The other side of Iraqi progress

Editor,

It's nice of Sotero Muniz to share positive news about Iraq. I confess, I tend to focus on the negative. His letter focuses attention on issues often overlooked. Iraq now boasts five 100-ft. navy ships, 75 radio stations, and a Stock Exchange. Sounds so good that maybe we can bring our troops home soon.

Mr. Muniz's good news from Iraq helped me forget about American casualties. From Aug. 3-10 we lost 20 soldiers. We lost 38 the week before. We cannot keep a balanced view unless we look at both sides of the story.

We certainly need positive news from Iraq to counter news reports like a Chicago Tribune article (8/11/05) by Liz Sly. Sly interviewed the director of the city morgue in Baghdad. July saw 1,100 corpses brought to the morgue. Sly writes, "June was a peak month for beheadings, May was a record month for suicide bombings." It's hard to stay focused on the good news with this type of reporting.

Mr. Muniz's progress report even caused me to forget the reason we're over there. Did it involve WMD? bin Laden? Dem-ocracy? National security? Nation building? Kicking Saddam's butt? Finishing Operation Desert Storm? Liberating Iraq? Controlling Iraq's oil fields so we could have cheap gas?

Perhaps we should stay the course as Mr. Muniz suggests. At our current rate we'll sacrifice another 400 American military lives and 22 billion dollars by Christmas. That's the price of progress. By then Iraq may have another six radio stations, 18 new schools, and 175,000 more cell phones. Do we really want to stay the course?

David Daniels

Ronan