No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 
Two more views on Iraq.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/sunday_review/9296480.htm?1c

The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse.
By Ken DilanianInquirer Staff Writer

A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days.

Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn't make the nightly newscasts, either.
The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy hasn't materialized - what company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television?

Simply by staving off stability and prosperity, the insurgents are winning.


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/184709_fisk04.html

Iraq on verge of implode
Neither Bush nor Blair appear to notice
ROBERT FISK
BRITISH COLUMNIST

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The war is a fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons ofmass destruction that didn't exist. Or the links between Saddam Hussein andal-Qaida that didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went towar. I'm talking about the new lies.For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist; now they hide from us the threats that do exist.

Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of the United States' puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told.

Hundreds of attacks are made against U.S.troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told.

Lastmonth's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone topped 700, the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told.

Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair,grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report.

Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't President Bush realize this?

The American-appointed" government" controls only parts of Baghdad -- and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority.

Ayad Allawi, the "prime minister," is little more than mayor of Baghdad." Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now.When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside policestations, how on Earth can anyone hold an election next January?

Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been postponed twice. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary -- be he American, British or SouthAfrican -- believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so.

But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the"coalition," that they support their new U.S.-manufactured government, that the "war on terror" is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to anInternet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out ofthe country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins.

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This does not sound like reports from a pacified, stable country.

Someone is lying, and Bush and the US media do not have a track record that indicates it is not them.

posted by Richard at 4:32 PM