How's it Going in Iraq?

It's bizarre that someone is looting dirt...


Even relatively simple projects designed to show goodwill can turn sour. Military engineers recently cleared garbage from a field in Fallujah, resurfaced it with dirt and put up goal posts to create an instant soccer field.

A day later, the goal posts were stolen and all the dirt had been scraped from the field. Garbage began to pile up again. "Is this animosity, crime or both? What kind of people loot dirt?" said Capt. Allen Vaught, from the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion

 

Aren't the restrictions in place so that our troops are more secure? I believe the article stated that the measure were taken to stop any incitement by the media. I'd say if it helps protect the troops then it's a good thing.

Of course you can spin it into the U.S. trying to take away their freedom of speech (something they know nothing about anyways) I've seen several posts in this thread making that leap.

 

How's it going on the home front?


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/20/iraq/main559669.shtml

Soldiers’ Wives Want Hubbies Home

HINESVILLE, Ga., June 20, 2003



Ellen Peterson sits in her car at her Ft. Stewart, Ga. home. Her husband is currently serving with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq and was expected to return home shortly after the war. (AP)



“It's aggravating, frustrating.”
Shanelle Stenson, whose husband, Spc. Tyuan Stenson, had hoped to take their young sons to Florida next month.



(AP) During the war in Iraq, the Army's 3rd Infantry took more casualties than any other military division. Now, with the heavy combat all but over, many wives angrily say their battle-weary husbands need to come home.

Once the picture of pride and patriotism during the war, the wives are arguing that the soldiers who did the killing should not have to do the peacekeeping.

“They need to be out of there, because I don't believe it's safe,” said Ellen Peterson, the wife of a 3rd Infantry sergeant who was deployed in January from the division's base at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

The Army's decision to assign new missions to more than 16,000 of the division's troops has hit hard in this military town. After six to 10 months in the desert, wives say, the men are mentally and physically exhausted.

“A lot of people felt like if you didn't support the war, you didn't support the troops,” said Peterson, a 42-year-old financial analyst, who asked that her husband's name not be used. “I had to tell someone — I've supported my husband for 16 years. I don't have to support the policies.”

U.S. commanders have said they tapped the 3rd Infantry to crush pockets of Iraqi resistance and keep order because of its fighting reputation. The division specializes in desert warfare and has experience with peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo in 2000 and 2001.

“I know it's hard on the families,” Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, commander of the 3rd Infantry, said June 3 from Baghdad. “We got a mission to do over here, we're continuing to do that mission and it's changing.”

He said his troops should be home by the end of August, earlier if possible.

Thirty-five members of the 3rd Infantry have died in Iraq; the most recent death was on May 8, when a soldier was shot while directing traffic on a bridge in Baghdad.

With attacks against U.S. troops a daily occurrence, some 3rd Infantry soldiers themselves are questioning their role.

“We need to pull these guys out and put some other troops in here who are trained for peacekeeping, because our first impulse is to kill,” Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright said in Iraq. “My guys question why we are going from warriors to peacekeepers, because the belief in what was told to us was that we would fight and win and go home and that someone else would do this.”

After President Bush declared the heavy fighting over last month, the soldiers' families hurried to prepare for their homecoming. They made banners out of bedsheets and circulated an e-mail telling them to stop sending letters overseas as of June 1 because the men would be home before the mail reached them.

Then they learned on May 29 that most of the 3rd Infantry soldiers would be staying through August.

A number of wives have dashed off bitter letters to their congressmen, saying their husbands are too exhausted to fight and should be replaced by fresh new troops. Others say they feel soldiers and their families were misled about the troops' return.

“It's aggravating, frustrating,” said Shanelle Stenson, whose husband, Spc. Tyuan Stenson, had hoped to take their young sons to Florida next month. “We're all making banners and planning vacations for July in Disney World. It's like a slap in the face. It hurts.”

Toya Hadden, 25, said she has had a rough time taking care of her three children: ages 5, 3 and 17 months — by herself. Hadden's doctor put her on anti-depressants when her husband, Sgt. Terrance Hadden, deployed.

