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News Release

Realities of Iraq

August 21, 2007
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DAVID ENDERS
Enders is a freelance journalist who has just returned from Iraq, where he spent time throughout the country. He said today: “The Bush administration says that ‘the surge is working,’ but the realities of Iraq are that violence is increasing, the electrical and water systems are approaching a state of collapse and most everyone in Iraq is expecting things to get worse. There are millions of refugees and displaced persons — I was able to interview many while in Syria on my way back from Iraq. Much of what the U.S. is doing is aggravating the violence. The recent bombing of the Yazidi village in northern Iraq also highlights the fight going on in areas in northern Iraq between Sunni Arabs and Kurds as a planned referendum on allowing some areas of northern Iraq to join the semi-independent Kurdish region draws closer.” Enders has spent nearly half of the last four years in Iraq and is author of the book Baghdad Bulletin.
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DAHR JAMAIL
An independent journalist who has spent over eight months reporting from Iraq, Jamail is author the forthcoming book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

He said today: “There is no need to wait for a September report to tell us what every Iraqi source I have can already confirm, much of which has been released recently in an Oxfam report: 8 million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance, over 2 million are displaced inside Iraq, and over 2 million Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan, making this the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world. According to the Oxfam report: ‘forty-three percent of Iraqis suffer from “absolute poverty.” … Children are hit the hardest by the decline in living standards. Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 per cent before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 28 per cent now. … The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since 2003, while 80 percent lack effective sanitation.'”
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For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at (202) 347-0020.