"Rebuilding Iraq, one poem at a time; Mass. man helps battered nation recover" by James F. Smith, Globe Staff | March 8, 2009
John Dunlop, 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds of muscle, works out of the US Army's Forward Operating Base Falcon in the Rashid District, at the sharp end of Baghdad, but he's not in uniform. His mission is to help Iraq rebuild itself, block by block, and yesterday, as it happened, verse by verse.
Poetry is in the lifeblood of this proudly literate country, and so it was that Dunlop and an Iraqi arts professor convened a poetry competition in war-ravaged Rashid. It was one more way to revive a sense of possibility.
"When you've got local poets who are identified with the community coming forward, it pulls the community around a common identity. It's like everyone's pulling for the same football team," Dunlop said by telephone from Iraq on the eve of the final round of the competition. "It's a sense of normalcy, not war and instability - of culture, of things happening, the kinds of spices that make communities worth defending."
So is this guy a NOC CIA agent or....? Of course, the paper would tell us if he was an intelligence asset, right? See what I'm getting at, readers? Btw, Iraq had normalcy and culture before the illegal invasion and occupation of their lands -- well, as normal as it could be under war-criminal sanctions from the slavish U.N. for ten years.
If American combat troops are finally able to withdraw from Iraq next year and to leave behind a country that is relatively stable and functional, it'll be thanks in part to Dunlop, a Marblehead native, and people like him.
That's a MIGHTY BIG IF out there -- especially when I was told the new president was definitely ending the thing (save for an occupying force of 50,000 troops with their names changed; that's the change we are getting?).
Dunlop spent most of the past two decades working on child survival and health development in some of the most destitute parts of Africa, including the Central African Republic, southern Sudan, and Rwanda, first for the Peace Corps, then Catholic Relief Services, and now for the US government's Agency for International Development.
So he IS an AGENT of the U.S. GOVERNMENT!! This his COVER?
Think of it this way: if he wasn't, would this "hero" be recognized by the war-promoting, agenda-pushing MSM with a front-page puff piece on how he helped win Iraq with a poem? They have no electricity or sewage treatment most of the time. I'll bet the readings stink either way.
Last April, he volunteered to move to Iraq. He is USAID's representative in the Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team for Rashid District, working with the military to help Iraqis revive their communities and reconstruct their shattered country.
Yeah, after we shattered it over BUSH'S LIES!! Ain't we's great people!?
The dozen or so teams serving with Army or Marine brigades at front-line bases are a little-known but critical element in the success of the military-civilian "surge" of the last two years....
Yup, BUSH WON IRAQ after ALL THAT LOST LOOT!!!
Dunlop avoids discussing the politics of the war. But his description of his team's work in Baghdad reflects the dramatic overhaul in American strategy, finally integrating military operations with civilian development work in ways that helped arrest a disaster in progress.
See? Bush's gut went against everything he/we were advised at the time, but HE GAMBLED and WON, the lying MSM is telling us.
"We basically advise the brigade on - we use the term counterinsurgency, but really it's community stabilization: How can we make people feel like this is a normal city, and that it's worth it for Iraqis to invest in peace and business," Dunlop said in an interview in Boston before returning to Baghdad.
Now IF ONLY it was WORTH IT to AMERIKA to INVEST in PEACE, huh? WAR is OUR BIGGEST BIDNESS!!!!
And btw, Iraq WAS a NORMAL PLACE before the American bombs started falling -- well, as normal as one could be under criminal sanction by the U.N (no WMD, etc, so he was in fact complying, wasn't he, unlike Israel)
One way has been a revival of artistic expression.... Poetry, too, is part of that. Dunlop said Shaker explained to him the enormous importance of poetry in Iraqi society, not just as an art form, but as a way of communicating in religion, politics, and love, "We started to talk about how we could promote poetry as an art form, and he said, 'How about a poetry contest?' "
That's probably true anywhere, right? I'm not a big poet fan at all, but I recognize the obvious talent.
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Dhafer Al Makuter, an Iraqi translator who has worked with Dunlop since last August, said the importance of poetry to Iraqis can't be overstated. "It's like
The organizers spread word about the poetry contest via the Rashid radio station. Set up last month, the radio station is another initiative funded and facilitated by Dunlop's team. In this way, the projects reinforce one another in restoring the fabric of the society.
Yup, a U.S. PROPAGANDA TEAM is SET UP to "RESTORE the FABRIC" of a SOCIETY THEY SMASHED!!!! How RICH is THAT PROPAGANDA, huh? Let's see a DISSENTER'S POEMS that mourn the deaths of millions of Iraqis due to the MSM and its complicity in war-promoting lies as a front-page lead!!!
The 10-member embedded reconstruction team is led by a State Department officer and a military officer and includes Dunlop as development specialist. The teams were formed in early 2007 to help address the widely acknowledged early failings of the US occupation.
If only our government would work so hard to REBUILD AMERICA, huh, American?
After the invasion in March 2003, the US-led provisional authority hurriedly rolled out billions in bricks-and-mortar reconstruction projects while the military operated almost in isolation. Neither fared well and the insurgency mushroomed.
While controversy over the surge authorized by President Bush has focused on the additional combat troops, many Iraq analysts now say that other less-noted changes adopted in 2007 by General David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker were equally important....
The decline in violence allowed development work to move ahead faster. Dunlop said that when he arrived at the Falcon base last April, "we'd get incoming every day, and sometimes many times every day . . . rockets and mortars." By July, with more Iraqis turning against the insurgency, things calmed down dramatically.
That let Dunlop and his reconstruction team get out and work with community leaders more often and with less concern about security. He has worked on local projects in agriculture, literacy, small-business financing, and building a community service center in Rashid....
Army Major Thao Reed, who works with Dunlop in Rashid [and] is on her third tour in Iraq, said she has seen USAID's role grow. "They bring expertise, money, capacity, improving governance. But USAID doesn't try to take the credit. We're trying to give legitimacy to the Iraqi government, so that people trust their government."
I wish I could trust mine; starting to realize that no governments are legitimate, including my own.
Dunlop's family is taking advantage of his Baghdad assignment to get accustomed to American life and New England winters. Dunlop is hoping to get another master's degree at the Army War College after his Iraq tour ends in June, to combine his years of conflict mitigation and development work, before heading back abroad to yet another foreign posting.
Sure smells like CIA (or whatever) to me.
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