“I'm on Zoloft. My nerves are bad having to deal with my kids and all the finances,” she said. “My mind keeps going to how they're being treated out there and all the uncertainty of when they're coming home.”

She added: “I know some wives who are on Prozac. We sit there and compare which anti-depressant we're on.”

Some wives are dealing with their disappointment by lowering expectations.

Luann Hoyseth set up a calendar to count down to her husband's return from 365 days, the maximum time allowed by his January deployment orders.

Her husband, 1st Lt. Colin Hoyseth, later wrote to say he would be home by July 1. Then he wrote to move the date to June 15. But now, Hoyseth has returned to her 365-day countdown.

“Yeah, the 3rd Infantry are the ones who fought the most of the war and they should be coming home,” Hoyseth said. “But they're also the most trained for what's going on over there. So they need to stay and finish the job.”


©MMIII, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

The only positive article I could find was in the Stars and Stripes.
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=16147


Warriors find their softer side dealing with the needs of Iraq's citizens


By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, June 20, 2003



Michael Abrams / S&S
Htaita Abd and Amera Ktasi’s four children are a little unsure why strangers are in their house. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Shawn Gibson stopped in the Habbaniyah, Iraq, neighborhood to check on housing conditions.


Michael Abrams / S&S
During a stop on a patrol, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, enjoys a laugh with Adan Ali, the emir of Civilcamp, a neigborhood of Habbaniyah, Iraq.


HABBANIYAH, Iraq — Staff Sgt. Shawn Gibson patrols the streets of his sector heavily armed — with a smile and compassionate heart.

It’s the softer side of a warrior.

More than an effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people in the poverty-stricken area he patrols, it’s something the 38-year-old leader of soldiers wants to do, he said.

“I enjoy people,” Gibson said. “I was raised to treat everyone equally. … American soldiers are the most compassionate soldiers there are.”

Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division, the first to storm into Baghdad on April 7, thought they were on their way home when word came that they were to take a detour to quell increasing violence against U.S. troops in Fallujah and surrounding areas.

It was a blow to morale, troops say.

“I was really looking forward to seeing my family,” said Pfc. Joshua Scherick, who celebrates his 21st birthday on Thursday.

The soldiers find a bit of comfort in the thought that they’re here because they’ve been told they are the best.

“I guess we should take this as a compliment,” Scherick said.
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However it appears that even the children! are turning agin us.


http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/6106210.htm


Posted on Tue, Jun. 17, 2003

Anger replacing patience during U.S. occupation
By Tom Lasseter and Natalie Pompilio
Knight Ridder

AL-FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Ahmed Manaa's face was dark with anger. He was tired of the U.S. troops rumbling up and down his city's streets in their big tanks, pointing their guns at passing cars. They are nothing but occupiers, he said, and they should go back to America, before another war begins.

Ahmed doesn't fit the profile of anti-U.S. elements whom American army commanders so often describe: He doesn't mourn the fall of Saddam Hussein. He never has been an Al-Qaida sympathizer. In fact, Ahmed is 13 years old, with a buzz cut and a frame a bit small for his age. But his views about U.S. forces are widely shared in Al-Fallujah, where he lives, and other towns northwest of Baghdad.

``We wish that Allah would have revenge on the Americans,'' he said.

The United States blames such sentiments on Saddam loyalists: The former dictator is a Sunni Muslim, and so are most of the people who live in the area. But residents said people are ready to fight only because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops.
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I'm not saying I'm against the restriction, this is an occupation not an elected government, but I would like to know what is exactly meant by incitement by the media. Is it organized revolts or bad press meaning only negative reports about the situation, or what????

