“It’s all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we’re right on schedule to be out of here. I mean, they can bullshit the American people, but they can’t bullshit us.”
- Staff Sergeant Craig Patrick (who is training the Iraqi military)

“We can’t kill them all. When I kill one, I create three [insurgents].”
- Colonel Frederick Wellman

Here are some things we learned about Iraq, as well as our involvement in the country, in the past year.

 • Regardless of the fighting, disorganization, claims of fraud, guerilla terrorism, and low voter turnout, Iraq can still put together a better election than the US.

 • Pissing off the Sunni insurgency with a marginalizing election and a narrowly passed Constitution, one with the horrifying addition of rights for women and without theocracy, is a bad idea.

• When Americans are dying, the US media doesn’t really report on the tens of thousands of Iraqis that have lost their lives both fighting for their own freedom, and innocently killed by suicide bombings.  • $9 billion in US investment over the last couple of years doesn’t mean anything if there is no security to protect the infrastructure. It means even less when only five percent (5%) of money earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction by Congress has been spent (while people sleep in tents on what used to be their homes and more than fifty thousand troops still don’t have body armor.)

 • America only likes war when we win. Too many steps are taken to just make it look like we are winning. I don’t know about you, but I want the news to report, not entertain. I want information, not a show.

 • Adorable Puppies were born! Hundreds of them! Hooray! Film at 11.

 • An honest news report like the Downing Street Memo, about how the faulty information about terrorism and WMD was built around Bush’s already-made decision to go to war with Iraq, will be ignored in favor of cute, missing white women and gay marriages.

• Torture is only bad if we hear about it or the pictures leak out onto the internet.  • Buying the news and filling Iraqis with pro-America propaganda can cost us tax dollars, but can’t change the minds of Iraqis.  • In wartime, we can blow up relics and ruins from the world’s first civilization and not make waves anywhere. No one cares about the past when they’re scared about the future.

 • No matter how much of a lie something is, if you repeat it enough, people will believe it. Just ask the 47% of Americans that think Saddam helped plan 9/11, or the 44% that think the hijackers were Iraqi. While you're at it, ask the people who think Iraqis want us there about the consistent 66%-80% of Iraqis polled that want the US out of Iraq sooner rather than later. And then ask Bush, who said, “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

 • US influence does not equal a US Constitution. Not many have heard a lot about the Iraqi Constitution itself, and many would be surprised (though not shocked) about the strict Islamic rules embedded therein.

 • That being at war is enough of a reason to stay at war.

 • Hypocrisy sells. Either you liberate someone, or you occupy them. There is no in between. Establishing freedom for someone else is establishing your freedom for them. And most Iraqis know the difference.

 • George W. Bush’s legacy will forever be determined by Iraq, just as Clinton's was by fellatio. Before I end this article, I just want to say I don’t consider myself anything, politically speaking. I am just a critic, unhappy and nauseated with the way things are. I have no agenda, and I have found the world is much more pleasant that way.