A reader identifying his/herself as “John/Bev” apparently didn’t like the tone of my fictional soldier story criticizing the war. He/she passed on this e-mail:

As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two week leave back home. And just so you can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would pass this on to you. This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently: (Please share it with your friends and compare it to the version that your paper is producing.)

• Over 400,000 kids have up-to-date immunizations.
  

• School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.
  

• Over 1,500 schools have been renovated and rid of the weapons stored there so education can occur.
  

• The port of Uhm Qasar was renovated so grain can be off-loaded from ships faster.
  

• The country had its first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.
  

• Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.
  

• The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the war.
  

• 100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed, compared to 35% before the war.
  

• Elections are taking place in every major city, and city councils are in place.
  

• Sewer and water lines are installed in every major city.
  

• Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.
  

• Over 100,000 Iraqi civil defense police are securing the country.
  

• Over 80,000 Iraqi soldiers are patrolling the streets side by side with US soldiers.
  

• Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever.
  

• Students are taught field sanitation and hand washing techniques to prevent the spread of germs.
  

• An interim constitution has been signed.
  

• Girls are allowed to attend school.
  

• Textbooks that don’t mention Saddam are in the schools for the first time in 30 years.

Don’t believe for one second that these people do not want us there. I have met many, many people from Iraq that want us there, and in a bad way. They say they will never see the freedoms we talk about but they hope their children will. We are doing a good job in Iraq and I challenge anyone, anywhere to dispute me on these facts. If you are like me and very disgusted with how this period of rebuilding has been portrayed, email this to a friend and let them know there are good things happening.

Ray Reynolds, SFC Iowa Army National Guard

234th Signal Battalion

So, naturally, I replied:

Thank you for your letter, though it would be more interesting if it were something reflecting your own personal feelings rather than a cut-and-paste e-mail that has been circulating around the internet since at least April 2004.

I guess I was wrong. Apparently war is a wonderful thing for children and all living things. I needn’t pay any attention to those 1,350+ dead Americans (truly 3,000+ if you count the casualties medevac-ed to Landstuhl and other military hospitals who later died… the Pentagon doesn’t count them). And so what if anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 innocent Iraqis have died. You have to break a few eggs to make omelettes, after all. The ports are better, the schools are open, and people have drinking water… well, at least the people who aren’t blown to bits.

The Duelfer Report has been finalized and there never were WMDs in Iraq, there were no plans to produce WMDs in Iraq, and now nobody is even bothering to look for WMDs in Iraq. The 9/11 Commission has emphatically stated that there were no working collaborations between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. But I suppose Bush had to lie about WMD’s and an imminent threat to America and Saddam’s terrorist buddies, because we’re just too callous to have sent our mighty military machine to Iraq for the purpose of immunizing kids and fixing up the power grid.

In the meantime, we’ve gone from having the world’s unanimous support to the world’s unanimous derision. We used to declare that countries that torture are evil, now we declare that we’re allowed to torture because terrorists don’t wear uniforms. We used to despise countries that would round up citizens without trial or charges and “disappear” them, now we’re discussing the option of housing prisoners at Guantanamo for life without charges because the government hasn’t enough evidence to present a case.

My article is not a slam on the troops. I support the troops; I was a troop. They don’t ask to be sent to war based on lies and they don’t ask to fight a war that is horribly planned, shoddily mismanaged, and completely counter to the goal of fighting terror. They follow orders and they believe in standing up to defend America.

Yes, soldiers are going to face horrors in a war. That is why we should never deploy them unless the objective is clear and the evidence of imminent national danger is overwhelming. And I will be mighty pissed if my 21-year-old brother ends up getting drafted just so George W. Bush can avenge his daddy and install an American-oil-company and military-base-friendly puppet government in the Middle East.

–“Radical” Russ

P.S. The following is some fantastic fact checking on the “Ray Reynolds” e-mail from Orwellian Times (http://www.orwelliantimes.com/2004/04/26.html). After all, one good cut-and-paste deserves another…

The email sure has a lot of the earmarkings of right-wing propaganda — ignore any information which doesn’t support your position, slam the media, misinform, make unfair attacks on the opposition and asking to spread the word.

