The Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War - Success

There is a lot of good news to report in Iraq. But the big media forgot to report it. Iraq is today a growing economy again. From 2002 [before our invasion] through 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, per capita GDP in dollars jumped 110%. Before the war, there were some 833,000 people with telephones. Today, there's 9.8 million. Fewer than 5,000 people were on the Internet during Saddam's rein of terror; today, it's a quarter million. There were no private TV stations under Saddam; today Iraq has more than 50. There are at least 260 independent newspapers and magazines in Iraq, vs. none under Saddam. Just 1.5 million cars were registered before the war; by 2005, that had hit 3.1 million. In short, by almost any objective measure one might choose, Iraqis are today much better off than they were under Saddam. Those that deny this are, frankly, deluded. Better still, Saddam's jackbooted minions no longer pull people screaming out of their homes for torture sessions and murder. By some estimates, an average of 50,000 people died each year from Saddam's campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and political murder. Last year, the peak of the surge, there were 18,000 civilian deaths — mostly by terrorists. Today, Iraq's nascent democracy, though imperfect, seems solid. A recent look at the Index of Political Freedom shows Iraq ranking as the fourth-freest country in the Mideast, out of 20. Those who term the war a "failure" need to define that term. Investors Business Daily "But we didn't find the WMD, the weapons of mass destruction." No, we found a lot of them.

On the contrary, U.S. troops found more than 500 weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. True, we didn't find an operational nuclear weapon, but U.N. inspectors found lots of equipment and plans clearly showing that Iraq had been working on one — and intended to do so again.

Why President Bush doesn't mention Hussein's nuclear plans baffles me! Why not defend your own policies? Is the world a better place now? Yes. Great things happened in the Middle East region.

We achieved many concrete benefits from taking Saddam out — none of them, by the way, related to "blood for oil," the libelous and patently false phrase used by the left to tarnish the U.S. war effort. For instance, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons just weeks after the U.S. deposed Saddam. Coincidence? Syria pulled its troops out of Lebanon, a country it bullied for decades. Elections followed. Iraq and Afghanistan had free and fair elections, while Saudi Arabia, Egypt and even Syria recognized democratic movements. North Korea suddenly decided to talk.

Since the surge began a year ago, nearly every indicator of violence in the country is down, and down sharply: civilian fatalities, off 80% from the peak; enemy attacks, off 40%; bombings, off 81%. Yes, U.S. fatalities are nearing 4,000. And every death of every brave soldier is a tragedy. But we lost more soldiers on D-Day. And we didn't ask to be attacked by the Muslim extremists. Via ¡No Pasarán!: Strange, How Few Pundits and MSM Outlets Commemorated the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War: