A Closer Perspective

The following is the gist of what the chairman of Iraq’s Democratic Party, Mithal al-Alusi, had to say about the state of Iraqi security, Iran, and what the US needs to do. These words were uttered during an anti-terrorism conference held in Tel Aviv this past week.

First of all, he said, “In Iraq, there is no occupation—there is liberation.” Alusi acknowledged that mistakes have been made, as is the case in any war. But for the first time in Iraq’s history, he said, “There is such a thing as democratic elections.”

And as for the terrorists that have fled Iraq in order to fight on another front in Afghanistan—as if miraculously beamed from one country to the next—Alusi urged the audience to get a map and locate the massive territorial divide these terrorists have miraculously hopped over on their way to Afghanistan.

“Iran is at the center of all the troubles in our region,” he said. And just as they meddled in Iraq’s affairs, they are now complicating the situation on the ground in Afghanistan in order to provide themselves with cover, he explained. They need time to finish developing their nuclear arsenal, he said.

After his remarks, Mr. Alusi was approached by the columnist for additional clarification.

“It’s very clear this is a liberation,” he told me. “People on the left in America have a problem with this. We in Iraq don’t have a problem with it. We call it a liberation because we know this is a liberation.”

Later, Alusi said, “I would like to say to the American people, thank you—not only because Saddam is gone—thank you for the change on the street and for the change in [our hearts].”

When asked about the controversial timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Alusi pleaded, “This is not the time to give up.” Later, he said, “Please, the time you are working for us is over. Now we are your partner. We are facing now Iran. And Iran is not an Iraqi problem. Iran, in the reality, is an international problem.”

Alusi resents the fact that in America, Iraq is being turned into a political issue. “This is not fair to the Iraqi people,” he said. “This is not fair to the American soldiers. We know the price they paid. We paid the same price. We have lost families and children.”

Three years ago Alusi lost two sons to terrorists. They were gunned down right in front of him. He anticipates and accepts the same fate.

We Owe Them

In this Sunday's Post Standard, Hart Seely writes a powerful story about a local man who has tried to serve his country as best as he can and has ended up with nightmares. His father, Kamal Mere, is a Palestinian who, at age 15, left his home in Jerusalem right after the Six Day War. Two years later he had settled in Chicago and in 1985 moved to Syracuse where he opened a business on the City's south side. I remember the business. This story is about his son, Naiel Mere.

Naiel joined the US Army five days after the WTC attacks. Eighteen months later he was in Iraq serving as an interpreter. His plans to serve his country were derailed when a rare skin disease forced his separation from the Army in 2004; he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service. Within six months (December 2004) Naiel had signed up with Titan Corporation (later L3 Communications) - a defense contractor that supplies interpreters to the US Armed Forces.

Maiel was back in Iraq.

He assisted in enlisting Iraqis as civilian interpreters, or "terps" as they're called, but it soon became apparent that he was also signing them up for an early grave. The Post Standard continues:

"At $1,050 a month, a "terp" could earn more than many Iraqi doctors. But if identified by insurgents, interpreters and their families became prime targets.

"In mid 2005, the enemy began to pinpoint translators as a tactical weakness in the U.S. force. Without its interpreter, the patrol could not understand a reasonable request or heed a critical warning. The insurgency wanted to send a message to anyone who was thinking of helping the United States."

I'll give credit to Seely, he provides a well written story and identifies the insurgents as what they truly are: "the enemy."

Naiel witnessed the deaths of hundreds of terps. He knew most of them. He was identifying the bodies at the morgue. He made death payments to the families.

"I would try to keep it professional. I would apologize for the loss. I would get down on my knees and I'd count the cash out in front of them. I'd fold it, and I'd stay on my knees to keep respectful. Then I would put the cash in their hands. And then they would just go crazy..."

This is not a fun job, I don't care how much they pay you. Because of the terrorists penchant for murder, Iraqis in record numbers are trying to get into the U.S. The U.S. State Department has agreed to allow 7,000 Iraqis to immigrate here in 2007, a mere pittance. So far the actual number allowed is far, far less.

