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What I Heard About Iraq
Eliot Weinberger
continued...
On the occasion of Ayad Allawi's visit to the United States, I heard the
President say: "What's important for the American people to hear is
reality. And the reality is right here in the form of the Prime Minister."
Asked about ethnic tensions, I heard Ayad Allawi say: "There are no
problems between Shia and Sunnis and Kurds and Arabs and Turkmen. Usually
we have no problems of ethnic or religious nature in Iraq."
I heard him say: "There is nothing, no problem, except on a small pocket
in Fallujah."
I heard Colonel Jerry Durant say, after a meeting with Ramadi tribal
sheiks: "A lot of these guys have read history, and they said to me the
government in Baghdad is like the Vichy government in France during World
War II."
I heard a journalist say: "I am house-bound. I leave when I have a very
good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes
and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't
eat in restaurants, can't strike up a conversation with strangers, can't
look for stories, can't drive in anything but a full armored car, can't go
to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak
English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't
linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying,
doing, feeling."
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "It's a tough part of the world. We had
something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in many of the major cities
of America last year. What's the difference? We just didn't see each
homicide in every major city in the United States on television every
night."
I heard that 80,000 Iraqi civilians were dead. I heard that the war had
already cost $225 billion and was continuing at the rate of $40 billion a
month. I heard there was now an average of 130 attacks a day on US troops.
I heard Captain John Mountford say: "I just wonder what would have
happened if we had worked a little more with the locals."
I heard that, in the last year alone, the US had fired 127 tons of
Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions in Iraq, the atomicity equivalent of
approximately 10,000 Nagasaki bombs. I heard that the widespread use of DU
in Gulf War I was believed to be the primary cause of the health problems
suffered among its 580,400 veterans. 467 were wounded in the war. Ten
years later, 11,000 were dead, and 325,000 on medical disability. DU
carried in semen led to high rates of endometriosis, leading to
hysterectomies, in their wives and girlfriends. Of soldiers who had
healthy babies before the war, 67% of their babies post-war were born with
severe defects, including missing legs, arms, organs, or eyes.
I heard that 380 tons of HMX (high melting point explosive) and RDX (rapid
detonation explosive) were missing from al-Qaqaa, one of Iraq's "most
sensitive military installations," which had never been guarded after the
invasion. I heard that one pound of these explosives was enough to blow up
a 747 jet, and that this cache could be used to make a million roadside
bombs, which were the cause of half the casualties among US troops.
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say, when asked why the troops were being kept in
the war much longer than their normal tours of duty: "Oh, come on. People
are fungible. You can have them here or there." "Fungible" means
"interchangeable."
* * *
I heard Colonel Gary Brandl say: "The enemy has got a face. He's called
Satan. He's in Fallujah and we're going to destroy him."
I heard a Marine commander tell his men: "You will be held accountable for
the facts not as they are in hindsight but as they appeared to you at the
time. If, in your mind, you fire to protect yourself or your men, you are
doing the right thing. It doesn't matter if later on we find out you wiped
out a family of unarmed civilians."
I heard Lieutenant Colonel Mark Smith say: "We're going out where the bad
guys live, and we're going to slay them in their ZIP code."
I heard that 15,000 US troops invaded Fallujah, as planes dropped
500-pound bombs on "insurgent targets." I heard they destroyed the Nazzal
Emergency Hospital in the center of the city, killing 20 doctors. I heard
they occupied Fallujah General Hospital, which the military had called a
"center of propaganda" for reporting civilian casualties. I heard that
they confiscated all mobile phones and refused to allow doctors and
ambulances to go out and help the wounded. I heard they bombed the power
plant to black out the city, and that the water was shut off. I heard that
every house and shop had a large red X spray-painted on the door to
indicate that it had been searched.
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "Innocent civilians in that city have all the
guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble. There
aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by
US forces."
I heard that, in a city of 150 mosques, there were no longer any calls to
prayer.
I heard Mohammed Aboud tell how, unable to leave his house to go to a
hospital, he had watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death, and how,
unable to leave his house to go to a cemetery, he had buried his son in
the garden.
I heard Sami al-Jumali, a doctor, say: "There is not a single surgeon in
Fallujah. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."
I heard an American soldier say: "We will win the hearts and minds of
Fallujah by ridding the city of insurgents. We're doing that by patrolling
the streets and killing the enemy."
I heard an American soldier, a Bradley gunner, say: "I was basically
looking for any clean walls, you know, without any holes in them. And then
we were putting holes in them."
I heard Farhan Saleh say: "My kids are hysterical with fear. They are
traumatized by the sound but there is nowhere to take them."
I heard that the US troops allowed women and children to leave the city,
but that all "military age males," men from 15 to 60, were required to
stay. I heard that no food or medicine was allowed into the city.
I heard the Red Cross say that at least 800 civilians had died. I heard
Ayad Allawi say there were no civilian casualties in Fallujah.