 

OK, new article I hope, otherwise I'll edit it out.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0620/p25s04-woiq.html


Smashed US memorial points to deepening Iraqi anger

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – With tears in his eyes, US Army paratrooper Richard Bohr knelt down in the Iraqi dust and kissed a handmade memorial stone, bidding farewell to a brother in the US Marine Corps who was killed in action on the spot April 10, the day after Baghdad fell to invading American troops.
Draped with a necklace and pendant imploring, "St. Michael Protect Us," the concrete memorial put in place by a US unit Friday morning measured two-by-three feet, and had been painted with a bright American flag, the Marine Corps shield, and the words "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

But within 30 minutes of the American troops leaving, this tribute to a brother was no more - a casualty of the deepening resentment toward US troops here, at the hands of Iraqis who increasingly see those troops not as liberating friends, but as an occupying enemy.

At first, after the waving Americans pulled away in their Humvees, curious Iraqis surrounded the memorial, with hands respectfully clasped behind their backs. They talked with displeasure of the American presence.

The necklace was quickly snatched up by a young boy. But just moments after a Western visitor began walking away, several children began to pelt the memorial with stones.

Within moments, it was smashed to pieces.

"I broke it - it was me!" boasted Ahmad Amin, a seven-year-old wearing a worn 101 Dalmatians T-shirt. But why did he want to destroy it, he was asked: "Freedom!" he crowed, unaware of the irony.

"I don't like America," Amin said. "They hurt us."

Amin says that his 12-year-old brother Mohamed had, in fact, been killed just a few strides away, after prayers on April 10, as he was leaving through the gates of the Abu Hanifa mosque. Mohamed died the same day that Gunnery Sergeant Jeffery Bohr died - possibly in the same incident.

"They hate the American flag-they consider it an offense to put a flag here," says Nagham Fadhel, a conservatively-dressed woman, an English-speaker who has found American soldiers to be friendly. "I consider [US troops] a liberation army, but many are ignorant, and now see them as the enemy."

One older Iraqi woman tried to shoo away the children as they vandalized the stone. But for many Iraqis, the swift destruction of such a sacred totem highlights a much deeper, growing unease at the US presence here, that has yet to deliver security, democracy, or even full-time electricity.

Instead, to many Iraqis the vision of America's role is marred by a string of incidents, like the shooting deaths of at least two unemployed Iraqi army officers at a demonstration on Wednesday, or recent operations to root out Saddam loyalists and guerrillas, who have killed 17 US troops in ambushes, drive-by shootings and grenade attacks since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations May 1.

The incident coincided with a memorial service held by US soldiers in the same area of Baghdad Friday morning, for Private First Class Shawn Pahnke, who was killed by a sniper bullet last Monday. Fellow troops lined up to mourn, where PFC Pahnke's helmet had been placed on his rifle, stuck barrel down between sandbags.

Ms. Fadhel says that as much as she disliked the regime of Saddam Hussein, she could safely be out past 9:00 pm. Now, she says, any time after 6:00 pm is unsafe. Delays by the Washington-appointed administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, to create a new Iraqi government, adds to the resentment among Iraqis.

"If they don't establish a new Iraqi government by August, Iraqi people everywhere will attack them. They must know that it will result in a civil war," Fadhel says. "You will see bodies of Americans in the streets. They think we are silent, but we are agitated inside."

That agitation is increasingly boiling to the surface. Signs are sprouting that US troops - and the ineffective new US-led authority they have ushered in - are wearing out their welcome. Graffiti sprayed across one highway overpass reads: "Go home Americans." Spray-painted in red inside a downtown bus stop: "Go away, U.S.A."

That sentiment echoes on the streets. Iraqi officers demonstrating for pay-and against an across-the-board disbanding of the 400,000-strong Iraqi armed forces by Mr. Bremer - led to deaths at the presidential palace gates on Wednesday.

Officers say they were demonstrating peacefully, and that it was a handful of provocateurs who "infiltrated" the crowd and began throwing stones at a passing American convoy, sparking a soldier to fire live ammunition into the crowd.

Coalition military spokesman Col. Guy Shields says loss of life is "regrettable," but that US forces remain in a "combat zone." It is "unrealistic" for soldiers to carry different rifle magazines with live and plastic bullets, he said at a press conference on Thursday.

