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Rumors and Rifles
Dispatch II from David Martinez in Iraq
Rumors and Rifles
I want to start by saying that Baghdad, after being here a week, is not so dodgy and chaotic as it sounds. Of course, remind me that I said this after our hotel gets hit by a rocket attack or something. But for now, Baghdad is tense and calm at the same time. People are just trying to get on with their lives, in the face of such extremely difficult circumstances.
The city itself reminds me of a lot of large 3rd world metropolises. Concrete buildings, untreated exhaust, street vendors, donkey-carts in the street battling with busses and taxis. Insane traffic, dirty air, people yelling and shouting, selling things or swearing at other drivers: it could be Monterrey, Mexico, or Bandung, Indonesia. There are parts that could literally be anywhere. I visited Sadr City, the heavily Shi'a, very poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the Baghdad, and I swear it looked almost exactly like Nezahualcoyotl, a very poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City.
Of course, there are profound differences. Like the tanks and Bradleys and Humvees that patrol the streets, and the proliference of automatic weapons being toted everywhere. Across from our hotel are two heavily guarded buildings, the hotels Palestine and Sheraton, respectively. Every morning groups of men leave for work, white men with bulletproof vests and Kalshnikovs, they get into SUV's and head off to work as private security, I imagine.
Nervous Iraqi cops guard the barricades at the hotel entrance, and an Abrams tank squats in the background.
Baghdad also seems to have a lock on the men-in-suits-carrying-automatic-rifles department.
And how is the occupation going, you ask? Well, let's just say that the words Unholy, Fucking, and Mess come to mind. One huge problem is that it is dangerous to walk around at night, for fear of thieves. This is something the Iraqis are very angry about, and they take it personally. They don't like to see their city descend into crime like this. Why can't the Americans maintain order? That is the Number One job of any occupying army, and the U.S. military is failing miserably at it.
That, combined with the lack of decent services like telephones (because the Americans, in a brilliant tactical move, hit the Telephone Exchange with a cruise missile), and the straight-out arrogance of the troops, are all combining to make people here very fed up with the "liberators".
There is so much to tell. Rumors abound about anything and everything, and everyone has warned me not to trust anyone. No one, they say, is who they say they are. Okay, fair enough. I haven't been here long enough to form an opinion about that. But to give an idea of how strange it is here, in post-Saddam Iraq, I will tell two stories. Whether they are true or not I don't know, I only know
they are good stories.
The first concerns the battle for the Baghdad airport. As you will remember, it was a fierce and bloody conflict, and at the end the Americans prevailed. But exactly HOW they won is being much speculated upon.
People say that there was a very loud explosion heard, and then after that, all resistance ceased. Then, eyewitnesses say, trucks were seen removing loads and loads of topsoil, as if it had been contaminated. And the families of the slain Iraqis have asked for their relatives' remains, to no avail. A British journalist told me he has seen photos of the corpses, and they are something akin to melted.
So people think that the Americans used a small Neutron bomb. For those of you who don't remember, the Neutron Bomb was a genius invention of Cold-War capitalism, a device that killed humans, but left buildings intact. It allowed the military to kill people without damaging real estate. A lot of folks here think that one of these was dusted off and used to wipe out the Iraqi fighters at the airport. Like I said, whether it's true or not, I don't know. But I sure as hell would believe it.
Then there's the matter of the documents looted from the Muhabarat, the Iraqi secret police. They are scattered all over the place, in the hands of the American, British, and Australian Intelligence Services, as well as several other entities. Stacks and stacks of documents, revealing how thoroughly and deeply the Muhabarat was entrenched in the lives of all Iraqis. No one has the
time or labor available to sift through them all, and so they sit mostly unread, at the moment. They tell things like how the secret police would rape a woman, then threaten her family with telling the neighborhood if they didn't become informants. Or simply kill someone, and threaten their friends with the same treatment if they didn't cooperate.
The crazy thing is that if these documents are released, Iraqi society might implode. Everyone would find out that their neighbors were informants, and might possibly go after them. The man who married the rape victim would demand a divorce. It would be utter chaos. So, according to the journalist who told me this, no one is quite sure what to do with them.