"In March, eight Iraqis made it to America. One more came in April, and another in May according to the government. In June and July, 120 Iraqis arrived, signalling a rise.

Over those two months the U.S. took in 1,484 Iranians."

If this is accurate, it is astounding, appalling. What is with our government? Kirk Johnson, a former information officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development states:

I'm beginning to think that even the president of the United States can acknowledge our responsibility, and yet nothing would happen, because our government is so incompetent.

"We've been so cowed by this mantra of security threats that an Iraqi who works for us on Wednesday could go home Wednesday night and have a family member assassinated an be forced to flee the country. And on Thursday we view him as a potential terrorist. [...] It's a horrible indictment on who we are as a country, that we could forget our friends so quickly."

I almost agree. These government ingrates don't forget their friends, they ignore them. It is politically expedient to allow these people to die, just like they did in Viet Nam. If they live it is an embarassment.

But others do not forget. Like the surrounding Arab nations who are waiting to see if the U.S will cut and run again. Unlike our politicans, they won't forget for a thousand years.

If we continue to do this, we won't have a true friend left in the world. No one will trust us to go the distance.

And they will be right.

Naiel returned home after suffering what appears to be a nervous/emotional breakdown. After a close friend bled to death during an attack he could couldn't stop crying. But he has not stopped trying to help his terps. He writes,he sends emails. And he refuses to forget.

"Just like we owe our soldiers, we owe the translators. [...] They have sacrificed their lives, like soldiers... What are they going to get in return? A certificate? A coin? Well, that's not enough... We need to help them. We need to get them out of there."

This Palestinian American shows more virtue than many of our politicians who have lived in this country for generations.

Why We Fight

While browsing the Rottie Bark, I came across this link to a story at Michael J. Totten's blog. It is about an interview with an Iraqi interpreter who works for the Americans. He gives his reasons why he does not want the Americans to leave.

After reading this I realize I have no clue what it is like to be raised in a totalitarian political system, an absolute dictatorship. As a retired cop I cannot relate to a system where the police (granted not all of them) are uniformed thugs and murderers. Does not compute, I can't wrap my head around it. The butchery and depravity is beyond me.

The journalist, Michael J.Totten, is asking the questions to an interpreter nicknamed "Hammer."

QUESTION: Tell us about living under Saddam Hussein.

ANSWER: It was crazy life, like feeling safe inside a jail. If they sent you to an actual jail nothing changed. They arrested everyone, literally everyone, for no reason and sent them to jail for two weeks just so they could see the jail.

I went there three times. The first time because I worked for a movie company. They sent all of us to jail. It had nothing to do with me.

I was given a three year sentence. My family has money, so I paid the judge 50,000 dollars. I gave it directly to the judge, plus four new tires for his car and a satellite TV. He gave me a three month sentence instead of a three year sentence.

He scratched “3 years” off my sentence and wrote “3 months” in by hand.

They sent me to Abu Ghraib. I saw so many things. If you want me to talk about that I would need a whole newspaper.

QUESTION: Tell us a little about Abu Ghraib.

ANSWER: On the bus to the jail I didn’t have handcuffs. I asked why. The guard said “Look behind you.”

The first guy behind me got a 600 year sentence.

The next guy got six hanging sentences.

The third guy was sentenced to be thrown blindfolded out of a second story window. Twice.

Another guy f*cked his mother and sisters three times. He was freed on Saddam’s birthday.

Another guy had his hand cut off.

There was this last guy. He went to the market with his wife. She waited in the car when he went to buy something. When he came back to the car his wife was screaming. Two guys were in the car with her. One held her arms and the other was raping her. He grabbed his AK-47 and chased them away. They ran to their car and he shot them. Their car blew up. They were mukhabarat [Saddam’s secret police]. He got a death sentence. On his second day in Abu Ghraib they killed him and sent the mother- and sister-f*cker free for the fourth time.

The guards who ran Abu Ghraib sold hallucinagenic drugs to prisoners for money.

