Scripps Howard News Service: "If he had his druthers, Jay Garner would have been fishing in Mexico Monday or otherwise dipping into the sizable pile of cash he has made as a defense contractor.... 'What better day in your life can you have than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people. And that is what we intend to do,' Garner told reporters and curious Iraqi citizens Monday in Baghdad." [emphasis added]

Monday Morning (Lebanon): "And more damning is the human damage done by the wars and the UN sanctions imposed more than 12 years ago to a population that slipped from affluence and high education in the 1970s to massive poverty. 'Iraq has one of the highest rates of under-five mortality in the world, with more than one in eight children dying before they reach their fifth birthday', according to UNICEF, the UN children’s fund in a recent report. 'Although it has improved in recent years, malnutrition also remains high, affecting one in four Iraqi children under the age of five -- almost 1 million youngsters', it added, pointing out that half of the population were children. According to Baghdad’s official statistics, at least 23 percent of all children no longer attend school and are working to supplement family income. 'Regardless of war, once sanctions have ended, the scars of sanctions will be seen for many years to come; to rebuild the social system will take 15-20 years', said Hans von Sponeck, a German who resigned in 2000 from his post of UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq to protest against the UN sanctions."

Sky News: "'They fought an extremely merciful and human war in a brilliant way,' [Garner] added."

CNN: "The United Nations inspection team is prepared to return to Iraq to hunt for banned weapons of mass destruction, Hans Blix told the Security Council on Tuesday. But the White House responded to the chief weapons inspector's comments by saying the United States has taken over the job."

NYTimes: "In another part of the city, the Ministry of Industry is a burned hulk of concrete, its interior stripped of everything of value. About 30 workers have turned up in the last few days to sign a registration book and stare at the piles of ashes on the lobby floor, hoping that something good might arise."

Islamic Republic News Agency: "Millions of Iraqis are in desperate need of drinking water and effective sanitation to prevent the spread of epidemics as searing 40 to 50 degrees Centigrade temperatures beckon. Even before the US-led war, an estimated half-a-million tons of raw sewage was mixing with the drinking water system. UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Ramiro Lopes da Silva has warned that millions of Iraqis face a nightmare of starvation and poverty."

Heritage Foundation: "While the U.S. should always listen respectfully to requests from its allies, it is imperative that in the weeks ahead the Bush Administration rebuff U.N. plans for a central role in a post-war Iraqi government. Such a scheme would jeopardize the United States' key war aims and would also seriously hamper President George W. Bush's broad vision of a free Iraqi nation, rising from the ashes of tyranny." [a sample of the reams of crap churned out by right-wing PR groups every day]