Additionally, it has been revealed, through similar seized records, that Saddam Hussein was actively planning to set up a new television station, along the lines of Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabia, that would have been outspoken and professional, but would have also allowed him to send agents anywhere in the world posing as reporters. The whole thing would have been secretly funded by
Saddam, and he was prepared to put twenty million dollars toward it. The idea was hatched by an Egyptian businessman, and I bet there are a lot of people who would like to know his name.
So those are some of the things I have heard in my first week here. Needless to say, the words fascinating, intriguing, and exciting hardly do it justice.
Of course, for ordinary Iraqis, it is just difficult and sad. After twenty years of living under Saddam, their country is teetering on the brink of total chaos, being controlled by a bunch of lunkheads with no knowledge and no plan. And now Bremer has refused to allow elections until 2005. What are people supposed to think?
Oh yeah, one more tidbit. There are huge, huge lines of people waiting to but gasoline every day. They wait for hours, and the lines stretch for miles, literally. But the crazy thing is, the gas they are buying is from Kuwait! It is transported by the ever-present Halliburton Corp., who buy it at 98 cents a gallon. They move it to Iraq, and then sell it to the U.S. military for $1.59 per gallon. Then the military sells it to Iraqis for fifteen cents a gallon, since they can't afford any higher(Iraqis are accustomed to paying virtually
nothing for gasoline, they used to use it to wash hotel floors, as it was cheaper than water). And the difference in the price is being taken out of the Oil-for-Food account, the program that used to be run by the U.N. but has now been taken over by the U.S. Army. So the Iraqi people pay through the nose, and Halliburton laughs all the way to the bank.
So there you go. Baghdad, December, 2003. There is much, much more to tell, like about the schools that Bechtel was supposed to repair, and which are still in appalling condition. And the entire town which has been cordoned off with barbed wire. We are trying to cover it all.
I want to start by saying that Baghdad, after being here a week, is not so dodgy and chaotic as it sounds. Of course, remind me that I said this after our hotel gets hit by a rocket attack or something. But for now, Baghdad is tense and calm at the same time. People are just trying to get on with their lives, in the face of such extremely difficult circumstances.
The city itself reminds me of a lot of large 3rd world metropolises. Concrete buildings, untreated exhaust, street vendors, donkey-carts in the street battling with busses and taxis. Insane traffic, dirty air, people yelling and shouting, selling things or swearing at other drivers: it could be Monterrey, Mexico, or Bandung, Indonesia. There are parts that could literally be anywhere. I visited Sadr City, the heavily Shi'a, very poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the Baghdad, and I swear it looked almost exactly like Nezahualcoyotl, a very poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City.
Of course, there are profound differences. Like the tanks and Bradleys and Humvees that patrol the streets, and the proliference of automatic weapons being toted everywhere. Across from our hotel are two heavily guarded buildings, the hotels Palestine and Sheraton, respectively. Every morning groups of men leave for work, white men with bulletproof vests and Kalshnikovs, they get into SUV's and head off to work as private security, I imagine.
Nervous Iraqi cops guard the barricades at the hotel entrance, and an Abrams tank squats in the background.
Baghdad also seems to have a lock on the men-in-suits-carrying-automatic-rifles department.
And how is the occupation going, you ask? Well, let's just say that the words Unholy, Fucking, and Mess come to mind. One huge problem is that it is dangerous to walk around at night, for fear of thieves. This is something the Iraqis are very angry about, and they take it personally. They don't like to see their city descend into crime like this. Why can't the Americans maintain order? That is the Number One job of any occupying army, and the U.S. military is failing miserably at it.
That, combined with the lack of decent services like telephones (because the Americans, in a brilliant tactical move, hit the Telephone Exchange with a cruise missile), and the straight-out arrogance of the troops, are all combining to make people here very fed up with the "liberators".
There is so much to tell. Rumors abound about anything and everything, and everyone has warned me not to trust anyone. No one, they say, is who they say they are. Okay, fair enough. I haven't been here long enough to form an opinion about that. But to give an idea of how strange it is here, in post-Saddam Iraq, I will tell two stories. Whether they are true or not I don't know, I only know
they are good stories.
The first concerns the battle for the Baghdad airport. As you will remember, it was a fierce and bloody conflict, and at the end the Americans prevailed. But exactly HOW they won is being much speculated upon.
