Take This Dot and Shove It...

Sometimes I wonder if there's anybody out there who can take a dot in each hand and connect them without smashing them into their foreheads.

Bush keeps rapping about how much progress we're making in Iraq. You know, things like bright and shiny new schools, new churches, hospitals, markets...He says Baghdad is the epitome of freedom and democracy since we liberated more than 6 million "folks" in that city.

Well, according to Baghdad mayor Alaa Mahmoud al-Timimi, the city's infrastructure is crumbling around its citizens, most of whom have no water, electricity nor fuel, and have nowhere to hide from the daily relentless bombings and kidnappings. Al-Timimi who, along with the rest of us, has watched US contractors dragging unaccounted-for cash off on pallets and in plastic bags, can't seem to get the money he needs -- pocket change for Halliburton's Baghdad hi-jinks -- from the puppet government to alleviate even a small part of the daily misery Baghdad residents are forced to endure.

The good news Bush wants us to know is that Baghdad produces about 544 million gallons of water per day. What he doesn't want us to know is that amount is still more than 370 million gallons short of the required amount. And, more important -- at least 55 percent of that is lost through leakage in the pipes. And, we don't need to worry our beautiful minds with the sickening fact that the water finally seeping through to the people is mixed with sewage.

Neat, eh? Dot--Dot--Smash!

Iraqis are too weary and abused to join Bush's Freedom Parade as it marches through their city. They get only a few hours of electricity a day, if they're lucky, and fuel is just a fond memory because the gasoline they must import because they have no oil has hit the black market and they can't afford it.

There's no one to help the Iraqis on the street. Their occupiers are predators who are stripping them of their money, their culture, their humanity and their very lives. There's nowhere for them to hide, and anyone foolish enough to attempt to connect the dots, such as Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi journalist and Knight Ridder special correspondent, who was shot in the head last week, is very quickly taken care of. Two other journalists were killed in the same manner a few days later.

Which just proves if there's one group who will tell you "take this dot and shove it," it's the US media, because not a single one of them would be caught dead (no pun intended) raining on George Bush's Freedom Parade.