Your Chance of Being Kidnapped or Killed in Baghdad is 100%

[Kadie]

Cenk Uygur
Your Chance of Being Kidnapped or Killed in Baghdad is 100%
Posted September 8, 2007 | 05:26 PM (EST)


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We were talking to Newsweek's correspondent in Baghdad, Babak Dehghanpisheh, on Friday's show. I asked him if a Westerner, journalists or otherwise, could walk around in Baghdad unprotected by the military. He said it would be "suicidal."

I don't really know what I expected. I knew it was dangerous and I suspected that no Westerner went outside of the Green Zone without protection, but I didn't get the sense of how perilous it was until we talked to Dehghanpisheh.

So, I followed up by asking him if being harmed was a certainty if you were unprotected in Baghdad. He answered that your chances of getting killed or kidnapped in Baghdad if you were an unprotected Westerner was "one hundred percent."

Think about that. That's amazing. The Bush administration claims that they have made significant progress in Baghdad security. If anyone had told you that four and a half years into the Iraq War, that any Westerner who walked around Baghad without a military convoy would have a 100% of being kidnapped or killed in Baghdad, what would you have thought?

You probably would not have believed it. You might have asked, "What happened, did we lose the war?" You certainly wouldn't have surmised that we were making progress.

snip...
I don't think any Congressman should be able to vote to continue this war unless they can take an unprotected walk in Baghdad for fifteen minutes. Put the voting booth in the middle of Baghdad, give them some purple ink and any Congressman who can make it to the voting area without a military escort and vote yes to continue the war should have their vote counted.

more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/your-chance-of-being-kidn_b_63613.html