A pattern of chaos

The situation in mid-summer Iraq continues to take a great toll on Iraqis and American soldiers. American patrols seem to be attacked dozens of times a day, and hundreds of American soldiers have been wounded since "combat ended." Iraq's infrastructure hasn't been coming together very well. And now we have this story in TIME that US forces trashed the Baghdad International Airport:

In the case of the international airport outside Baghdad, the theft and vandalism were conducted largely by victorious American troops, according to U.S. officials, Iraqi Airways staff members and other airport workers. The troops, they say, stole duty-free items, needlessly shot up the airport and trashed five serviceable Boeing airplanes. "I don't want to detract from all the great work that's going into getting the airport running again," says Lieut. John Welsh, the Army civil-affairs officer charged with bringing the airport back into operation. "But you've got to ask, If this could have been avoided, did we shoot ourselves in the foot here?"

An American diplomat who was sent to Nigeria refutes the idea that Nigeria sold yellow-cake uranium to Iraq, and was shocked to find that BushCo held up this supposed incident as real evidence.

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

...If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.

...Were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.

You have to like This Modern World, the classic alternative pop-art style comic. Today it's asking, "What if [Bush] deliberately deceived Americans because he knew they'd never support sending their sons and daughters to die in pursuit of some neo-con wet dream of global hegemony? Would that truly be considered a lie?" Not to put too fine a point on it. :)

BBC reports that American soldiers perhaps don't recall how the tactics of our own revolution unfolded.

The recent spate of attacks on American troops in Iraq has had a profound effect on the morale of the US troops stationed here. Even though they are an army of occupation, many soldiers I have spoken to are surprised at the upsurge in violence against them. They were told that the people of this country would greet them as liberators.

"We're here to help them!" said a soldier on duty at a checkpoint near my hotel. "I don't want say anything bad about these people, but the way they're attacking us is just so...sneaky," he says. "Shooting at us from rooftops as we drive by ... and I wish they'd just like, stand up and fight us."

Feeling victimized lately? A fascinating piece "Bush Dominates a Nation of Victims" details how President Bush uses negative language, generalizations and personalizations to dominate the psyche of the American public. (Schwartz on the link :)

An article on OpenDemocracy.net details the dimensions of Iraqi resistance, and how perhaps "Saddam loyalist remnants" is too easy a label to apply.

Are these not just irrelevant if troublesome "remnants" as we are repeatedly told? The answer is probably no, and the reason relates to the closing stages of the original three-week war. For whatever reason, whether by the Americans "buying of" the leadership, or by design, the elite Special Republican Guard and the tens of thousands of people attached to the various security and intelligence organisations all failed to offer serious resistance to the US entry into Baghdad, Fallujah and Tikrit.

Almost all of these forces, numbering at least 40,000, melted away with their arms and ammunition largely preserved. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the original war, there was widespread looting of ordinary army munitions stores and the disbanding of that army of nearly 400,000 troops, most of them released to join the ranks of the unemployed.

Looked at this way, a picture emerges of "remnants" that could number in the many thousands, mostly trained in irregular warfare, well-armed and supported by a public mood that, in many parts of Iraq, has become increasingly anti-American.

An Arab attorney argues that the American effort to pump oil in Iraq is illegal under international law.

With this whole disgusting mess unfolding, can you say there was some merit, any merit, to the original anti-war position? That it could have been more than just liberal reactionism?

Posted by HongPong at July 6, 2003 03:40 PM
Listed under Iraq .