A typical example of the kind of HORSE-SHIT the Monkey-Media will print to fill their pages and who cares whether it’s true or false, or whether it’s misinforming or misleading? NO RULES, GREAT SPLOTCH!

DERELICT MEDICAL DISTRICT SAD SYMPTOM OF BAGHDAD’S DECLINE

By Bryan Pearson of Agence France Presse via The Daily Star Monday 5^th May 2008

Dear readers and fellow-Apes; the following is the biggest, lowest, and most stinky collection of contradictions and circumlocutions - HORSE-SHIT - I have ever read in my life, and I shall do my utmost best to keep my comments as short as possible out of respect for you. Brainless Bryan has done his best to camouflage and hide the facts by twists and turns, jumping off the track, and retracing his footsteps or shit-prints, but nothing escapes Daniel in The Lion’s Den! BY GOD! Kindly read it all and note the important points in RED, and my comments in BLACK.

BAGHDAD: Its traditional wooden-balconied Shanasheel houses in ruins, other buildings crumbling and muddied streets reeking of rubbish, central Baghdad's Al-Batawin neighbourhood is an abject picture of just how far the rot has set in on the once-proud Iraqi capital.

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Al-Batawin's main thoroughfare, Al-Sadun Street, bustled with restaurants, hotels, up-market stores and most famously medical centers. Today just a scattering of businesses still bother to open their doors, residential blocks stand empty, and those buildings that are occupied have few tenants willing to risk living above the first floor. Electricity is supplied only sporadically and water in a trickle, and there are no other services to speak of, so it makes no sense to live too far from the ground in what is now a rapidly eroding urban wasteland.

Most Iraqis knew Al-Sadun Street for its medical facilities and pharmacies. Many used to travel from afar and wait in long queues to see a doctor. And after the visits there were some 200 pharmacies within a few blocks ready to fill in prescriptions. 200 pharmacies within a few blocks! That would mean all pharmacies and no other shops! Pharmacies, pharmacies everywhere and not a pill to take! BY GOD AGAIN!

Not any more. The 2003 invasion and the sectarian violence it subsequently spawned have changed all that. Today most of the doctors have left and just 20 pharmacies remain. Doctors these days open their doors for only a few hours in the afternoon. With no electricity and few patients, there is little point in hanging about after dark. 20 pharmacies within a few blocks! And this Brain-Drain Idiot complains! BY GOD ONE MORE TIME! Whoever heard of doctors hanging about after dark? Doctors do not hang about streets any time of the day. They are too busy making money out of the misery and pain of their fellow-Apes. And after work, they go home to their families or to their clubs and other places. Hoodlums, punks, pimps, whores, drug-addicts, thieves and criminals, Etc, hang about streets at night!

If the ground floor of the building reflects the jangled disintegration of Baghdad society, the third floor epitomizes the city's decay. Electric cables hang from jagged openings in crumbling walls, the signs outside consulting rooms are mangled or missing, the doors of the long in-operative lift hang loose and thick dust coats the floors and walls, and a huge pile of hundreds of long-discarded cigarette butts in one corner, near an upturned plastic chair with one missing leg. The fourth floor is in better shape thanks to a dental surgeon who opens his clinic for two hours a day to treat two patients on average. The dentist, unlike the other doctors who have left the building, either to take their families overseas or to set up practices closer to their homes, believes the situation will improve. Fellow-Apes! He mentioned the ground and third floors, skipped the first and second floors, and then jumped up to the fourth floor, which is in better shape! I wonder! You tell me how the fourth floor could be in better shape when the ground and third floors are in such a state, and we know nothing about the first and second floors.

A Plastic Surgeon, who once served in Saddam Hussein's army patching up soldiers disfigured in the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, insists that he, too, will stay put. He had to start again from zero once when he was arrested by Saddam's police when he decided he'd had enough of the army and wanted to leave the country in 2001. He was sentenced to 6 years and all his properties, including his surgery, were confiscated. He was released under an amnesty after serving 21 months.

Soon afterwards, Saddam was toppled and he could practice medicine freely again. He now spends his time doing nose jobs and tummy tuck-ins, mainly for women but also for some well-off men. I ASK YOU! Iraqi women and men who can still afford plastic surgery and this Brain-Drain Idiot complains! BY GOD YET AGAIN!

But the decay of Baghdad did not begin with the invasion five years ago. The decline actually started at the end of the heady 1970s, when Iraq went to war with Iran at the end of a decade when oil money had been flowing and Baghdad had become a center of trade, culture and learning. By the middle of 1985 the war with Iran was taking its toll as more money and resources were ploughed into the military effort. Investments dried up, the mood soured, and the good times no longer rolled. Contradictions!

The gnawing away of the city's innards picked up pace when the United Nations imposed sanctions in 1990 after Iraq had invaded Kuwait, which weakened the Iraqi people and lowered their morale while strengthening Saddam and making him more despotic, dictatorial, tyrannical, and brutal. Contradictions!

The 2003 invasion and Saddam's toppling brought a brief period of recovery before sectarian violence exploded and Baghdad became prey to shootings, rocket and mortar fire, car bombs and suicide attacks. Contradictions!

The sight of men sitting in front of a crumbling tea house, playing dominoes and backgammon, three blocks from Al-Janabi with their backs to the street behind them is not for nothing. After all, why look at the piles of rubbish, the shell of a building blasted by a bomb, and the wreckage of rows of wooden Shanasheel houses that must once have given the street a certain grace and beauty; to say nothing of remaining residents treading their way through thick, stinking mud churned up by American military patrols, and be reminded of the good old times when Saddam’s goons churned up the thick stinking mud with their vehicles?