People say that there was a very loud explosion heard, and then after that, all resistance ceased. Then, eyewitnesses say, trucks were seen removing loads and loads of topsoil, as if it had been contaminated. And the families of the slain Iraqis have asked for their relatives' remains, to no avail. A British journalist told me he has seen photos of the corpses, and they are something akin to melted.
So people think that the Americans used a small Neutron bomb. For those of you who don't remember, the Neutron Bomb was a genius invention of Cold-War capitalism, a device that killed humans, but left buildings intact. It allowed the military to kill people without damaging real estate. A lot of folks here think that one of these was dusted off and used to wipe out the Iraqi fighters at the airport. Like I said, whether it's true or not, I don't know. But I sure as hell would believe it.
Then there's the matter of the documents looted from the Muhabarat, the Iraqi secret police. They are scattered all over the place, in the hands of the American, British, and Australian Intelligence Services, as well as several other entities. Stacks and stacks of documents, revealing how thoroughly and deeply the Muhabarat was entrenched in the lives of all Iraqis. No one has the
time or labor available to sift through them all, and so they sit mostly unread, at the moment. They tell things like how the secret police would rape a woman, then threaten her family with telling the neighborhood if they didn't become informants. Or simply kill someone, and threaten their friends with the same treatment if they didn't cooperate.
The crazy thing is that if these documents are released, Iraqi society might implode. Everyone would find out that their neighbors were informants, and might possibly go after them. The man who married the rape victim would demand a divorce. It would be utter chaos. So, according to the journalist who told me this, no one is quite sure what to do with them.
Additionally, it has been revealed, through similar seized records, that Saddam Hussein was actively planning to set up a new television station, along the lines of Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabia, that would have been outspoken and professional, but would have also allowed him to send agents anywhere in the world posing as reporters. The whole thing would have been secretly funded by
Saddam, and he was prepared to put twenty million dollars toward it. The idea was hatched by an Egyptian businessman, and I bet there are a lot of people who would like to know his name.
So those are some of the things I have heard in my first week here. Needless to say, the words fascinating, intriguing, and exciting hardly do it justice.
Of course, for ordinary Iraqis, it is just difficult and sad. After twenty years of living under Saddam, their country is teetering on the brink of total chaos, being controlled by a bunch of lunkheads with no knowledge and no plan. And now Bremer has refused to allow elections until 2005. What are people supposed to think?
Oh yeah, one more tidbit. There are huge, huge lines of people waiting to but gasoline every day. They wait for hours, and the lines stretch for miles, literally. But the crazy thing is, the gas they are buying is from Kuwait! It is transported by the ever-present Halliburton Corp., who buy it at 98 cents a gallon. They move it to Iraq, and then sell it to the U.S. military for $1.59 per gallon. Then the military sells it to Iraqis for fifteen cents a gallon, since they can't afford any higher(Iraqis are accustomed to paying virtually
nothing for gasoline, they used to use it to wash hotel floors, as it was cheaper than water). And the difference in the price is being taken out of the Oil-for-Food account, the program that used to be run by the U.N. but has now been taken over by the U.S. Army. So the Iraqi people pay through the nose, and Halliburton laughs all the way to the bank.
So there you go. Baghdad, December, 2003. There is much, much more to tell, like about the schools that Bechtel was supposed to repair, and which are still in appalling condition. And the entire town which has been cordoned off with barbed wire. We are trying to cover it all.
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Hey david and rob, whats going on? how'd you get over there? read a number of your dispatches, interesting. please try to be as objective as possible. you really think the us used a 'neutron bomb' ? what are you trying to get a job for al jazeera? i think they have plenty of other lethal weapons to use before resorting to that. one thing that worried me about your accounts, and rob's, was the propagandistic quality.
granteed i guess antiwar group or george soros is paying your ticket and they want certain reports, and granted you probably don't have to make anything up in that malicious maelstrom, but it seems the reporting exclusively recovers the same ground. Americans are stupid, and sometimes corrupt and violent, iraqis are frustrated angry and righteous, etc etc. all of which is true but not likely the whole truth. journalism is being objective, in any every case, especially when the stakes are so high.
and the stakes are will iraq emerge under a bad regime under us sponsorship or a hideous regime from indigenous and neighboring sources. its basically between bad and worse, nobody likes bad but are you keeping in mind the other options?
