An interesting read

[gridlore]

What if the United States was like Iraq?

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

Comments

Well...

[seawasp]

... the word was "improving", not "better than America".

You'd have to look at statistics (from whatever timeframe suits your political preferences) and determine whether Iraq is doing better or worse than it was at the timeframe you have selected.

I doubt even the optimists would have said that Iraq would come to equal our level on such statistics.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

From the same chap:

I have a sinking feeling that the American public may like Bush's cynical misuse of Wilsonian idealism precisely because it covers the embarrassment of their having gone to war, killed perhaps 25,000 people, and made a perfect mess of the Persian Gulf region, all out of a kind of paranoia fed by dirty tricks and bad intelligence. And, maybe they have to vote for Bush to cover the embarrassment of having elected him in the first place.

How deep a hole are they going to dig themselves in order to get out of the bright sunlight of so much embarrassment?

I'm afraid he's right...

[angeleyes8410.livejournal.com]

Wow. I had thought of those things but never seen it written and the statistics.