US troops are rarely trained for police work. But when they deployed briefly to Somalia in early 1995, to provide security for evacuating United Nations staff and troops, they expected protests and carried the latest anti-riot gear: "Bee-sting" hand grenades that sprayed hard rubber pellets, and nozzle goop-guns that blasted immobilizing glue.

Col. Shields said troops in Iraq that might face violent demonstrators carry no non-lethal crowd control devices, and that he was unaware of any requests by US commanders for such anti-riot gear.

That is a surprise to the family of Tariq Hussein al-Mashledani, a junior officer killed Wednesday. Under a mourning tent set up in a cramped alley, in Mr. Al-Mashledani's poor neighborhood, the talk is of how the US has wasted the goodwill felt by many Iraqis in the afterglow of the fall of Iraq's dictator.

"They speak of democracy and freedom, but we get exactly the opposite," says al-Mashledani's bearded brother, Aladin Hussein. "If [demonstrators] throw stones, do they shoot back? There are a lot of ways to disperse a crowd. If you must shoot, aim at the legs."

Al-Mashledani was taken by stretcher by US troops, and a copy of his medical report by a US military doctor - kept in a plastic bag by his brother - makes clear that he arrived alive "after receiving [two] gunshot wounds at assassin gate, apparently from US forces." The reports says he resisted attempts to help him.

But when family and friends retrieved the body, they say they inexplicably found a third wound - a wound that they say witnesses at the demonstration did not notice, when al-Mashledani was whisked away for treatment.

What the family sees as a continuing uncertainty about what happened to their brother now clouds their view of the American presence.

"The US has proved to the Iraqi people that it is an occupation force that wants oil, to protect Israel, and to build big military bases in Iraq," says Mr. Hussein, who also worked in the Iraqi military. "Of course we wanted a change of regime, but not in this way, because we have gone from bad to worse. Then there was safety, and we knew when we would get our salary."

 

We turned a bunch of innocent people into dust.

Aide Says Hussein, Sons Survived War


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18075-2003Jun21.html?nav=hptop_tb


By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 21, 2003; Page A14


Saddam Hussein's top aide has told U.S. authorities that the deposed Iraqi leader and his two sons survived the war and that the sons, along with the aide, escaped to Syria, only to be forced to return to Iraq, defense officials said yesterday.

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If Mahmud's account is true, it would mean that neither Hussein nor his sons died in U.S. air attacks in March and April aimed at compounds where the Iraqi leaders were thought at the time to have been hiding.

Searches of those compounds by forensic teams have turned up no Hussein family remains.

 

If that's true it also means that the early slander campaign against Syria wasn't valid, and that the Syrians were turning away Iraqi officials and not helping them escape.

 

If you can, one should listen to this week's show on This American Life at www.thislife.org. It's called I'm in Charge Now, and I was only interested in the portion about our administration of Iraq. Based entirely on listening to the show - outside of the large cities the country is ruled by tribes that even Hussein feared and had to negotiate with those tribes. They call Bremer, Bremer Hussein, and the sound bites make our spokesmen and spokeswomen sound like the Iraq disinformation minister, unfortunately. If any of this is true, they said they were giving the Americans another month before they started a war so we'll know soon if this was bravado BS or not.

 

Resistance Simmers as Iraqis Await Government


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...2jun22,1,1997396.story?coll=la-home-headlines

By Alissa J. Rubin , Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — "What is our fate? Where is our government? We have volunteered to serve Iraq," said Ali Kudair Jabar, 33, at a protest Saturday as he held up a hand-lettered sign in Arabic demanding back his job as a policeman.

The angry demonstration outside the gates of Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound, now headquarters for the U.S.-led civilian administration whose officials were far removed from the shouting voices, was the latest warning that the Coalition Provisional Authority is fast running out of time to establish the Iraqi government it promised.
Further delays could spawn increased resistance to the coalition's presence, endangering the lives of both Iraqi civilians and American soldiers. The delays also exacerbate frustrations over the dearth of reliable services including electricity, telephones and, above all, security.

About a mile inside the imposing gates, in a palace ornamented with depictions of Hussein wearing military helmets, staff members are hard at work defining the role for Iraqis in the occupation government. But the task is proving far more difficult and time-consuming than anticipated.

"There's no reliable census, no electoral rolls, no polls," said provisional authority chief L. Paul Bremer III, almost two weeks after talk of holding speedy elections was officially abandoned.

"The prospect of holding elections is premature," Bremer reiterated last week.

But Bremer's alternative — a council giving Iraqis only an advisory role in their own affairs — is being received warily at best by Iraqi political leaders and appears unlikely to satisfy grass-roots demands for government with an Iraqi face.

Although many experts on post-conflict situations, both Western and Iraqi, concur with Bremer's assessment that it is too soon to hold elections, they also say that the authority is taking too long to integrate Iraqis into the administration of the country.

Even if the authority does bring local leaders on board in an advisory capacity in the next few weeks, as promised, Iraqis may lose faith that it offers them any real power, the experts say.

At stake is the credibility of the U.S.-led administration and its ability to midwife a political transition to self-rule, according to a report released last week by the International Crisis Group, a Washington- and Brussels-based research organization that studies trouble spots.

"They may find Iraqis to carry out certain tasks, but are they going to find a real Iraqi leadership, or will Iraqis feel there's nothing to be gained by being part of this interim administration?" asked Joost Hiltermann, director of the organization's Iraq project.

One of Iraq's major Shiite groups, led by former exile Abdelaziz Hakim, says it has doubts about whether an advisory council will have enough power to make it worth joining.

"What is the authority of Mr. Bremer? Will the final decisions be Bremer's decisions and the council have only an advisory role? If that's the case, we would be very reluctant to be involved," said Adel Abdul Mahdi, an advisor to Hakim's Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

According to United Nations Resolution 1483 approved in May, Bremer has final authority over decisions in governing Iraq, much as the U.N. administrator has in Kosovo and the high representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina — both post-conflict regions in which governance was turned over to international bodies.

Neither is a particularly encouraging example: In Bosnia the high representative has been in place for nearly eight years, in Kosovo the U.N. has been there for four years, and in neither case is an end in sight.

Iraq in many ways is far more complex than the Balkans because of the powerful foreign influences on the country, most notably from Iran and Saudi Arabia. But it also has some distinct advantages, above all its enormous oil wealth.

"The Iraqis have no sense of sovereignty now, they haven't even been given symbols of sovereignty," said Faleh Jabar, an Iraqi sociologist who teaches at London University's Birbeck College and has returned to Baghdad to do research.

"All the Iraqis I've met have said that they want something that will represent Iraqi sovereignty, something so that they feel this is still their country."

Some of the provisional authority officials are keenly aware of the problem, but they say it would be a disaster to move too quickly and risk widespread chaos in the country. The only two serious power bases among Iraqis at this point are the now-outlawed Hussein-backed Baath Party and the Shiite clerics.

"In an ideal world we would have moved to elections sooner, but Iraq isn't an ideal world," said a senior authority official who is immersed in the political process.

"The hopes of the exiled parties were raised by earlier pronouncements, but the conditions for such a rapid movement does not exist. If there were an open election it would be very vulnerable to fundamentalist extremists and Baathist remnants."

If the advisory council plan is to work, the provisional authority will have to take the following steps — each fraught with problems, according to reconstruction experts and authority officials:

Recruit credible members of all the major groups in Iraq to participate in the council.

Balance the number of exile groups with representatives from inside the country and find female participants in a society that has became increasingly dominated by religious Iraqis who are uncomfortable with women in public positions.

Deal with Iraqi demands for control over all aspects of governance despite the reality that under the recently approved U.N. resolution, the provisional authority has responsibility for all government and humanitarian functions until a constitution is written and an Iraqi government is elected.

Convey its plans to the Iraqi people — a difficult task in a country where electricity remains sporadic and television signals weak.

The provisional authority's goal is to create an advisory council with 25 to 30 members who will represent the range of groups in Iraq.