aside from the anarchist or social democratic dream, which i can't fail to notice has never panned out and really worked anywhere, ever in human history (and nothing like it exists in nature), the likely alternatives would be a baathist revival based among sunnis and with syrian links, or a shia fundamentalist takeover linked to iran.
from this huge distance my vision might be blurred but realistically i can't see any other outcome to a us withdrawl, which is obviously the goal of the group you're linked with. and while there has only been one hitler, one stalin, etc, never to be an exact other, politics morph and combine trends and either one of the above options would have alot in common with fascism, stalinism, or the morality of 1600s salem. and not only would such a regime come to power but also a 2 or 3 way civil war would erupt possibly leading to regional war involving syria, iran, and turkey.
these are things i don't feel antiwar people think about. for instance there was no greater war monger than hussein, attacks on kurds, iran, israel, and kuwait with plans according to son in law Kamal Hussein who was beheaded that he hoped to use nuclear weapon against kuwait and israel. i never heard 'antiwar' people upset or even aware of that, let alone to have anything like a useful plan to deal with that regime. when does antiwar become defacto prowar, or liberalism help enable fascism to power?
i realize that in '91 we held some small responsibility for the mass murders of shias and kurds because our antiwar protests encouraged bush I to puss out and let hussein stand. some countries get taken over by such a horror show that other countries feel compelled to step in and kick the heads out. should the west have left germany and japan alone under the principles of respecting sovereignty? would that effort have been halted because we realized innocents were suffering or being killed? the basic idea is all governments are stupid and brutal in conflict but some states are veritable death machines and lives lost in conflict are balanced against those that can live subsequently more free from terror and murder. in fact iraq was first invaded by the uk in '42 because those nationalists in power then were nazi allied. was that takeover justified? imperialist, illegal to int'l law, caused deaths, but kept hitler from getting crucial oil supply and russia getting a blade in its southern side. so..?
i work with alot of vietnamese at this school and their situation has gotten me more curious about vietnam and the war(s) there. the vietnam era was the glory days of wine, dandelions, and joints for the antiwar movement. they helped stop to big beast of the us war machine from totally ravaging se asia. but in the long run they screwed the vietnamese. the us supported a string of brutal corrupt generals, thieu, ky, etc. bad stuff, but according to all objective accounts the takeover by the communist north led to a hideous stalinist regime in vietnam , cambodia, and laos. theres bad and worse and the way to better is not through worse. 2+ million people left through very dangerous circumstances to escape a reality of total state control, including concentration camps and outright genocide (and not just in cambodia either). to american lefties the issue was dead in '75 as 'peace' reigned, to the asians it was a change from pergatory to utter hell. but the antiwar movement has very selective and convenient memory and concern. maybe i just missed it in 5 years in sf but i never heard anyone lefty young or old giving a damn about people killed in reeducation camps, mass murder of minorities, torture onto death of american and vietnamese prisoners, slavery, starvation, elite privelege for party members, the total control of the south by the north (even the vc/nlf/prg got screwed), etc.
and in retrospect look at 40 years of bad regimes vs worse. taiwan and s. korea things are pretty good but in pr china and n. korea things really suck (and have for 40 years) and on top of it both threaten to takeover/destroy their neighbors, also look at germany, japan, and italy, pretty good places despite, or because of their experience with us 'imperialism'.
so my only point is be aware of the effect you have, maybe very little but still some. don't be beholden to any ideology including the know nothings who can't think past the mantra 'us bad'. you should go see what the options of us control are, go see iran, or syria, (and those versions are 'Lite' compared with the ethnic/religious based fury that'll take iraq). in iran hardliners are retaking power. in december a group of folkdancer women, in an official group, with appropriate permits, etc, was arrested and brutalized for showing their evil womanness (an ankle? a wrist?) thats a place with real fucking problems. and syria who loves any terrorist who chants 'death to jews, whip the women' (as does iran) deals with dissent by obliterating whole towns by air (like hussein in the kurdish north). those are places where the people are gasping for air and the right to live and not just upset with national pride, crime, and power outages.
