Jesus helps people get their priorities straight....

Every half-mile or so, a few Iraqis appeared like ghosts in the wasteland. Some put their thumbs and forefingers together and brought them to their mouths, the third-world sign language for please-give-me-food. Some rubbed their stomachs. Others tilted their heads back and cupped their hands, as though drinking one of the plastic bottles of Oasis mineral water that are stacked like howitzer shells in the backs of Humvees; they were thirsty, too. The smartest ones waved Iraqi dinars bearing images of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps the marines would extend charity in exchange for a war souvenir.

--Peter Maass, "Food, Too, Can Be a Weapon of the War in Iraq," New York Times Week in Review, 4/6/03

Last week, a missionary writing from Iraq on the International Bible Society's Web site described the scene this way: "I can hear jets flying over the town, and I hear explosions from the distance. There are still a few of us in town. We go out to visit and distribute tracts and the Jesus video. We are busy duplicating the video. We ran out of tracts and we need to print 10,000 more." The Bible society has published a Scripture booklet especially for Iraqi refugees. Christians in the United States are urged to spend 40 cents per booklet to print and ship them to Iraq.

--Deborah Caldwell, "Should Christian Missionaries Heed the Call in Iraq?," New York Times Week in Review, 4/6/03

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From the same articles:

Civilians are suffering, and a debate has begun about who should control relief efforts. The Pentagon has said it wants to keep control over all humanitarian aid. But relief agencies, like Catholic Relief Services and Oxfam-America, have said they don't want to be part of a military effort, because they must be independent to do their jobs.

--Maass

Both Mr. Fleischer and a spokeswoman for the United States Agency for International Development, which coordinates humanitarian aid, said that the government could not control the work of private charitable organizations because it did not finance them.

--Caldwell

Yeah? So which is it? Why is the government saying one thing about the non-evangelicals and another thing about the evangelicals? Why doesn't the Week in Review (which published both articles) know which is correct?