They forced me to take them.

You need protection in there. You find someone and give him drugs and cigarettes. You pay off the guards to just punch you in the face or move you to a different cell instead of kill you.

I was freed 26 days after I arrived, on Saddam’s birthday before I finished the three months.

I can’t live with this nightmare anymore.

QUESTION: What’s it like out there now for the average Iraqi?

ANSWER: If you give average Iraqis electricity right now it will be enough. This is the most important thing. Give them power for seven days in a row and there will be no fights.

After the US came and Saddam fell they earned 3 dollars a month. Now they earn between 100 and 700 dollars a month.

Giving them electricity would reduce violence. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what would happen to this Army base if the power was cut off forever and the soldiers had to spend the rest of their lives in Iraq. Do think think these soldiers would still behave normally?

Iraqis are paid to set up IEDs. They do it so they can buy gas for their generator and cool off their house or leave the country. Their hands do this, not their minds.

TV is the most interesting thing to Iraqis. They learn everything from the TV. Right now they only have one hour of electricity every day. Do you know what they watch? Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera pushes them to fight. If they got TV the whole day they would watch many things.

Their minds would be influenced by something other than terrorist propaganda. Right now they have no electricity. They have no dreams. Nothing. And Saddam messed with their minds. For more than 30 years he poisoned their minds.

You can’t understand Iraq because you can’t get inside their mind. When you get
inside their mind…it is a crazy mind.

QUESTION: What will happen if the Americans leave next year?

ANSWER: Rivers of blood everywhere. Syria and Iran will take pieces of Iraq. Anti-American governments will laugh. You will be a joke of a country that no one will take seriously.

I will kill myself if it happens. I am completely serious. The militias will hunt down and kill me and my family. I will beat them to it by killing myself.

I worked for the U.S. government for four years. Everyone who works as an interpreter for four years and gets a signature from a General or a Senator gets a Green Card. My hope is to get this somehow. I will do anything for this.

I am doing this for my son. Everything for my son. I don’t want my son living here getting into religion and militias and Al Qaeda. I want my son to be free, to have a girlfriend, to get married, and to be a good citizen.

QUESTION: Why is there peace in Kurdistan but not in this part of Iraq?

ANSWER: The Kurds got rid of Saddam earlier. They fought against Saddam just like the Shia fought against Saddam, but the Kurds won their war and the Shia lost. In 1991 the Americans were heroes to the Kurds, but they disappointed the Shia and left them to Saddam. They were not reliable. So the next time, in 2003, some Shia thought they should get help from Iran. They know Iran is not going anywhere. Iran is a more reliable ally than the Americans.

The Shia never forgot being abandoned by the Americans. They talk about this all the time, still. They know the U.S. will leave Iraq and they will face Al Qaeda alone.

Shia people here are very simple, very easy. They are easy to control. They don’t need too many things. Just electricity, rights, a decent life, a good opportunity to get a job.

QUESTION: What is the worst thing you have ever seen in this country.

ANSWER: 60 guys from Al Qaeda kidnapped an interpreter’s sister. She had a baby boy, six months old. They raped her, all 60 guys. Then they cut her to pieces and threw her in the river. They left the six month baby boy to sleep in her blood.

We found him on a big farm south of Baghdad. All that was left was his legs and his shoes. The dogs ate him.

I don’t want this for my family.

These people are like animals who came from another planet.

And the libs were crying about underwear party hats and naked pyramids.

Do You Know

Did you know that 47 countries have reestablished their embassies in Iraq?

Did you know that the Iraqi government currently employs 1.2 millionIraqi people?

Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 new schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been completed in Iraq?

Did you know that Iraq 's higher educational structure consists of 20 universities, 46 institutes or colleges and 4 research centers, all currently operating?

Did you know that 25 Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2005 for the re-established Fulbright program?

Did you know that the Iraqi navy is operational? They have five 100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a naval infantry regiment.

Did you know that Iraq 's Air Force consists of three operational squadrons, which includes 9 reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft (under Iraqi operational control) which operate day and night,and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 Bell Jet Rangers?

Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando Battalion?

Did you know that the Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers?

Did you know that there are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over 3,500 new officers each 8 weeks?

Did you know there are more than 1,100 building projects going on in Iraq?

They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad stations,
22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.

Did you know that 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first two series of polio vaccinations?

Did you know that 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid October?

Did you know that there are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%?

Did you know that Iraq has an independent media that consists of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations?

Did you know that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?

Did you know that 2 candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a televised debate recently?

OF COURSE WE DIDN'T KNOW!

WHY DIDN'T WE KNOW?

OUR MEDIA WOULDN'T TELL US!

Instead of reflecting our love for our country, we get photos of flagburning incidents at Abu Ghraib and people throwing snowballs at the presidential motorcades.

Tragically, the lack of accentuating the positive in Iraq serves two purposes:

It is intended to undermine the world's perception of the United States, thus
minimizing consequent support,

and it is intended to discourage American citizens.

Above facts are verifiable on the Department of Defense web site. http://www.defendamerica.mil/

And now you know...

H/T to Charlie the cop.

Central New Yorker Murdered By Terrorists

In both the New York Post and the Syracuse Post Standard, we are told that four US soldiers, one of them Pfc. Shawn P. Falter, 25, of Homer, N.Y., were murdered in an ambush by terrorists on January 20th. Homer is a town about 20 miles south of Syracuse.

From the Post Standard:

4 troops abducted, killed in Iraq attack
1/27/2007, 6:24 a.m. ET
By STEVEN R. HURST and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — In perhaps the boldest and most sophisticated attack in four years of warfare, gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons abducted four U.S. soldiers last week at the provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and then shot them to death.

In response, all terrorists in U.S. custody will be forced to wear their underpants on their heads for a week. Clean skivvies will be issued each day, of course, to prevent excessive patchouli build up.

The U.S. military confirmed a report earlier Friday by The Associated Press that three of the soldiers were dead and one was mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province, about 25 miles from the compound where they were captured. A fifth soldier was killed in the initial attack on the compound.

This will not decrease the liberals' outcry against "imperialistic" U.S. actions in the Middle East. This will hardly get any attention at all in the MSM. As you read the bird dropping catcher known as the Post Standard, it sounds like the US is at fault for this atrocity. Did you catch how the AP reporters noticed the boldness and sophistication of the attack?

The new account contradicted a U.S. military statement on Jan. 20, the day of the raid on an Iraqi governor's office, that five soldiers were killed "repelling" the attack.

So the news here is that the US military contradicted itself, not the bloody-minded business of murdering captives. Then this:

The security breakdown and the dramatic kidnapping and murder of four soldiers leaked out just as President Bush faces stiffening congressional opposition over his plan to flood Baghdad and surrounding regions with 21,500 more American troops. Two of Congress's most vocal war critics, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha, were in the Iraqi capital as the news broke.

Again, the news is not the outrageous behavior of terrorists, but security breakdowns, opposition to the war and critics of the President's policies. Garbage coverage.

This is a breakdown of the stories Qassim Abdul-Zahra has written for the AP. This is the breakdown of Steven Hurst's stories. As you read this trash you'll get a notion that these reporters get a charge out of negative news from Iraq for they write of nothing else. I checked back to July 2003 on Hurst (68 articles) and July 2005 on Abdul-Zahra (59 articles). All but a few were negative reports.

Contrast this with what the NY Post has to say:

January 27, 2007 -- Those who insist so loudly on following Geneva Conventions rules regarding captured terrorists need to take a long, hard look at the latest atrocity in Iraq, news of which broke yesterday.

Four U.S. soldiers, one of them a New Yorker, were captured - and promptly murdered - last Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles from Baghdad, officials confirmed.

Two of the slain soldiers were found handcuffed together in the back of a vehicle.

The soldiers were murdered after being captured. Their bodies were found miles away from where they were taken. This is the money quote:

But the murder of disarmed and helpless troops - killing POWs, in effect - is what's at issue here.

