[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 24997]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HALF-EMPTY, HALF-FULL

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 16, 2003

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member commends to his colleagues the 
October 5, 2003, an editorial from the Omaha World Herald, which is 
entitled ``Half-empty, half-full.'' As the editorial correctly notes, 
Iraq remains a country ``full of positive potential but also fraught 
with danger.''

              [From the Omaha World-Herald, Oct. 5, 2003]

                         Half-empty, half-full

       Gene Taylor, a Democratic U.S. representative from 
     Mississippi, recently returned from a trip to Baghdad. He 
     struck the right note when he said the situation in Iraq ``is 
     neither going as well as the administration says it's going 
     nor as badly as the media say it is going.''
       Indeed, the situation is decidedly mixed. That hasn't 
     stopped diehard partisans on either side from trying their 
     best to highlight only one facet of the matter, however.
       The catalog of challenges is well known. Saddam Hussein 
     loyalists and outside terrorists have succeeded, for the time 
     being, in rattling people's nerves about security. Enemies of 
     the U.S. campaign have assassinated one member of Iraq's 
     Governing Council and murdered a Shiite cleric who advocated 
     tolerance for the American presence. They have used pinprick 
     attacks to kill and would U.S. soldiers at a slow but 
     relatively steady rate that has diminished support for the 
     Iraq operations among many Americans.
       Meanwhile, saboteurs continue to hobble the electrical grid 
     and oil-pipe network. Large numbers of Iraqis remain without 
     jobs. Mafia-style gangs have become a serious concern in 
     Baghdad. Ethnic tensions simmer among Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites 
     and Kurds, sometimes erupting violence.
       The United States has come up short, so far, in gaining 
     financial assistance from foreign governments. And a variety 
     of uncertainties beset the ambitious endeavor to move Iraq's 
     political system toward a constitutional republic.
       And yet, much is going right. A vivid description of the 
     progress came in an opinion essay written by Julie Flint, a 
     veteran Middle East journalist, for a Lebanese newspaper. 
     Media depictions of Iraq as trapped in bottomless turmoil are 
     wrong, she argued:
       ``Outside Baghdad, in the Shiite south, the mood was 
     overwhelmingly upbeat. In Basra, ordinary people gave the 
     thumbs-up at the mere sight of a Briton. . . . In Amara, 
     streets were buzzing well after midnight. . . . Shops are 
     overflowing with imported goods; food prices are lower than 
     they were during Saddam's last years. Approximately 85 
     percent of primary and secondary schools have reopened. . . . 
     All Iraqi cities and 85 percent of its smaller towns have 
     fully functioning municipalities.''
       Similarly, Pamela Harris, a United Press International 
     writer praised for her wartime reporting, noted in a recent 
     good news/bad news analysis how she had seen ``happy children 
     running out to greet Marines when they walk through downtown 
     Hillah without body armor or rifles because they have worked 
     long and hard to win the trust of the townspeople, and they 
     have succeeded.''
       USA Today recently noted that, thanks to U.S. policy that 
     as tapped $1.7 billion in Iraqi assets frozen during the Gulf 
     War of 1991, government workers in Iraq have received major 
     pay increases. The article described a police officer whose 
     monthly pay has gone from $25 before the war to $275 now.
       This leap in the purchasing power of many Iraqis, combined 
     with a tariff-free influx of imported products, has spurred a 
     dramatic flurry of consumer spending, not least on major 
     items such as refrigerators and ovens. (The average price for 
     home appliances has fallen by 41 percent from prewar levels)
       Iraq, in short, is in the middle of a momentous time of 
     transition--full of positive potential but also fraught with 
     danger.
       As the debate rages over whether the glass is half-empty or 
     half-full, one thing is certain: The United States cannot cut 
     and run. Together with the Iraqi people and whatever support 
     can be mustered from the international community, we will 
     have to see this through--without minimizing how difficult 
     the task will be.

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