America's Distorted Image of Iraq

I have come across an article written by Amir Taheri, formerly the executive editor of Kayhan, Iran's largest daily newspaper, is the author of ten books and a frequent contributor to numerous publications in the Middle East and Europe. His work appears regularly in the New York Post. Here are some exerts:

Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various "fundamental mistakes" committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the “carnage” and “chaos” in the streets as signs of the country’s “impending” or “undeclared” civil war. ... It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. ... For someone like myself who has spent considerable time in Iraq—a country I first visited in 1968—current reality there is, nevertheless, very different from this conventional wisdom, and so are the prospects for Iraq’s future.

Please take the time to read the full article... it is very interesting and gives a much better understanding of what is actually happening in Iraq from a man who is not an American but a third party.

Click here to read the whole article.

- footprints of Chad, 1:43 AM

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