This is a letter from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Anny National Guard, serving in Iraq:

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 sony 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 ofUhm 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. r

* 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 genns.

* 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. Weare doing a good job in Iraq and I challenge anyone, anywhere to dispute me on these facts. So If you happen to run into John Keny, be sure to give him my email address and send him to Denison, Iowa. This soldier will set him straight. 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 Anny National Guard

234th Signal Battalion

and before we imposed sanctions which deprived the people and kids of all that in the first place... oh i feel better for those 19 yr old soldiers now then...... who shall we do next??!! i'm hungry...... christ.

The sanctions didn't deprive them of that. The sanctions specifically allowed Iraq to sell oil to pay for such things. Selective memory again, Bexy....

Edited by Cucking Funt (29 Oct 2004 2:00pm)

cucking - are you saying sanctions didn't deprive the people of medical supplies?

by the way martin - i don't read the guardian, i am not a pacifist and i am not far left - but i do think this war, along with people across the board, was and is a disgrace.

I'm saying that Saddam chose not to provide the medical supplies. As I said, they were allowed to sell oil on the understanding that the proceeds were not to be used for military purposes.

"We call on the president of America, the vice president and the congressmen to come to Iraq and see the little children and Tony Blair, the U.K. government and Kofi Annan to come and to go to the cancer ward and give us an answer...what was their crime?" -Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez-Esquivel of Argentina who traveled to Iraq in March (AP, March 9, 1999)

"I asked myself many times where do the rights of children fit in here? Why should any, but especially children under the age of five, suffer so much and die in such numbers? Sadly, I had to witness ever repeated scenes of children dying as I walked through hospital wards...." - Margarita Skinner, UNICEF Health Coordinator in Baghdad from 1991-1992, excerpt from her 1998 book 'Between Despair and Hope. Windows on my Middle East Journey 1967-1992'. The Radcliffe Press . London and New York 1998.

"Even the most conservative, independent estimates hold economic sanctions responsible for a public health catastrophe of epic proportions. The World Health Organization believes at least 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each month from lack of access to food, medicine and clean water. Malnutrition, disease, poverty and premature death now ravage a once relatively prosperous society whose public health system was the envy of the Middle East. I went to Iraq in September 1997 to oversee the U.N.'s "oil for food" program. I quickly realized that thishumanitarian program was a Band-Aid for a U.N. sanctions regime that was quite literally killing people. Feeling the moral credibility of the U.N. was being undermined, and not wishing to be complicit in what I felt was a criminal violation of human rights, I resigned after 13 months." --Denis Halliday, former humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 12, 1999)

"You kill people without blood or organs flying around, without angering American public opinion. People are dying silently in their beds. If 5,000 children are dying each month, this means 60,000 a year. Over eight years, we have half a million children. This is equivalent to two or three Hiroshimas."-Ashraf Bayoumi, former head of the World Food Programme Observation Unit, in charge of monitoring food distribution in Iraq (Al-Ahram Weekly, 24 December 1998

"Malnutrition was not a public health problem in Iraq prior to the embargo. Its extent became apparent during 1991 and the prevalence has increased greatly since then: 18% in 1991 to 31% in 1996 of [children] under five with chronic malnutrition (stunting); 9% to 26% with underweight malnutrition; 3% to 11% with wasting (acute malnutrition), an increase in over 200%. By 1997, it was estimated about one million children under five were [chronically] malnourished." --Situation Analysis of Children and Women in Iraq, UNICEF Report, 30 April 1998, pg. 23 and 63.

Edited by Bexter (29 Oct 2004 2:18pm)