Good News, about Iraq, Please Read....

[redneck13]

:flag: :!: :beer: DID YOU KNOW.....?
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> Did you know that 25 Iraq students departed for the United States in
> January 2005 for the re-established Fulbright program?
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> Did you know that the Iraqi Navy is operational?! They have 5-
> 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?
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> Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando
> Battalion?
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> Did you know that the Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully
> trained and equipped police officers?
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> Did you know that there are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce
> over 3500 new officers each 8 weeks?
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> Did you know there are more than 1100 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.
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> Did you know that 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have
> received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations?
>
> Did you know that 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary
> school by mid October?
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> Did you know that there are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq
> and phone use has gone up 158%?
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> Did you know that Iraq has an independent media that consists of 75
> radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations?
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> Did you know that 47 countries have reestablished their embassies in
> Iraq?
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> Did you know that the Iraqi government currently employs 1.2 million
> Iraqi people?
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> Did you know that 3100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are
> under rehabilitation, 263 schools are now under construction and 38
> new schools have been built 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?
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> Did you know that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?
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> Did you know that 2 candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had
> a televised debate recently?
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> OF COURSE YOU DIDN'T KNOW . . . AND I DIDN'T KNOW!
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> WHY DIDN'T WE KNOW? OUR MEDIA WOULDN'T TELL US!
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> Instead of reflecting our love for our country, we get photos of flag
> burning incidents at Abu Ghraib and people throwing snowballs at the
> presidential motorcades.
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> 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 consequential support, and it is intended to discourage
> American citizens.
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> *** Above facts are verifiable on the Department of Defense web site.
> ***
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[rktect3j]

No I didn't and neither does America as of right now. Someone should clue them in.

[outlaw3179]

Good read thanks for the info Ssgt.

[greensideout]

The last paragraph troubles me a bit. It says that "two purposes" are served. My question would now be, WHO is served by this and WHO controls the media to fulfill this aledged plot???

[BOOGIEMAN44]

Wind'nface, Thats Great News, Thanks For Sharing It With Us, Our Media Won't, Thanks...

[ringoffire]

Thanks for posting...I will be passing this info on to alot of people

[redneck13]

Well Sir.....I don't have the answer's to your questions. Beats me I just posted what I received. Yet it does bring up good questions you asked. Who is served by this? I would guess it would serve us all to really know what has happened since the invasion and maybe even some Vets, but most of all the American People, which by all accounts, with the media?, nobody really knows the "good" things. Who control's the media to fulfill this aledged plot? What Plot Sir would this be? A plot from the Gov't to give out "false information?" I don't know. Maybe it's propaganda made up by the Gubmit, or maybe for once it's the truth put out by the gubmit information people.....I just posted something I thought was positive and in hope's that people would, like me, see that the loss of "blood" for and from our Troops, especially Marines, may not be in vain. SF
The last paragraph troubles me a bit. It says that "two purposes" are served. My question would now be, WHO is served by this and WHO controls the media to fulfill this aledged plot???

[thedrifter]

More good news from Iraq
John B. Dwyer 4 21 06

Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s briefing by MNF-Iraq spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch in which he discusses foreign fighters, suicide attacks, border security, defeating IEDs, weapons caches discovered & Iraqis providing the coalition solid intel. For the rest of the briefing, go here.

I want to talk about four specific indicators on operations here in Iraq, and I don’t want to talk about what happened yesterday. I want to talk over a period of time to give you a sense of the trend lines that we see.

And these are four that I’ve talked to you about before, but allow me to give you an update.

We believe that 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are conducted by foreign fighters—al Qaeda, Zarqawi commissioning foreign fighters to conduct these suicide attacks.

Last year this time, across Iraq, we were averaging about 75 suicide attacks a day. Now we’re averaging about 24 a day.

One of the reasons for that drawdown is not that Zarqawi and al Qaeda doesn’t want to do it anymore, but effective border operations have been capturing foreign nationals at the border.

And I talked you through last week in great detail what’s happened on the Iraqi border. Last November the Iraqi government declared initial control of the borders, and over time they’ve placed Department of Border Enforcement personnel—20,000 people, on the borders, 258 border camps—to stop this flow of foreign nationals into Iraq, some of which are coming in to be used as suicide bombers.

So if you look closely at what’s happened, just before the first of the year, we were averaging about 44 captured foreign nationals per month, and now we’re down to less than half of that.

The effect of that is reduction in the number of suicide attacks in Iraq: over 70 a year ago, 24 now.

I talked about IEDs and IEDs that are found and cleared. We have reached the point where almost 50 percent of the IEDs are found and cleared before they detonate. And people say, “Well, why is that?” A reason why that is, is the number of sophisticated bomb-makers we’ve been able to take off the battlefield here in Iraq.

There are indeed with—people with talent and capability that can build a reliable IED, one that will function as designed. What we’ve been doing is a conscious effort with the Iraqi security forces to take those guys off the battlefield and either kill or capture them. And you can see that we took over—took out 115 in the year 2005. And since the first of the year, we’ve taken out an additional 26.

The effect of that is, IEDs are produced that are less effective. And in many cases, we’re finding the people that are emplacing the IEDs are killed by their own IEDs, or the IEDs that are emplaced don’t go off as detonated. And that’s because of the conscious decision to kill or capture bomb-makers.

I talk every Thursday about the weapons caches and weapons finds. And if you looked over the years 2005, we came across 2,880 weapons caches and since the first of the year almost 900 weapons caches.

Again, this goes to the effectiveness of the insurgents. In order to be able to create effective IEDs, he’s got to have technical expertise, and he’s got to have the proper munitions. A lot of these weapons caches we found had old munitions, but a lot of them had relatively new munitions that could build an effective bomb.

So as we look for bomb-makers and as we look for weapons caches to this level of effect, we are reducing the effectiveness of IEDs, VBIEDs and suicide car bombs, suicide vest packs, and also by taking out foreign nationals as they come across.

But I believe that the most important indicator on these charts, on this quad chart, is this one. And that’s the number of tips, actionable tips, that we are receiving from the people of Iraq. They have indeed reached the point where they’re tired of the insurgency, and they realize that they are indeed the target of attacks by the insurgency. The numbers of attacks against civilians, as I told you before, has doubled in the last four months, is up by 86 percent just in the last nine weeks.

So the people of Iraq are tired of the insurgency.

And what they’re doing is calling in actionable tips or providing tips to the 250,000 members of the Iraqi security force that are patrolling the streets of Iraq. They’re providing the information just like they did the IED on the mosque—and I showed you that operation with the 6th Iraqi Army Division.

Ellie

[redneck13]

:D :D :banana: Outstanding-good reply and good news to hear....This makes me feel good to realize that "Our Marines" are getting the job done, as well as the Iraqi people and Iraqi Military. Maybe soon, the Muslim radical's will get the message, that if you try to come to Iraq, your chances of survival, if you're planning something not so good, are slim to none. And a big SF to the Iraqi people for doing what they can to help not only their own but our armed forces. Great Post Ellie, and thanks. SF