‘The scope of the return…appears to have been massaged by politics,’ stated a recent New York Times article.Iraqi Gov’t Is Lying About Refugees’ Return By Cliff Montgomery – Nov. 28th, 2007Since October, those few people clinging to Bush’s U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq as the cure for that country’s many ailments have claimed a massive reduction of violence within Baghdad. To bolster their claim, they often crow of a huge influx of former refugees now supposedly returning home to a more peaceful Iraq.Most in the Corporate Media have accepted these claims without question. But claims about Iraq have been wrong in the past, and surely are inflated once more, revealed a New York Times piece printed Monday.”By all accounts, Iraqi families who fled their homes in the past two years are returning to Baghdad. [But] the description of the scope of the return…appears to have been massaged by politics,” stated the Times.”Returnees have essentially become a currency of [pretended] progress,” the Times added.”Under intense pressure to show results after months of political stalemate,” the Times article stated, “the [Iraqi] government has continued to publicize figures that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq and Iraqis’ confidence that the current lull in violence can be sustained.”A week ago, Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration Abdul-Samad Rahman Sultan told reporters that 1,600 Iraqi citizens were returning to the war-torn country every day. On Nov. 7th, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi–the Iraqi mouthpiece for the U.S.-led effort to calm Baghdad–claimed this as a proof of the “improving security situation.”But ministry officials admitted to the Times that this impressive number was an accounting of all Iraqis cutting across the border, not merely those returning home.“We didn’t ask them if they were displaced and neither did the Interior Ministry,” acknowledged Sattar Nowruz, a Ministry of Displacement and Migration spokesman.In fact, the questionable tally apparently even counted Iraqi employees of the Times returning from visits to family members in nearby Syria as among those former refugees flocking home because of the “improving security situation.”A United Nations poll released last week verified that the official number of Iraqi refugees ‘returning home to a more secure country’ is greatly exaggerated.The survey conducted on refugees leaving nearby Syria and returning to Iraq revealed that “46 percent were leaving because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy,” stated the Times story, “and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security.”Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!
How Necessary Laws Are Killed These Days
Lawmakers generally only fight to protect the things they care about – and all too often, that just doesn’t include the lives of most of their constituents.
