Why waste time & $$ on these constant photo op trips to the Green Zone?

It seems as if virtually ALL of the senators and congressmen and women must make a trip to Baghdad's little island of safety, the Green Zone, and then return to make grand statements about 'the war' and have their pics taken with the soldiers, why?

Do we really need to go through this process, at this late stage in the disaster? What's the point? Our tax dollars pay for this, I for one don't care for all these obscenely expensive junkets.

Many of these politicians go back and forth and some have been there dozens of times, and they are highly protected, they only see the Green Zone/Haliburton complex and apparently are spared the sight of all the tortured corpses lying in the streets outside the gates.

I don't need to see a politician, of either stripe, tell me how things are going over there in Baghdad, I read the news, unlike bush. And I can see the carnage on my t.v., and president cheney hates this fact, he only wants us to see the 'good things' going on there, and to him of course that means money out the wazoo.

They go to great lengths NOT to show Americans what's really going on over there, but I know, cause I can read and I've got two good eyes still.

I get it Mr. or Mrs. Senator or Congress person, I understand that you just got back from Baghdad, and you can verify unconditionally that we need to continue/end this war, because you personally went to the Green Zone and saw for yourself. I get it, I get it.

I can also tell you, having been an operations manager in a home office, there were times I believe I had to fly to the manufacturing site to see for myself what was real and what was just BS. o there was no green zone and my life wasn't in danger no matter where I went, butI think it's a "I want to see for myself" situation andnot just take someone elses word.

You and I hae both heard conflicting reports about the conditions in Iraq. Lots of RW reporters say the media is just not showing the great things that have been done there, while the rest of the reporters enumerate the things that havent, like electricity at best is only 12 hours a day, no clean water, severe high unemployment, and almost nowhere Iraqis can go and feel safe.

We also hear that moralwithinour troops is very high. I would like to go there myself to ask the troops myself, because I don't believe that for a minute!

I'm sure some of our congressmen go just for a photo op, but I also believe manyjust want to see for themselves what the real truth is. As far as going out on the Streets of Bagdad, I'm sure they see the same reports as you and I do.

It's WAY better information than you can get in the States. We just had a staff meeting today where our Iraqi translators told us hard it is for them to get to work, and dangerous. Just hearing the bombs and gunfire makes a difference, even if you can't get out to see what happened.

And you can always go out with a patrol. I've only done that once, and it was a complete milk run in a fairly pacific, middle-class neighborhood. We still supposedly took a little sniper fire as our convoy rolled up; I didn't see/hear anything, but you're pretty insulated inside a Stryker.

Now, Ramadi is supposed to be scary. I'll give that jerkoff Ollie North one small bit of credit; he had 'nads enough to go outside the wire out there.

that "you don't KNOW what's happening in Iraq because you've haven't been to Iraq" and the ever favorite "if you had the information that WE have from our discussions with our troops IN IRAQ then you would agree with what we are saying should be done".

when they flew into Orlando, and spent a whole week at DisneyWorld, and then flew back home..

or people who had a layover at JFK, and claim they have "been to New York"..

It's all smoke & mirrors folks..

Going to the Green Zone and having a "sit down" with the embedded reporters there and the military brass is NOT "going to Iraq".