There’s been much caterwauling about the negative coverage of “postwar” Iraq, including repeated charges that the media never show the progress being made.
Here’s your progress:
Once the Iraqis at the Baghdad Fire Department’s largest station learn English, they’ll be able to read the English-language “Baghdad Fire Department” T-shirts we’ve decked their employees in. The BFD seems to be a symbol for our whole approach, by the way: US taxpayers have paid for a repainting of the station, new beds, air conditioners, office equipment, a television and a DVD player, reports ABC Nightly News. So the BFD probably on the surface looks more luxurious than most American fire stations. But ABC reports, that “after doing their best for the cameras, the firefighters told us there were still no replacements for the fire engines and protective gear taken by looters just after the war. ‘I’m happy the Americans helped us,’ said one of them. ‘But if I’m going to fight fires, I’m going to need better clothing than a T-shirt. It’s nylon and will burn right off.’ ”
Sorry, did our shock & awe campaign cost you your fire trucks? Here, have a million-dollar T-shirt. And smile for the nice Americans back home.
—Matt Bivens, The Nation