obviously the us killed innocents in horrible ways, but on purpose? they know from vietnam how counter productive that is in basic terms of winning allegiance. the guerillas also deliberately strategize to encourage the us to mistakenly attack civilians, as they did in vietnam. they want a regular working class gi joe to get frustrated and get rude at least, and completely lose it at most. thats part and parcel of guerilla strategy, using women in distress to lure soldiers in to help, then booom, using other peoples houses to shoot from, then the occupiers destroy some hapless peoples house and family. even during the 'war' the iraqi army used mosques and schools as ammo dumps and firing points.
as far as corruption and incompetence goes i'm sure its happenning. but i think its amatuer stuff compared the previous regime, the likely successor if us pulls out, or what things would be like under un, or france, or russia. i'm sorry bagdadians are upset with crime and that they can't walk the streets at night, i feel the same way here. i teach in 'the warzone' (Albuquerque) where after dark the whole area is either stay inside or run for your life. totalitarian regimes keep crime down by being a police state, cuba, ussr, s. africa, etc. when these regimes fall crime mushrooms. the solution 7x as many police and intensive community assistance to police work. this won't happen because the cost would be enormous and people wouldn't like to see police every 200 ft. if iraqis keep killing their police and treating cops as yankee puppets and not help root out criminals, they'll get the current situation. the only time a society doesn't need alot of police to keep a lid on crime is if the society is homogenous and disciplined with strong social sanctions against antisocial behavior, like in japan. these days thats a very unique situation.
Anyhow i beseech you to keep eyes open , including 3rd eye, keep a micro and macro perspective and try to be fair and balanced to all sides while realizing that all sides, including the antiwar movement, are often foolish, sometimes dishonest, and all have blood on their hands with more to come. take care of yourself and watch your back.
peter k
granteed i guess antiwar group or george soros is paying your ticket and they want certain reports, and granted you probably don't have to make anything up in that malicious maelstrom, but it seems the reporting exclusively recovers the same ground. Americans are stupid, and sometimes corrupt and violent, iraqis are frustrated angry and righteous, etc etc. all of which is true but not likely the whole truth. journalism is being objective, in any every case, especially when the stakes are so high.
and the stakes are will iraq emerge under a bad regime under us sponsorship or a hideous regime from indigenous and neighboring sources. its basically between bad and worse, nobody likes bad but are you keeping in mind the other options?
aside from the anarchist or social democratic dream, which i can't fail to notice has never panned out and really worked anywhere, ever in human history (and nothing like it exists in nature), the likely alternatives would be a baathist revival based among sunnis and with syrian links, or a shia fundamentalist takeover linked to iran.
from this huge distance my vision might be blurred but realistically i can't see any other outcome to a us withdrawl, which is obviously the goal of the group you're linked with. and while there has only been one hitler, one stalin, etc, never to be an exact other, politics morph and combine trends and either one of the above options would have alot in common with fascism, stalinism, or the morality of 1600s salem. and not only would such a regime come to power but also a 2 or 3 way civil war would erupt possibly leading to regional war involving syria, iran, and turkey.
these are things i don't feel antiwar people think about. for instance there was no greater war monger than hussein, attacks on kurds, iran, israel, and kuwait with plans according to son in law Kamal Hussein who was beheaded that he hoped to use nuclear weapon against kuwait and israel. i never heard 'antiwar' people upset or even aware of that, let alone to have anything like a useful plan to deal with that regime. when does antiwar become defacto prowar, or liberalism help enable fascism to power?
i realize that in '91 we held some small responsibility for the mass murders of shias and kurds because our antiwar protests encouraged bush I to puss out and let hussein stand. some countries get taken over by such a horror show that other countries feel compelled to step in and kick the heads out. should the west have left germany and japan alone under the principles of respecting sovereignty? would that effort have been halted because we realized innocents were suffering or being killed? the basic idea is all governments are stupid and brutal in conflict but some states are veritable death machines and lives lost in conflict are balanced against those that can live subsequently more free from terror and murder. in fact iraq was first invaded by the uk in '42 because those nationalists in power then were nazi allied. was that takeover justified? imperialist, illegal to int'l law, caused deaths, but kept hitler from getting crucial oil supply and russia getting a blade in its southern side. so..?