The major exile groups will have representatives on the council, as will a number of groups representing Iraqis who remained in the country during the decades of Hussein's rule.

So far, six of the seven most established Iraqi exile organizations appear ready to take a seat at the table. The exception is the Shiite group headed by Hakim.

Eight more leaders also appear likely to be involved, according to a senior authority official.

The authority is still searching for female representatives and credible tribal leaders. It is also struggling with how to involve the Hawza — the loosely knit group of Shiite factions based in the holy city of Najaf.

The U.S. wants to ensure that Shiite leaders play a major role because they represent more than half of the country's population, but it wants to avoid encouraging the more fundamentalist Shiite clerics who might push for an Islamic government similar to Iran's.

But the biggest debate is about the council's powers. The council would have responsibility for nominating ministers and representing the country in delegations overseas and proposing policy initiatives such as writing a new curriculum and new textbooks for the Iraqi schools and determining a currency. It is also expected to interact both with a group writing a new constitution for the country and an economic council focused on attracting investment and jobs.

However, the council would have no control over the military or the police — the two most visible symbols of power during Hussein's rule.

Mindful of a demonstration last week by mostly members of the dissolved Iraqi army that left two Iraqis dead at the hands of American soldiers, some potential council members say it is mandatory that the advisory board have a say in military and security policy.

"We can do the job as well or better than they can," said Adnan Pachachi, who heads the Liberal Democratic Group, which is generally supportive of most coalition policy. "We have a lot of competent military officers, and in general Iraqis are better informed about the situation in the country than foreigners are."

Bu that appears to be a nonstarter. Provisional authority officials say that until there has been a thorough overhaul of the Iraqi military, which was used as an instrument of repression under Hussein, they are worried about reconstituting any part of it.

 

To be fair they're only taking guns that are illegal for personal possessions almost anywhere in the world -- the assault rifles like the AK-47's, the heavy machine guns, and the heavy weapons, like RPG's. They are letting people keep hand guns and the like, though they are confiscating them if people carry them in public.

I think, however, they are making a mistake in not adapting their democracy to the particular culture -- they seem to be applying a very strict US model of things. I think it would be entirely approprate to appease the local mores by shutting down the public p*rn theaters, or trying to accomidate Muslim law by limiting public consumption of alcohol & prominant public sale.

It might not even hurt to allow some of these AK's to be 'registered' and kept by villages that are so used to them.

 

*May* have gotten Saddam for real? Usually get false positives on Fox so may be this one is accurate.

http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,982710,00.html


DNA tests after missiles strike 'Saddam convoy'

Human remains removed after US Hellfire missiles target source of dictator's satellite phone call

Jason Burke in Baghdad
Sunday June 22, 2003
The Observer

American specialists were carrying out DNA tests last night on human remains believed by US military sources to be those of Saddam Hussein and one of his sons, The Observer can reveal.
The remains were retrieved from a convoy of vehicles struck last week by US forces following 'firm' information that the former Iraqi leader and members of his family were travelling in the Western Desert near Syria.

Military sources told The Observer that the strikes, involving an undisclosed number of Hellfire missiles, were launched against the convoy last Wednesday after the interception of a satellite telephone conversation involving either Saddam or his sons.

The operation, which has not yet been disclosed by the Pentagon, involved the United States air force and ground troops of the Third Armoured Cavalry Regiment based around Ramadi, a major town 70 miles west of Baghdad.

Despite previously unfounded US claims that Saddam had been killed during the bombing of Baghdad before the invasion by America and Britain, the sources indicated that they were cautiously optimistic that they had finally killed the target they described as 'the top man'.

Asked about rumours circulating in senior military circles about the incident, one US officer with knowledge of the raid on the convoy said: 'That is unreleasable information. The Pentagon has to release that information.'

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/22/sprj.irq.main/index.html
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The attack was carried out by a secret special operations unit known as Task Force 20 near the Syrian border and was based on intelligence "gleaned" from senior Iraqi regime officials in U.S. custody, according to one informed official, who declined to elaborate.

