Thomas Mott Osborne: “in roughly 1 month, general elections will be held in Iraq. I would like to comment on my perceptions as to what I have…”

“in roughly 1 month, general elections will be held in Iraq. I would like to comment on my perceptions as to what I have seen as I visited there on three different occasions and talked to many of our soldiers. Soldiers often comment on the fact that there are really two wars, apparently, going on in Iraq. There is a war that they see on CNN, and they watch cable television regularly. Then there is the war that they are actually fighting. Apparently, in their minds, at least, there is some discrepancy between the two versions. They have asked me to come back on occasion and talk about what they see happening over there. First of all, in the area of education, 746 schools have been renovated, and these projects have all been completed; 36,000 teachers have been trained since the war started; attendance in the schools is up by 80 percent, and most of these increases are young women, who are attending school for the first time. In the area of health care, 17 new hospitals have been built; 3.2 million children under the age of 5 have been vaccinated for the first time, 97 percent of all children have been vaccinated; 700,000 pregnant women have been vaccinated; and 142 new clinics are currently under construction or have been completed. It is certainly not perfect, but it is an improvement. As far as the economy is concerned, many small businesses and entrepreneurial activities are springing up.…”