i work with alot of vietnamese at this school and their situation has gotten me more curious about vietnam and the war(s) there. the vietnam era was the glory days of wine, dandelions, and joints for the antiwar movement. they helped stop to big beast of the us war machine from totally ravaging se asia. but in the long run they screwed the vietnamese. the us supported a string of brutal corrupt generals, thieu, ky, etc. bad stuff, but according to all objective accounts the takeover by the communist north led to a hideous stalinist regime in vietnam , cambodia, and laos. theres bad and worse and the way to better is not through worse. 2+ million people left through very dangerous circumstances to escape a reality of total state control, including concentration camps and outright genocide (and not just in cambodia either). to american lefties the issue was dead in '75 as 'peace' reigned, to the asians it was a change from pergatory to utter hell. but the antiwar movement has very selective and convenient memory and concern. maybe i just missed it in 5 years in sf but i never heard anyone lefty young or old giving a damn about people killed in reeducation camps, mass murder of minorities, torture onto death of american and vietnamese prisoners, slavery, starvation, elite privelege for party members, the total control of the south by the north (even the vc/nlf/prg got screwed), etc.
and in retrospect look at 40 years of bad regimes vs worse. taiwan and s. korea things are pretty good but in pr china and n. korea things really suck (and have for 40 years) and on top of it both threaten to takeover/destroy their neighbors, also look at germany, japan, and italy, pretty good places despite, or because of their experience with us 'imperialism'.
so my only point is be aware of the effect you have, maybe very little but still some. don't be beholden to any ideology including the know nothings who can't think past the mantra 'us bad'. you should go see what the options of us control are, go see iran, or syria, (and those versions are 'Lite' compared with the ethnic/religious based fury that'll take iraq). in iran hardliners are retaking power. in december a group of folkdancer women, in an official group, with appropriate permits, etc, was arrested and brutalized for showing their evil womanness (an ankle? a wrist?) thats a place with real fucking problems. and syria who loves any terrorist who chants 'death to jews, whip the women' (as does iran) deals with dissent by obliterating whole towns by air (like hussein in the kurdish north). those are places where the people are gasping for air and the right to live and not just upset with national pride, crime, and power outages.
obviously the us killed innocents in horrible ways, but on purpose? they know from vietnam how counter productive that is in basic terms of winning allegiance. the guerillas also deliberately strategize to encourage the us to mistakenly attack civilians, as they did in vietnam. they want a regular working class gi joe to get frustrated and get rude at least, and completely lose it at most. thats part and parcel of guerilla strategy, using women in distress to lure soldiers in to help, then booom, using other peoples houses to shoot from, then the occupiers destroy some hapless peoples house and family. even during the 'war' the iraqi army used mosques and schools as ammo dumps and firing points.
as far as corruption and incompetence goes i'm sure its happenning. but i think its amatuer stuff compared the previous regime, the likely successor if us pulls out, or what things would be like under un, or france, or russia. i'm sorry bagdadians are upset with crime and that they can't walk the streets at night, i feel the same way here. i teach in 'the warzone' (Albuquerque) where after dark the whole area is either stay inside or run for your life. totalitarian regimes keep crime down by being a police state, cuba, ussr, s. africa, etc. when these regimes fall crime mushrooms. the solution 7x as many police and intensive community assistance to police work. this won't happen because the cost would be enormous and people wouldn't like to see police every 200 ft. if iraqis keep killing their police and treating cops as yankee puppets and not help root out criminals, they'll get the current situation. the only time a society doesn't need alot of police to keep a lid on crime is if the society is homogenous and disciplined with strong social sanctions against antisocial behavior, like in japan. these days thats a very unique situation.
Anyhow i beseech you to keep eyes open , including 3rd eye, keep a micro and macro perspective and try to be fair and balanced to all sides while realizing that all sides, including the antiwar movement, are often foolish, sometimes dishonest, and all have blood on their hands with more to come. take care of yourself and watch your back.
peter k
A neutron bomb was obviously not used, but the US has been intentionally torturing and killing Iraqis:
----
Five American soldiers have been accused of driving a 19-year-old Iraqi civilian to his death in the Tigris river in one of the main centres of resistance to the occupation.
Zeidun Fadhil and his cousin Marwan Fadhil were allegedly taken to a remote spot on the shore and ordered into the river at gunpoint. When they refused, the soldiers were said to have forced them into the river. Zeidun, who could not swim, drowned in the strong current. His cousin survived to tell the story.