The officials said a report in the British newspaper The Observer on Sunday suggesting that the United States believed Saddam or his sons might have been in the convoy was incorrect.

"We did hit a convoy," one official said. "We know that the convoy was tied to former Iraqi officials."
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That's a child they have cuffed and lying on the ground in the bottom picture...

 

More from the occupation.
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According to an Iraqi witness, last week an American soldier at a propane tank got into an argument with an Iraqi woman, took her propane tank away from her and tossed it on the ground, and gave her a hard shove.

An Iraqi man driving by saw this, stopped his car, got out and walked back to the two American soldiers there, shot them both with a pistol and then left in his car. He killed one and wounded the second.

If the Iraqi witness is telling the truth, this was not a drive-by shooting, as the American military described it. Nor was it an organized attack by a supporter of Saddam Hussein. It appears to be just an Iraqi man who got ticked off when he saw an Iraqi woman being abused by a foreign soldier.

This is both sad and revealing. It's sad because these young American soldiers are not trained to occupy a foreign country. Their morale is low. The temperature is hot. And we can well imagine a young American losing his temper when some lady is screaming at him in a foreign language. What he did should not have caused his death.

On the other hand, it is revealing to understand that ordinary Iraqis are getting angry at the American occupation. A sense of honor is highly important in the Arab world, and this young man must have thought that he was honor-bound to avenge the affront of a fellow citizen and a woman by a foreigner.

The American administration in Baghdad is trying to depict all attacks on Americans as the work of remnants of hard-core supporters of Saddam Hussein. The administration has begun to repeat the story, first floated by an Iraqi exile leader, that Saddam is offering a bounty for people to kill Americans.

I doubt that is true. Some of the attacks are certainly by Saddam supporters, but we will be making a big mistake if we deny that our occupation by itself is provoking some of these attacks.

The lot of an occupier is not an easy one. First of all, he is a foreigner who conquered the country. This will breed some resentment even among people who hated Saddam Hussein. Second, he is torn between the need for his own security and the need to win over the people. Third, practically everything the Iraqis are demanding is not in the power of the individual soldier to give them. A GI can't help it if the big shots in the palace headquarters are dragging their feet, but it's the GI, not the big shots, who is exposed to the Iraqi people.

Every time our soldiers fire into a crowd, every time they kick down a door in the middle of the night and start jerking people around, they will breed bitter resentment. Some of our soldiers recently killed four young Iraqis who were just firing into the air to celebrate a wedding. It's a custom in that part of the world. T.E. Lawrence called them joy-shots. It's also a custom in that part of the world that every wrong must be avenged. But our soldiers aren't given courses in Arab culture, and they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later. Any man who intended to come home in one piece would have to adopt the same practice.

And that's the tragedy of it all. The people on both sides are doing what they believe they have to do, and that is leading inexorably to a greater conflict. Several thoughtful Iraqis have warned us that the longer we stay, the greater the potential for trouble. That's no doubt true.

The Bush administration did a poor job of planning for the end of the war. Unless we get lucky, we are very likely to lose the peace.



url

 

Welfare and socialism are fine for foreigners who attack American troops...

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aTcvVBdLb7HI&refer=us

U.S. Iraq Administration Creates New Army, Pays Ex-Officers
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S.-led occupation administration in Iraq outlined plans to create a new Iraqi army of 40,000 soldiers within two years. In a reversal of policy, it also decided to pay a monthly salary to ex-officers of the country's dissolved military forces.

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Don't conservatives realize that Iraq is the limited government paradise that they want to turn the US into? It's got it all, little to no regulation, a government so small it doesn't really exist, everybody's got guns... its utopia... all they need now is a missile defense shield ant they are set for life..

 

do you dislike the idea of limited government, sam?

 

Max, i think we already HAVE a limited government, far more limited than any other Western first world gov't (as a % of GDP), we pay the lowest taxes of that same group, and federal gov't spending, as a % of GDP, is at its lowest level since the Eisenhower administration.

So yes, I dislike the idea of rolling the government back to a pre-new deal level, as many right wing ideologues advocate. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.