Iraq today. Dismissing it might just be a huge mistake. Here's the whole transcript. Below, a small excerpt:
Oil production and energy production are below prewar level. You remember they said that was going to pay for the war, and it's below prewar level.
Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation. Only $9 billion of $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent.
And I said on the floor of the House, when they passed the $87 billion, the $18 billion was the most important part of it because you've got to get people back to work; you've got electricity; you've got to get water.
Unemployment is 60 percent. Now, they tell you in the United States it's less than that. So it may be 40 percent. But in Iraq, they told me it's 60 percent, when I was there.
Clean water is scarce and they only spent $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects.
And, most importantly -- this is the most important point -- incidents have increased from 150 a week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over a time when we had additional more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revolution at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled.
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