Un-friggin'-believable.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

WASHINGTON - When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay sat down with reporters on Tuesday on Capitol Hill, he was asked to assess President Bush's campaign in Iraq and to respond to criticism that the military mission is not going well and the White House needs to develop an exit strategy.

DeLay offered this response: "These things take time and they take a long time, and some people get weary of the constant barrage that we see in the media.

"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 is violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways," DeLay said.

I imagine the local TV news in Houston follows the same "if it bleeds, it leads" form as in most US cities, but if they were regularly reporting car bombings and mortar attacks, I think it might have broken nationally, even during Jacko's trial. Strangely, the national and international news reports seem to have missed the "open guerilla warfare in major US metropolis" story.

I don't know who those "some people" are, but the last time I went to Houston, I didn't need to drive to and from the airport in an armed-and-armored convoy. I know there are a lot of Hummers there, but I haven't seen any with mounted machine guns. Just longhorns.

I spoke to my in-laws there just the other day, and I'm sure they would have mentioned if the air-conditioning had gone out because they were only getting electricity sporadically, one hour in four. I don't recall hearing about someone sabotaging main water supply pipelines, or that, because many water pumps were broken, that children there were dying from sewage-polluted drinking water. And though I don't regularly read the Houston Chronicle, I think my in-laws would have said something if there were regular car-bombings in the city. Maybe they were just hiding it from me to get me to go back? Maybe I'm not hearing these things because it's not safe for journalists to travel around the city anymore? Wow, that must really cut into attendance at Astros games.

In any case, I'm pretty sure there isn't a meeting happening in Brussells right now to discuss international aid for Texas.

DeLay continued:

"And if you took that as the image of what is a great city that has an incredible quality of life and an incredible economy, it's amazing to me. Go to Iraq. And see what's actually 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 set."

Well, OK! Sounds like we can bring our boys home then, eh? Mission accomplished, again.