Our blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

MORE
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
Katrina's Aftermath
US News
Bush Crime Family News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Support Bloggers' Rights!

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
                Imad Khadduri's blog "Free Iraq" (scroll down for English version)

Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Iraqi recruits put in the firing line while Americans retreat to safety of barracks
(Robert Fisk, The Independent, 10 March 2004)
I come across a Nepalese with a rifle over his shoulder, one of the armies of mercenaries now employed by the Americans - let us not call them sandbags - to secure the airport perimeter. He sleeps at the airport and has been here for five months. Does he like it, I ask? "Boring but not much sleep," he smiles. "Too many mortars and too much gunfire." . . . Overhead, a four-engined military transport aircraft is groaning into the sky, turning tight 1,000-metre circles to keep outside missile range. Go over the 1,000 metres and you can be hit. It streams four dirty fuel trails behind its engines as they fight to gain height. . . . At the terminal stands an American officer in his forties, a lieutenant colonel in civvies but with a flak jacket covered with camouflage cloth. And how does he like the airport? "We're leaving here soon. We're leaving the airport. The Iraqis are taking over." In other words, I suggest, the Americans are going to let the Iraqi army or the Iraqi "Civil Defence" or any of the other fancy Iraqi outfits being trained by the Americans, take the nightly fire of the resistance here? "That's pretty much it," he said. . . . I don't entirely believe this. The US occupation forces fly their transports into Baghdad airport and won't leave their security to Iraqis. But they could let the new Iraqi army do the dirty work, hunting and patrolling in the grass and muck outside the 1,000 metre perimeter at night, guarding the perimeter wire, withdrawing the massive US presence to save American lives. . . . And then I remember that most famous of dates - 30 June - when Iraq's "sovereignty" will be handed over by the Americans to the American-appointed Iraqi "Governing Council", and it begins to make sense. The Americans aren't leaving on 30 June, of course; they are retreating to secure barracks. The airport will become an Iraqi responsibility. Iraqis will risk their lives to defend it from the "resistance". . . . And it dawns on me that this will happen in a thousand other areas of Iraq. The dams on the Euphrates west of Fallujah, the walls of the old RAF Habbaniya airbase which is now home to the 82nd Airborne, the street patrols in Baghdad. Even now, you see fewer US patrols in the old Caliphate capital. No bad thing for a people who don't want to be occupied. . . . But the Americans are not leaving Iraq and the Iraqis know this.

posted by LoZo 2:58 PM