[...] The murder of helpless captives is a stark reminder of the barbaric nature of the enemy that American-led forces face in Iraq. Indeed, it puts into perspective the complaints about U.S. "atrocities" committed against prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Frankly, complaints about degrading photos and alleged desecration of the Koran can't hold a candle to the savage abduction and execution-style murders of brave soldiers.

Those who have led the outcry over what they hysterically decry as U.S. "war crimes" in Iraq have a particular obligation to speak out against genuine atrocities of the kind committed by these terrorist insurgents.

Their failure to do so will only serve to confirm their actual motive: not to hold America to the highest moral standard, but to undermine the U.S. effort and ensure a Vietnam-style defeat in Iraq.

You'll find nothing like this from the AP.

The enemy has one one Rule Of Engagement; kill every man, woman and child who does not support them. There are no circumstances too despicable for these animals. And no atrocity so evil that it can't be overlooked and/or spun by the liberals.

Dead Man's Jig

More details are becoming available on the execution death of the tyrant Saddam. As reported in The Sun, it appears that his executioners had a few words to say about his impeding fate.

SADDAM Hussein went to Hell with the vicious curses of executioners ringing in his ears, including one who snarled: “God damn you”.

Can't blame these people, who suffered greatly under his despotic regime. They obviously exercised extraordinary self discipline in that Saddam reached the gallows with his head still attached to his shoulders. What surprises me is that the British editors at The Sun seem to believe in an afterlife.

The Iraqis were so delighted at the despot’s demise that immediately after his death they danced a jig around his body as it dangled from the noose. Joining in the outpouring of joy was the masked hangman, guards and even Iraqi officials.

This giddiness was due, no doubt, to the intoxicating effects of the Noose Fairie.

But Saddam had been left in no doubt of the contempt in which he was held in his last few minutes alive. As he prepared to move onto the trap- door of the gallows, one of his guards turned to him and spat out: “God damn you.” The doomed tyrant was heard replying: “God damn you.”

In the exchange with his guards Saddam attempts to justify his war against Iran, which cost a million lives, and laughably proclaims victory against the United States.

One of the guards then shouts: “You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.” Saddam counters: “I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans.”

You wonder what goes through the mind of this proud, arrogant man as he faces eternity. He spared himself and his family from the destitution that he visited upon the rest of the country but yet only survived as a free man by scampering from safe house to safe house and ended up hiding in a hole in the ground. During his regime he surrounded himself with riches, family and sycophants, thereby isolating himself from reality.

Last night we had some friends over to celebrate the New Year. One of them, an Army Chaplain, spent two tours of duty in Iraq. The last tour ended a year ago, he was stationed in Tikrit. He talked about the three palaces he was in; one was the size of a state capitol building and the others were like large hotels. These structures were incredibly opulent - Saddam's monuments to himself.

If Saddam ever realized the devastating effects of his actions on others, he never let on. He seeks this same isolation at the end.

As the hangman prepares to pull the lever to open the trap-door, Saddam chants the Muslim profession of faith. “God is Great and Mohammed is his prophet. Palestine is Arab.”

His last words are: “I bear witness that Mohammed . . . ” It is the beginning of the second verse of the invocation, but before Saddam can complete it the executioner sends him hurtling to his death.

Saddam is seen plunging through the trap-door. As he dropped his neck snapped with an audible crack. According to one witness he died with his eyes open. In the video his corpse is then seen dangling at the end of the rope with his head at a grotesque angle. One onlooker proclaims: “The tyrant has fallen.”

Sic semper tyrannis.

How Fast Did Saddam Slide Into Hell?

"I saw fear, he was afraid."

So says Ali Al Massedy, the man chosen to videotape the execution of Saddam Hussein. Standing only three feet away from the ex-dictator as he slid into eternity, Ali was in a perfect position to observe Hussein as the final preparations for his death were completed.

