Interesting story being linked to by a number of pro-war blogs: Commentary: Letter from Baghdad. Published in the right-wing Washington Times, it’s an account by Reverend Ken Joseph, Jr., who according to his bio was initially against the war, but changed his mind after seeing pre-war conditions in Iraq.

What makes this interesting to me is that there is pretty much no way to recconcile his rosy account of current conditions in Baghdad with the much-more-grim portrayal being provided by others, including, for example, everyone’s current-favorite Baghdad blogger, Riverbend.

Here’s an excerpt from Joseph’s piece:

Despite the recent bombings, Baghdad looks dramatically different. The stores are full of supplies. The streets are crowded with people and cars. The buses are working and police are on the streets, directing traffic.

At night the streets are full of pedestrians, many families with children. I am at a loss to reconcile what we see on the ground with what is being reported.

The “regular people” are much better off than they were. Security has improved with Iraqi police everywhere, telephones are starting to work, electricity, while off and on, is relatively stable, the stores are full of food, and, little by little, people are getting jobs back.

Pensions have been paid on time. The schools are working and people for the first time have hope and a future.

Now, here’s an excerpt from a recent piece by Riverbend in her Baghdad Burning weblog (Road trip):

Being out in the streets is like being caught in a tornado. You have to be alert and ready for anything every moment. I sat in the backseat, squinting into the sun, trying to determine if a particular face was that of a looter, or abductor or just another angry countryman. I craned my neck looking at the blue SUV, trying to remember if it had been behind us for the last kilometer or longer. I held my breath nervously every time the cousin slowed down the car because of traffic, willing the cars in front of us to get a move on.

I caught site of two men fighting. A crowd was beginning to gather and a few people were caught in the middle, trying to separate them. My cousin clucked angrily and started mumbling about ignorant people and how all we needed, on top of occupation, was hostility. E. told us not to keep staring and anxiously felt for the pistol under his seat.

The ride that took 20 minutes pre-war Iraq, took 45 minutes today. There were major roads completely cut off by tanks. Angry troops stood cutting off access to the roads around the palaces (which were once Saddam’s but are now America’s palaces). The cousin and E. debated alternative routes at every checkpoint or roadblock. I stayed silent because I don’t even know the city anymore. Now, areas are identified as “the one with the crater where the missile exploded”, or “the street with the ravaged houses”, or “the little house next to that one where that family was killed”…

By the time we got to my aunt’s house, every muscle in my body was aching. My eyes were burning with the heat and the strain. E.’s brow was furrowed with the scenes we had left behind us on the street and the cousin’s hands were shaking almost imperceptibly- knuckles still white with tension. My mother said a prayer of gratitude for our safe arrival and the cousin’s wife, T., swore she wasn’t going to leave my aunt’s house for another three days and if we planned to go home today, we could do so without her because God needed to look out for other people today, not just us…

Even a notorious truth-is-what-we-make-it guy like me can’t view these divergent accounts as the normal result of the differences between two observers’ subjective realities. One of these people (at least) is intentionally lying in an effort to mislead us.

Which one is it? Lies.com: We report. You decide.

This entry was posted by jbc on Thursday, September 4th, 2003 at 9:21 am and is filed under war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.