A lawyer for the family of the dead man said US soldiers in Samarratold the family there would be a full investigation, and that a military investigator had interviewed the surviving cousin as a witness. Nazar Fadhil, the dead man's uncle and the family lawyer, said the US military had ordered Zeidun's body to be exhumed for an autopsy. He said the family was awaiting the arrival of a forensic pathologist. He also said that the US army had offered the family compensation, but that they had refused it.
Zeidun - full name Zeidun Mamun Fadhil al-Samarai - had become engaged three weeks before his death, and was saving for his wedding. The Independent was shown a letter from his mother, Widad, to President George Bush and to Tony Blair in which she demands a full inquiry into her son's death.
Samarra, a Sunni city and one of the main centres of Iraqi resistance to the American occupation, is seething with anger over the alleged circumstances of his drowning.
The incident happened on the night of 3 January. Zeidun and Marwan, were returning to their home town of Samarra from Baghdad with goods to sell in the back of their pick-up truck: paving stones, clocks and watches. It was a trip they had made many times.
The road south to Baghdad is dangerous because the large numbers of American convoys travelling on it are targeted by insurgents, but Zeidun needed the money for his forthcoming wedding.
They arrived late, close to curfew, and were stopped by an American patrol. After searching the pick-up truck the Americans let the cousins go. But then, according to Marwan, one of the American armoured vehicles followed them, stopped them a second time and ordered the cousins into the back of their vehicle. It was then, Marwan said, that the five soldiers drove him and Zeidun to a deserted spot on the banks of the Tigris, near a dam outside Samarra, and ordered them into the river.
There was a powerful current because water was being let out of the dam, and at first the two young men refused.
The soldiers then pointed their guns at the two men, Marwan alleged, and pushed them into the river. Marwan, who can swim, managed to reach a tree trunk. Zeidun did not get that far. His family did not find his body until 12 days later.
When they found the pair's abandoned truck, it and the goods inside had been crushed. The family has photographs of the damage. The truck looked as if it had been driven over by a heavy vehicle, and the family accusesthe Americans of deliberately driving an armoured vehicle over it, though there are no witnesses to support this.
It is by no means clear that Zeidun Fadhil was intended to die. It is possible he was the victim of an elaborate punishment designed to humiliate the two young men - a punishment that went horribly wrong. Marwan alleged the American soldiers were laughing as they pushed them into the river.
Samarra is part of the so-called "Sunni Triangle", the area including Baghdad which has mounted the strongest Iraqi resistance to the American occupation. US soldiers stationed in Samarra have faced an almost daily onslaught of grenade and roadside bomb attacks.
It appears that the two Fadhil cousins were stopped by the American patrol on the streets soon after curfew began. Zeidun's family insists that he and his cousin arrived in Samarra beforehand, but that they were delayed when their truck was searched by the reconstituted Iraqi army, which is now manning checkpoints for the Americans at the entrances to restive towns such as Samarra.
If the allegations about Zeidun's death are true, it is possible that he and Marwan Fadhil were the victims of American soldiers - worn-down, angry soldiers, who wanted to teach a couple of Iraqis a lesson. If so, it was a lesson that went disastrously wrong.
Zeidun's mother, in her letter to President Bush and Mr Blair, said: "We found his jacket in the river. We shall keep it as a souvenir of the justice my son got from the American soldiers. They came to Iraq under the slogans of democracy and human rights, but in cold blood they wedded my son to death even as he was preparing for his marriage.
"I ask you to open an inquiry. Whatever you do will not bring my son back to life. But maybe this will stop the pain of the other mothers in my country."
The US authorities would not comment on the case yesterday.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=491210
----
Five American soldiers have been accused of driving a 19-year-old Iraqi civilian to his death in the Tigris river in one of the main centres of resistance to the occupation.
Zeidun Fadhil and his cousin Marwan Fadhil were allegedly taken to a remote spot on the shore and ordered into the river at gunpoint. When they refused, the soldiers were said to have forced them into the river. Zeidun, who could not swim, drowned in the strong current. His cousin survived to tell the story.