There was some discussion whether or not Saddam would be strangled by the rope in a short drop (ala Iranian executions), or if he would be given the option of a quick neck pop in a long drop. From Ali's account,

Saddam dropped through—from "me to you," he said, crouching down to show how he shot the scene. The distance, he said, was "about one meter,"

It was the long drop.

From the official Iraqi government photograph, the rope used to hang Saddam looks like it could be used to lash the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to the dock at San Diego. I wonder if "alleged" lengths of it will show up on eBay?

From the photo, it appears as if there is at least five to six feet of slack in the rope.

Using the British Table of Drops, we can infer that Hussein may have been hung by the 1913 standards. A man weighing 200 lbs and over requires a drop of at least five feet. Saddam was 6'2" and his weight fluctuated between 210 and 220 pounds.

Now for arguments sake, let's assume that it only took a second for Saddam to reach the end of his rope, so to speak. We know that the force of gravity is a constant, that is, 32 feet per second squared. Using the acceleration equation

Vf = Vo + at

we can solve for final velocity. The initial velocity, Vo, is zero because Saddam was at rest. Not really at rest cause he was probably crapping his pants, but he wasn't moving in relation to the gallows. So all we have is that Saddam accelerated for one second at 32 ft/sec2. So he was probably moving at about 32 feet per second when he ran out of rope. That is only 21.8 mph. Saddam's velocity was barely sufficient to get him bagged for speeding in a school zone.

Kinetic energy (KE) is something else. What was the force (power) exerted on his neck vertebrae? The formula for finding the kinetic energy of a moving object is:

KE = 1/2 * M * V2

where m = mass of object and v = speed of object. This is easier to solve in metric units of measure. Estimating Saddam's weight at 210 pounds (he didn't have much of an appetite lately) his metric weight would be 95.25 kilos. His final velocity would actually be zero since the rope brought him to an abrupt stop, but just before that point, he would be travelling at 35.1 kmh or 9.75 meters per second.

Using the KE equation, that is only 4,527 joules/sec. Converted to US measurements, that translates to 3,339 ft lbs/sec. or the equivalent of 6.07 horsepower.

Hmmmm.

The Ultimate Dictator of Iraq was killed by the equivalent output of a Briggs & Stratton mulching lawnmower engine.

Saddam's End

Several news sources give a time of between 9:30 and 10:30 tonight as the time for Saddam's hanging. Scripture states that God does not rejoice in the death of the wicked, but I think a lot of Iraqi's will be deep in the throes of a happy dance tonight.


UPDATE: 10:15 pm EST - Fox News reports that Herr Hussein dwells no more amongst the living.

And The Bad News Is?

If someone listens to the MSM as the sole source for all information on the middle east, there is but one one viewpoint given: Iraq is an unholy mess, get out, run away. But there are other measures of change, some of them fairly promising. This is one of them from Amir Taheiri of the NY Post:

WHILE the American political elite is using Iraq as an excuse for fighting internal political wars, a different reality is taking shape in parts of this war-torn nation. Wherever some measure of security is assured - that is to say in more than 80 percent of Iraq - towns and villages long left to die a slow death are creeping back to life.

Some are doing more than creeping. Things are booming in much of Iraq and it's not from IED's.

Nowhere is this slow but steady return to life more startling than in Um Qasr, in the southeast extremity of Iraq on the Persian Gulf. Four years ago, this was a jumble of rusting quays, abandoned houses and gutted buildings. By the spring of 2003, its population had dwindled to a few dozen, along with hundreds of stray dogs. There was even talk of abandoning it altogether.

This is the same talk in Democratic circles. The Iraqi's aren't buying it though, and perhaps we should be listening to them rather than the likes of Pelosi.

Today, however, Um Qasr is back in business as a port with commercial and military functions. Hundreds of families that had left after the first Gulf War in 1991 have returned - joining many more who have come from all over Iraq.

The boom in Um Qasr is part of a broader picture that also includes Basra (the sprawling metropolis of southern Iraq), the Shi'ite "holy" cities of Najaf and karbala, Mandali on the Iranian border and much of Baghdad.

