This is an interesting piece of cheery propaganda. Under the photo, the caption suggests that the bridge is goig to be widened, but then we discover that they are just thinking aobut widening only the pedestrian parts of the bridge that the United States destroyed when we nearly flattened the entire city and dropped the napal-like substance called white phospherous on the people who stayed to protect their homes and businesses or were too poor to be able to be refugees in the desert so wee could blow up their city. We are only planning to help rebuild the city, and this makes a good Story since we have fewplans to do much rebuilding of what we destroyed, for as we were told, "We are not in Iraq to engage in nation-building — ... More »

Flush with repeated quotes from military personnel, claiming the glorious "recovery" of Fallouja, this report reads so obviously like a script prepared by the US military for the reporter that it stuns the reader. The reporter evidently, did not engage in any investigative journalism. No rationale was given for the underlying developments that have led to the return to "normalcy" there. It is simply another piece of stenographic "journalism" brought to you by the promoters of the "surge". Unfortunately for the L A Times, far more reliable reports (even on TV, by NBC Evening News), state that "calm" has been restored to Sunni controlled areas by a program of US military payoffs in the millions of US taxpayer dollars to the ... More »