Tom deLay thinks so:
From the "What Planet Is He On?" department, Tom DeLay has weighed in on how things really are in Iraq. And it turns out that Iraq is like ... Iraq is like ... well, it turns out that Iraq is a lot like Texas, actually.
"You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody'd go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston [would be about] violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways," DeLay says in an interview reported in today's Houston Chronicle. It's the media's fault, of course. People should just go to Iraq, DeLay says, and they'd see what's really happening there. "Everybody that comes from Iraq is amazed at the difference of what they see on the ground and what they see on the television."
I've never been to Houston but I doubt that twenty people have recently been blown to smithereens in a restaurant there or that roadside bombs are everyday events. I also suspect that people in Houston have electricity and water all the time. And if there is a war going on in Houston, Texas, the media really fucked up because I have heard nothing about it.
This story is like that old one about New York City being as dangerous as being a soldier in Iraq. If all this was true wouldn't you expect the wingnut politicians to enlist in large numbers, especially those from places like Houston?
Smarter politicians, please! From both sides of the aisle, actually. My job of ridicule is far too easy these days.