This morning (Monday) I spoke with Lt. Col. Gregory O. Hapgood, the Public Affairs Officer for the Iowa National Guard. He told me that Sgt. Ray Reynolds exists. Lt. Col. Hapgood told me that he received an email this morning from Sgt. Reynolds which confirmed Sgt. Reynolds wrote the email. While we talked about the contents of the email, I did not confirm that every word in the email I received was written by Sgt. Reynolds. Nonetheless, for the most part, the email appears to be an authentic communication from one of our soldiers.

Contrary to the information in the email I received, Sgt. Reynolds is not a medic. He does communications work. In fact, the 234th Signal Battalion’s “mission is to provide wide area communications support in a theater of operations.”[*] Sgt. Reynolds’ civilian job is as a police officer.

Lt. Col. Hapgood told me these were Sgt. Reynolds’ sources for the information in the email:

USAID Fact Sheet

Influential Iraqis

The Police Chief of Baghdad

While the email appears to provide some truthful information, it is replete with misinformation. I don’t have time to check each representation in the email, but here’s an overview:

Over 400,000 kids have up-to-date immunizations

This is interesting. A lot of kids have been immunized in Iraq. In fact, last year the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) “25 million doses of vaccines to Iraq to help prevent the spread of polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, measles, and tuberculosis — considered the main killers of children in developing countries.”[*] At the time, UNICEF spokesman Gordon Weiss explained that the children of Iraq would need several stages of repeated immunizations for the immunizations to be effective:

“Iraq is in a particularly delicate stage at the moment — postwar, with a lot of the health system having broken down and a lot of the water systems having broken down, as well. So children are more than ever this year vulnerable to water-borne diseases. Usually you don’t vaccinate just once, you vaccinate a number of times in order to have the vaccinations work.”[*]

Here’s what the Fact Sheet says:

“USAID has partnered with UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Abt Associates to support health program in Iraq. Since the end of the war, USAID has vaccinated three million Iraqi children under the age of five, administered tetanus vaccine to more than 700,000 pregnant women, and by April 30, 2004 the USAID mission will have provided updated vaccinations to 90 percent of pregnant women and children under five years of age.”

Hmmm. UNICEF said that 3 1/2 million Iraqi children were vaccinated last year. Does this mean that the vaccination program is not being pursued as much as last year? I don’t know.

I also don’t know where the 400,000 number came from. Last year, Iraq had approximately 4.2 million children in Iraq under the age of five. If fewer than 10% of young Iraqi children have up-to-date immunizations out of the millions who have been on an immunization schedule and are exposed, that would seem to be a serious failure.

That being said, hundred of thousands of immunized children has got to be a good thing.

The country had its first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.

Nonsense. First, there’s nothing in the Fact Sheet about oil. Iraq is presently exporting approximately 1.9 million barrels of oil a day, or under 60 million barrels per month. And that’s going to be difficult to maintain. You probably already know that insurgent attacks have been limiting the exports.[*] In August — the supposed 2 billion barrel month — Iraq was expecting to export fewer than 1.2 million barrels a day, about 37 million barrels for the month.[*]

Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.

Here’s what the Fact Sheet says:

“Iraq has 13 major wastewater facilities. Baghdad’s three facilities are currently inoperable and comprise three quarters of the nation’s sewage treatment capacity. Raw waste flows directly into the Tigris River. In the rest of the country, most wastewater treatment facilities were only partly operational before the conflict, and a shortage of electricity, parts, and chemicals has exacerbated the situation and only a few wastewater treatment plants are operational. Iraq’s 140 major water treatment facilities operate at about 65 percent of the pre-war level of three billion liters a day.”

Water does appear to be getting to a lot more people. But, apparently, at a price. A witness from Basra last month claimed:

“The [water] plant seems to be working well . . . This plant is up and going and provides water for a huge number of people. Someone is constructing a new plant to expand so that there is drinking water. I have not met anyone here yet despite the poverty who is not buying drinking water.”[*]

The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the war.

