Thomas Mott Osborne: “Iraq's final general election will be held a week from tomorrow, December 15. Iraqis have paid a great price to get to…”

“Iraq's final general election will be held a week from tomorrow, December 15. Iraqis have paid a great price to get to this point. 30 years under Saddam Hussein, the last 2\1/2\ years, thousands of Iraqi have died in a conflict. The United States has paid a great price. Over 2,000 of our finest soldiers have been killed, many more have been wounded, billions of dollars have been spent, some have said this is a quagmire, some have compared it to Vietnam. And yet, I think it is appropriate to mention at this time that progress has been made. Now I will mention several areas in which considerable progress has been made. First of all, in the area of education, 774 schools have been built or renovated since the conflict began. We see an 80 percent increase in attendance in schools in Iraq. Most of these increases are due to young women who have never attended school previously. We have had 36,000 teachers trained in Iraq since the conflict began. In the area of health care, 17 hospitals either have been built or are currently under construction. 142 health clinics are under construction today or have been completed. And 3.2 million children under the age of 5 have been vaccinated. This is roughly 97 to 98 percent of that population. As far as the economy is concerned, we see many small business starting to spring up. Cell phones, satellite dishes, newspapers, television stations are apparent at every turn.…”