If this is a war for the liberation of the Iraqi people, at least a few Iraqis aren't getting the message.
By deciding to pursue their enemy into the city center, the Americans appeared to have enraged many of the Iraqi civilians who live there, including those who said they were predisposed to support the American effort.
One of those, Mustafa Mohammed Ali, a medical assistant at the Saddam Hospital, said he had spent much of the day hauling dead and wounded civilians out of buildings that had been bombed by the Americans. Mr. Ali that said he had no love for the Iraqi president but that the American's failure to discriminate between enemy fighters and Iraqi civilians had turned him decisively against the American invasion.
"I saw how the Americans bombed our civilians with my own eyes," Mr. Mustafa said, and he held up a bloodied sleeve to show how he had dragged them into the ambulances.
"You want to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime?" Mr. Mustafa asked. "Go to Baghdad. What are you doing here? What are you doing in our cities?"
This is clearly a residential area and that's been know for 50 years. What does Mr. Bush need from us? Clearly there are no military targets here. Maybe it is his dream that we will welcome his troops but on the contrary they will get a hard time from us.
This morning, hundreds of Iraqis filled the lobby of the Palestine Hotel to watch the broadcast of Saddam Hussein's speech. Their mood was defiant. They clapped and cheered as Saddam rallied them to war. "Americans have bombed civilian areas," Saddam said, according to my translator. "They are trying to weaken us, but they are stupid. They will never win."
...
The atmosphere on the street gets more and more menacing every day. There are groups of people chanting anti-American slogans. The military presence has increased dramatically. Outposts and bunkers are on every corner. Roadblocks are set up on all the main streets. The oil trenches ignited over the weekend continue to burn—casting a literal black cloud over the city. Iraqis assume that American forces will encircle Baghdad, and they are preparing for a siege.
A side effect of the war in Iraq is the return of Iraqi refugees from Jordan. The only problem is they're returning to fight U.S. and British forces.
posted by dackHmmm, the Iraqis are going to fight the "liberators"??
how ungreatful of them. You'd think that they would offer up their daughters to the glorious troops who are flattening the cradle of civilisation. not.
What the fek did they think would happen? Churchill was not a popular leader, but he had the british people RIGHT behind him when the shit hit the fan. Its different when it is your own home, your own families that are under threat.
Posted by: Stef on March 25, 2003 05:44 AM
Iraq May Use Chemical Weapons on US in Baghdad
Are you stupid? Do you think an elderly farmer with a rifle could take down a military helicopter? It's propaganda and you are falling for it.
Posted by: person on March 25, 2003 11:07 AMre: the helicopter-- stranger things have happened.
re: everything else-- at what point does the media realize what tools they are, and take off their steaming piles of "operation iraqi freedom" graphics? I would like to see a graphic that says: Operation Iraqi Oil Liberation.
Posted by: Fred on March 25, 2003 11:16 AMRule #1, why are you using this forum to dump urls? Unable to string together several words for a relevant response? If you like links get your own weblog. Unfortunately I doubt you could figure it out.
Posted by: Frida B on March 25, 2003 11:29 AMMe like URLs.
"...the Shiite majority in Basra has started a popular uprising against Saddam Hussein's forces..."
Funny how the "rational" enquirer is so blatantly, irrationally one-sided. This blog sucks.
Posted by: Emyl on March 26, 2003 12:31 AMre: Fred's comments. in north america you're just not going to find a media source that doesn't have those kind of graphics. our media's giving us straight propaganda at the moment. they talk about the whole thing like it's fiction, like an after-school special, dramatized and glorified, and guess what - america's their hero.
Posted by: Lindsay on March 26, 2003 03:57 PMtwo things
1. the helicopter: no visible sign of damage, so it probably was lucky small-arms fire. In other words, yes, a farmer could have taken it down.
2. there was no uprising in Basra. It was a story put out by the brits as psychological warfare.
Posted by: autodata on March 27, 2003 10:22 AMWell you all seem to have some interesting opinions.
Stef: offering up their daughters? what is that about? Oh, and as to why surrenders were expected, Saddaam Hussein is a homicidal, genocidal dictator and his people hate him. They just also happen to fear him.
The helicopter, does it really matter how it went down?
Also, stop complaining about the news. Its not some government conspiracy. what they hear, they report.
Posted by: dave on March 27, 2003 12:24 PMyou can't pretend the media is unbiased. if you watch arab networks you see all the people dying and all the damage done by the u.s. if you watch the american networks you hear about how evil the iraqi army is. so you can't say they just report things exactly as they see them. there's a certain amount of censorship that goes on during the war, a certain level of propaganda. journalists travel with the army now and get protection in exchange for allowing the army to see what they're telling people before they say it. it's just a fact - you don't get the whole story until after it's all over.
Posted by: Lindsay on April 9, 2003 06:17 PMHey the Iraqi farmer came clean. He did not have anything to do with that downed apache. He was threatened by The Baath Party if he did not pretend he did it...
Propaganda...plain and simple.
Posted by: duke on April 24, 2003 01:03 AM