You didn't see many new hotels springing up in Berlin in March of 1945. Investors are not idiots. They are not going to invest a lot of money in ventures that are bound to fail in a war zone, so why is this economic activity occuring at all?

Newsweek has just hailed the emergence of a booming market economy in Iraq as "the mother of all surprises," noting that "Iraqis are more optimistic about the future than most Americans are." The reason, of course, is that Iraqis know what is going on in their country while Americans are fed a diet of exclusively negative
reporting from Iraq.

Just how much growth is being experienced in Iraqi market segments?

The U.S. State Department reports that there are now 7.1 million mobile-phone subscribers in Iraq, up from just 1.4 million two years ago.

That is a 407% increase in just two years. Of course everything is not coming up roses in Iraq. Unemployment is about 30% in a country that is in the midst of an alleged civil war. But 30% is the average unemployment rate for the 3 billion workers for the entire planet!

What are the comparative unemployment rates in other countries, many of which are not plagued by daily bombings, kidnapping and murders? Take a look here.

Zimbabwe (unrest) - 85%
Liberia (unrest) - 85%
Zambia (no war) - 50%
East Timor (unrest) - 50%
Djibouti (no war) - 50%
Lesotho (recent unrest) - 45%
Turkmenistan (no war) - 45%
Bosnia/Herzegovina (recent war) - 45%
Nepal (no war) - 42%
Swaziland (no war) - 40%
Afghanistan (unrest) - 40%
Libya (no war)- 40%
Kenya (no war) - 40%
Macedonia (no war)- 37%
Yemen (no war) - 35%
Armenia (no war) - 32%
Gaza Strip (crazy idiots) - 31%
Serbia (recent war)- 31%
American Samoa (Hey, it belongs to us!) -30%
Cameroon (no war) - 30%
(I left out many small island nations such as Nauru with less than 20,000 pop. and an unemployment rate of 90%).

And these countries are just those with an unemployment rate of 30% and higher. Sometimes all you need are corrupt government officials to mess things up. And on top of everything else, that is exactly what Iraq is also recovering from - 30 years of Saddam's corrupt choke hold on the Iraqi economy.

But a good part of the boom is due to an unexpected flow of foreign
capital. This has been facilitated by the prospect of a liberal law on direct foreign investments, which exists only in such free-trade parts of the region as Dubai and Bahrain. None of Iraq's six neighbors offers such guarantee for the free flow of capital to and from the country.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the number of private companies in Iraq has increased from a mere 8,000 to more than 35,000 this year. Each week an average of 60 new companies spring up in Iraq's booming areas. A good part of the investment in southern Iraq, including in Um Qasr, comes from Kuwait and the
United Arab Emirates.

Iraq's neighbors are pouring investment capital into this country. What does that tell us? It appears that these countries do not read the Times or listen to the democrats.

"Whatever happens, Iraq is Iraq," says a Kuwaiti businessman, building hotels in the south. "Iraq will always remain the country with the world's largest oil reserves and the Middle East's biggest resources of water."

One hears similar comments from local and foreign businessmen investing in real estate in Najaf and Karbala. Over 200 million Shiite Muslims regard the cities as holy. Najaf and Karbala have always been dream destinations for pilgrims. Under Saddam Hussein, however, few foreign pilgrims were allowed. With the despot gone, pilgrims are pouring in - and with them the fresh money.

That good business is possible in Iraq is reflected in the performance of new companies, most of which did not exist three years ago. One privately owned mobile phone company is expected to report revenues of more than $500 million this year, a sevenfold increase in three years. Another private firm marketing soft drinks has seen profits double since the end of 2003. The number of luxury cars imported has risen from a few hundred in 2002 to more than 20,000 this year.

Conditions certainly are harsh in Iraq, but that is true of many other places in the world. With a stable, secular government and the end of bloody interference by other nations, Iraq could become the economic powerhouse of the Middle East. And perhaps this is what the White House was trying to accomplish. With everyone in DC appearing to go all wobbly I somehow doubt this will come to pass.