Since President Bush declared an end to major combat
on May 1, 2003...
* The first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has
graduated and is on active duty.
* Over 60 000 Iraqis now provide security to their
fellow citizens.
* Nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.
* The Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.
* On Monday, October 6, power generation hit 4,518
megawatts-exceeding the pre-war average.
* All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes
and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary
schools.
* By October 1, Coalition forces had rehabbed over
1,500 schools - 500 more than their target.
* Teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former
salaries.
* All 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are
open.
* Doctors' salaries are at least eight times what
they were under Saddam.
* Pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially
nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons.
* The Coalition has helped administer over 22 million
vaccination doses to Iraq's children.
* A Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers
of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals. They now irrigate
tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for
more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
* We have restored over three-quarters of pre-war
telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production.
* There are 4,900 full-service connections. We expect
50,000 by January first.
* The wheels of commerce are turning. >From bicycles
to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming
to life in all major cities and towns.
* 95 percent of all pre-war bank customers have
service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.
* Since President Bush declared an end to major
combat on May 1... Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.
* The central bank is fully independent.
* Iraq has one of the world's most growth-oriented
investment and banking laws.
* Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first
time in 15 years.
* Satellite dishes are legal.
* Foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying
mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information
for "minders" and other government spies.
* There is NO Ministry of Information.
* There are more than 170 newspapers.
* You can buy satellite dishes on what seems like
every street corner.
* Foreign journalists and everyone else are free
to come and go.
* A nation that had not one single element--legislative,
judicial or executive--of a representative government, does.
* In Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory
councils. Baghdad's first democratic transfer of power in 35 years
happened when the city.
* Today in Iraq, chambers of commerce, businesses,
schools and professional organizations are electing their leaders
all over the country.
* 25 ministers, selected by the most representative
governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business
of government.
* The Iraqi government regularly participates in
international events. Since July the Iraqi government has been
represented in over two dozen international meetings, including
those of the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank
and IMF and, today, the Islamic Conference Summit. The Ministry
of Foreign Affairs today announced that it is reopening over 30
Iraqi embassies around the world.
* Shia religious festivals that were all but banned,
aren't. For the first time in 35 years, in Karbala, thousands
of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.
* The Coalition has completed over 13,000 reconstruction
projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the
reconstruction of Iraq.
* Uday and Queasy are dead - and no longer feeding
innocent Iraqis to his zoo lions, raping the young daughters of
local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq's soccer players
for losing games... murdering critics.
* Children aren't imprisoned or murdered when their
parents disagree with the government.
* Political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured,
executed, maimed, or forced to watch their families die for disagreeing
with Saddam.
* Millions of long suffering Iraqis no longer live
in perpetual terror.
* Saudis will hold municipal elections.
* Qatar is reforming education to give more choices
to parents.
* Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms.
* The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first
time to an Iranian -- a Muslim woman who speaks out with courage
for human rights, for democracy and for peace.