Not true. According to the Fact Sheet, on March 11, 2004, power peaked at approximately 92% of “the pre-conflict generating level”. ABC reports that power generation is off since last October and is averaging somewhere around pre-conflict generation.[*]

100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed, compared to 35% before the war.

Not true. The Fact Sheet provides no information about this. But, the Washington Post on March 5, 2004 reported[*]:

“Health Minister Khudair Fadhil Abbas said about 90 percent of the hospitals and clinics have been brought back to the same poor conditions as before the war but that the others will take more time to reach even that low level.”

Here are the first few paragraphs from the article:

“The stout woman, covered from head to toe in a black abaya, shuffled into the crowded hospital. She went straight to the emergency room and opened her robe to reveal a tiny baby wrapped in fuzzy blankets. The boy had been born prematurely, and the family was afraid he was going to die.

Uday Abdul Ridha took a quick look and shook his head. The physician put his hands on the woman’s shoulders in sympathy, but his words were blunt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We cannot help you. We don’t have an incubator, and even if we did, we are short on oxygen. Please try another hospital.”

Scenes like this one at the Pediatric Teaching Hospital in Baghdad’s Iskan neighborhood have become common in Iraq in recent months, as the health care system has been hit by a critical shortage of basic medications and equipment. Babies die of simple infections because they can’t get the proper antibiotics. Surgeries are delayed because there is no oxygen. And patients in critical condition are turned away because there isn’t enough equipment.”

Elections are taking place in every major city, and city councils are in place.

False. In June, 2003, US authorities put a halt to local elections. We installed mayors and administrators of our choosing.[*]

Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.

I don’t know how many Iraqi police are on duty, given widespread desertions.[*] But, we know how many police are in the New York Police Department — 39,110.[*] According to the 2000 Census, NY City had a population of more than 8 million and covered an area of 320 square miles.[*] According to 1993 estimates, the population of Iraq is about 19,435,000.[*] Iraq is about the size of California, approximately 171,000 square miles.[*]

Though New York, like any other big city, can be dangerous at times, armed insurgents aren’t blowing people up daily. New York has about 1 police officer for every 205 residents. Iraq — which does have armed insurgents blowing people up daily — has about 1 police officer for every 324 citizens.

Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever.

Not true. The Fact Sheet says that before we invaded 1.2 million Iraqis had “subscribed to landline telephone service.” As of March 9, 2004, “104,680 subscribers to the Iraqi landline phone network were reconnected.” Repairs have reconnected some form of telephone service between Baghdad and 20 other cities.

Girls are allowed to attend school.

True, but not because of the invasion. Girls were allowed to attend school during Saddam’s rule. Between 1997-2000 82% as many girls attended primary school as did boys. 62% as many girls attended high school as did boys, during the same period.[*]

The email is not informative, but disinformation. It’s propaganda. While he did not cite any particular rule, Lt. Col. Hapgood said that members of the force are not to take a politically partisan stance in any communications they use in which they identify themselves as members of the force. Lt. Col. Hapgood, in essence, also said that it was improper for Sgt. Reynolds to attack Senator Kerry in his email.

Thanks to Andrew Lazarus for his comment at dailyKos[*] for some fact checking leads.[*]

UPDATE: Apparently, Lt. Col. Hapgood misinformed me about Sgt. Reynolds’ civilian job. He’s not a cop. He’s a firefighter. This is how Sgt. Reynolds responds to inquiries about his message:

“I did write it and I am in Kuwait now on my way home. I wrote it while at home because I felt that too many people were exploiting the violence in Iraq to sell papers and gain votes. Sometimes the silent majority need to be awakened to respond to the bad things in our world. I am passionate about our President’s decision and support this rebuilding whole heartedly…Yes legit..I am a fire fighter in Denison, Iowa and to verify, call Mike McKinnon of the Denison Iowa fire department.”

Too bad that the Sergeant’s passion got ahead of his control of the facts.

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