Bush tries to impose new terms of victory - World - Times Online
Bush tries to impose new terms of victory - World - Times Online: "A FRESH attempt by President Bush to redefine success in Iraq was undermined within hours by the American military and Iraqi officials.
Mr Bush surprised America by admitting yesterday to growing similarities between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. But he also emphasised that success should not be measured by the body count, but in terms of the ability of Iraqis to defend themselves, their access to healthcare and education.
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I define success or failure as whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we’re seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East,” he told ABC News.
Only hours after his statement
Major-General William Caldwell, spokesman for the US forces in Iraq, said that the results of a vast security operation to secure Baghdad — the key to this war — had been “disheartening”.And there is little more heartening news from the results of the $30 billion (£16 billion) to $40 billion American reconstruction effort. Since the invasion not a single Iraqi hospital has been built, according to Amar al-Saffar, in charge of construction at the Health Ministry.
In fact, no hospital had been built since the Qaddumiya hospital opened in 1986 in Baghdad, he said. When the war started it had 20 intensive care unit beds. Now it has half that, with many patients forced to buy their own oxygen supplies on the black market.The only significant attempt to build a hospital was a project promoted by Laura Bush, the First Lady, in Basra. She frequently praised the $50 million paediatric hospital being built in the southern city. But Mr al-Saffar said that through financial mismanagement — the bane of postwar reconstruction across the country — it had never been completed.Another senior Health Ministry official was surprised that Mr Bush had latched on to healthcare as proof of progress in Iraq. “It is the worst situation that the Ministry of Health has been in in its entire history,” he said. Healthcare had become so dire that half of those who died of injuries from terrorist attacks might have been saved, according to Bassim al-Sheibani, of the Diwaniyah College of Medicine, writing in the British Medical Journal.
COUNTING COSTS
$30-40bn spent on reconstruction
None Hospitals built since invasion
200 Doctors and pharmacists murdered
15,000 Doctors who have fled abroad
3,000 out of 18,000 schools refurbished
5,000 Extra schools needed
24,000 Pupils who have fled abroad
72 Iraqi civilian fatalities reported yesterday
US casualties
2,784 killed
71 this month
Iraqi police casualties
4,000 killed
8,000 wounded in the past two years
3,000 Iraqi policemen sacked this month
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