who do i believe?

in this case, the new york times of course!

iraq has met few IF ANY of the benchmarks WE have defined (yes, we. it saddens me but it's true. WE invade their country in an illegal and immoral and unjust way AND we have the balls to lay out a set of rules and regulations for them. )

Iraqi Leader In 'WSJ' Op-Ed Claims Progress -- 'NYT' Disputes

By Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK Who you going to believe? The leader of Iraq or The New York Times? The choice arose today as the two offered diametrically different views of political progress in Iraq.Just as the Times reported a failure in Iraq to reach or even approach "benchmarks," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki appeared on the editorial page of the friendly Wall Street Journal claiming gains. He opens: "Americans keen to understand the ongoing struggle for a new Iraq can be guided by the example of their own history. In the 1860s, your country fought a great struggle of its own, a civil war that took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation signaled the destruction of the terrible institution of slavery, and the rise of a country dedicated, more than any other in the world of nation-states then and hence, to the principle of human liberty."Maliki then tackles several U.S. demands, including reform of the de-Ba'thification law ("This has not been easy, but we have stuck to that difficult task)" and oil sharing (“Iraq is well on its way to passing a new oil law”). .................