A lawyer for the family of the dead man said US soldiers in Samarratold the family there would be a full investigation, and that a military investigator had interviewed the surviving cousin as a witness. Nazar Fadhil, the dead man's uncle and the family lawyer, said the US military had ordered Zeidun's body to be exhumed for an autopsy. He said the family was awaiting the arrival of a forensic pathologist. He also said that the US army had offered the family compensation, but that they had refused it.
Zeidun - full name Zeidun Mamun Fadhil al-Samarai - had become engaged three weeks before his death, and was saving for his wedding. The Independent was shown a letter from his mother, Widad, to President George Bush and to Tony Blair in which she demands a full inquiry into her son's death.
Samarra, a Sunni city and one of the main centres of Iraqi resistance to the American occupation, is seething with anger over the alleged circumstances of his drowning.
The incident happened on the night of 3 January. Zeidun and Marwan, were returning to their home town of Samarra from Baghdad with goods to sell in the back of their pick-up truck: paving stones, clocks and watches. It was a trip they had made many times.
The road south to Baghdad is dangerous because the large numbers of American convoys travelling on it are targeted by insurgents, but Zeidun needed the money for his forthcoming wedding.
They arrived late, close to curfew, and were stopped by an American patrol. After searching the pick-up truck the Americans let the cousins go. But then, according to Marwan, one of the American armoured vehicles followed them, stopped them a second time and ordered the cousins into the back of their vehicle. It was then, Marwan said, that the five soldiers drove him and Zeidun to a deserted spot on the banks of the Tigris, near a dam outside Samarra, and ordered them into the river.
There was a powerful current because water was being let out of the dam, and at first the two young men refused.
The soldiers then pointed their guns at the two men, Marwan alleged, and pushed them into the river. Marwan, who can swim, managed to reach a tree trunk. Zeidun did not get that far. His family did not find his body until 12 days later.
When they found the pair's abandoned truck, it and the goods inside had been crushed. The family has photographs of the damage. The truck looked as if it had been driven over by a heavy vehicle, and the family accusesthe Americans of deliberately driving an armoured vehicle over it, though there are no witnesses to support this.
It is by no means clear that Zeidun Fadhil was intended to die. It is possible he was the victim of an elaborate punishment designed to humiliate the two young men - a punishment that went horribly wrong. Marwan alleged the American soldiers were laughing as they pushed them into the river.
Samarra is part of the so-called "Sunni Triangle", the area including Baghdad which has mounted the strongest Iraqi resistance to the American occupation. US soldiers stationed in Samarra have faced an almost daily onslaught of grenade and roadside bomb attacks.
It appears that the two Fadhil cousins were stopped by the American patrol on the streets soon after curfew began. Zeidun's family insists that he and his cousin arrived in Samarra beforehand, but that they were delayed when their truck was searched by the reconstituted Iraqi army, which is now manning checkpoints for the Americans at the entrances to restive towns such as Samarra.
If the allegations about Zeidun's death are true, it is possible that he and Marwan Fadhil were the victims of American soldiers - worn-down, angry soldiers, who wanted to teach a couple of Iraqis a lesson. If so, it was a lesson that went disastrously wrong.
Zeidun's mother, in her letter to President Bush and Mr Blair, said: "We found his jacket in the river. We shall keep it as a souvenir of the justice my son got from the American soldiers. They came to Iraq under the slogans of democracy and human rights, but in cold blood they wedded my son to death even as he was preparing for his marriage.
"I ask you to open an inquiry. Whatever you do will not bring my son back to life. But maybe this will stop the pain of the other mothers in my country."
The US authorities would not comment on the case yesterday.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=491210
>aside from the anarchist or social democratic dream, which i can't fail to notice has never panned out and really worked anywhere, ever in human history
Not so. See:
People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy
by Harold Barclay
Not so. See:
People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy
by Harold Barclay
meterologically wise (hot-cold), but in the deep crusted earth other signs and shows which I never... forget 40000 years ago in the wurm glacial the neanderthallian extinct... we are living and dying...since then...also remember of the last echo of the tempest
See RBN live.com and listen to investigative Journal archive Eric May (Ghost Troop) the Tuesday 1-24-06 show. In the interview May states that a neutron bomb WAS used in Baghdad while we watched Jessica Lynch. A must hear!
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg06.html
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg06.html
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