Quotes of the Morning: Whitewash

“Last Friday we asked a hard question..”
-Skippy

“Hey, how many schools were painted today?”
-Skippy, January 5, 2007

“Well feel the power of the Quotes of the Morning.. We ask the tough questions and the government answers. Apparently our question drove the Administration to look carefully at its school-painting agenda and re-examine what was being done.”
-Skippy

“President Bush’s new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with a jobs program costing as much as $1 billion intended to employ Iraqis in projects including painting schools and cleaning streets, according to American officials who are piecing together the last parts of the initiative.”
-New York Times, January 6, 2007

“I think that we can all agree that we owe the Iraqi people a lot, and we will not leave until EVERY school is painted. It seems the least (the very least) we can do.”
-Skippy

“I am confident in our plan for victory ... I am confident in the will of the Iraqi people ... I am confident in the skill and spirit of our military. Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 31, 2006

“Dang straight. We are not leaving until every school is painted. Now we just need to figure out what color. I think blood red would be appropriate.”
-Skippy

“More than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics, a sharp increase that coincided with rising sectarian strife since the February bombing of a landmark Shiite shrine.
In the first six months of last year, 5,640 Iraqi civilians and police officers were killed, but that number more than tripled to 17,310 in the latter half of the year, according to data provided by a Health Ministry official with direct knowledge of the statistics. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said those numbers remained incomplete, suggesting the final tally of violent deaths could be higher.
[…]
The Health Ministry's full-year death toll of 22,950, although incomplete, is higher than the 13,896 violent deaths of civilians, police officers and soldiers reported Jan. 1 by Iraq's ministries of defense, health and interior. The United Nations, in a November report, estimated that more than 28,000 Iraqi civilians had died violently in the first 10 months of 2006, but that count was disputed by the government. The differences in the numbers could not be reconciled.”
-Washington Post, January 8, 2006

“Newspaper headlines have borne much bad and frightening news lately: car bombs in Baghdad, missile fusillades launched at hotels, deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers, Iraqi police and governmental officials, and representatives of the international community. But there is plenty of good news, too, even though it doesn't as often make the papers. And that good news stems from a single irreversible and critical truth: the Iraqi people are free. . . . Real progress is being made on the ground that gives Iraqis hope that life will get steadily better. . . . We have renovated more than 1,500 schools.”
-Colin Powell, October 31, 2003