I heard a man named Hammad say: "They used these weird bombs that put up
smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fall from the air with long
tails of smoke behind them." I heard him say that pieces of these bombs
exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown
on it. I heard him say: "People suffered so much from these."
I heard Kassem Mohammed Ahmed say: "I watched them roll over wounded
people in the streets with tanks. This happened so many times."
I heard a man named Khalil say: "They shot women and old men in the
streets. Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies."
I heard Nihida Kadhim, a housewife, say that when she was finally allowed
to return to her home, she found a message written with lipstick on her
living-room mirror: "FUCK IRAQ AND EVERY IRAQI IN IT."
I heard General John Sattler say that the destruction of Fallujah had
"broken the back of the insurgency."
I heard that three-fourths of Fallujah had been shelled into rubble. I
heard an American soldier say: "It's kind of bad we destroyed everything,
but at least we gave them a chance for a new start."
I heard that only five roads into Fallujah would remain open. The rest
would be sealed with "sand berms," mountains of earth. At the entry
points, everyone would be photographed, fingerprinted, and have iris scans
taken before being issued identification cards. All citizens would be
required to wear identification cards in plain sight at all times. No
private automobiles- the vehicle of suicide bombings- would be allowed in
the city. All males would be organized into "work brigades" rebuilding the
city. They would be paid, but participation would be compulsory.
I heard Muhammad Kubaissy, a shopkeeper say: "I am still searching for
what they have been calling democracy."
I heard a soldier say that he had talked to his priest about killing
Iraqis, and that his priest had told him it was all right to kill for his
government as long as he did not enjoy it. After he had killed at least
four men, I heard the soldier say that he had begun to have doubts: "Where
the fuck did Jesus say it's OK to kill people for your government?"
* * *
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "I don't believe anyone that I know in the
administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we
had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass
murder. We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light,
through the prism of our experience on 9/11."
I heard a reporter ask Donald Rumsfeld, "Before the war in Iraq, you
stated the case very eloquently and you said they would welcome us with
open arms." And I heard Rumsfeld interrupt him: "Never said that. Never
did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody else. You
can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like those things you just said I
said."
I heard Ahmad Chalabi, who had supplied most of the information about the
weapons of mass destruction, shrug and say: "We are heroes in error. . . .
What was said before is not important."
I heard Paul Wolfowitz say: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one
issue, weapons of mass destruction, as justification for invading Iraq,
because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
I heard Condoleezza Rice continue to insist: "It's not as if anybody
believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction."
I heard that the Niger "yellowcake" uranium was a hoax, that the aluminum
tubes could not be used for nuclear weapons, that the mobile biological
laboratories produced helium for weather balloons, that the fleet of
unmanned aerial "drones" was a single broken-down oversized model
airplane, that Saddam had no elaborate underground bunkers, that Colin
Powell's primary source, "solid information," for the evidence he
presented at the United Nations was a paper, written ten years before, by
a graduate student, itself largely plagiarized. I heard that, of the
400,000 bodies buried in mass graves, only 5,000 had been found.
I heard Lieutenant General James Conway say: "It was a surprise to me
then, and it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered
weapons. It's not from lack of trying."
I heard a reporter ask Donald Rumsfeld, "If Iraq did not have WMDs, why
did they pose an immediate threat to this country?" I heard Rumsfeld
answer: "You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use
the phrase 'immediate threat.' It's become a kind of folklore that that's
what happened. If you have any citations, I'd like to see them." And I
heard the reporter read: "No terrorist threat poses a greater or immediate
threat to the security of our people." Rumsfeld replied: "It- my view of-
of the situation was that he- he had-- we- we believe, the best
intelligence that we had and other countries had and that- that we
believed and we still do not know- we will know."
I heard Sa'adoon al-Zubaydi, an interpreter who lived in the presidential
palace, say: "For at least three years Saddam Hussein had been tired of
the day-to-day management of his regime. He could not stand it any more:
meetings, commissions, dispatches, telephone calls. So he withdrew. . .
Alone, isolated, out of it. He preferred shutting himself up in his
office, writing novels."
* * *
I heard the President say that Iraq is a "catastrophic success."
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "They haven't won a single battle the entire
time since the end of major combat operations."
I heard that hundreds of schools had been completely destroyed and
thousands looted, and that most people thought it too dangerous to send
their children to school. I heard there was no system of banks. I heard
that, in the cities, there was only 10 hours of electricity a day and 60%
of the water was undrinkable. I heard that the malnutrition of children
was now far worse than Uganda or Haiti. I heard that none of the 300,000
babies born after the start of the war had received immunizations.
I heard that 5% of eligible voters had registered for the coming elections.
I heard General John Abizaid say: "I don't think Iraq will have perfect
elections. But, if I recall, looking back at our own election four years
ago, it wasn't perfect either."
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "Let's say you tried to have an election and
you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in
some places you couldn't because the violence was too great. Well, so be
it. Nothing's perfect in life."
I heard an Iraqi engineer say: "Go and vote and risk being blown to pieces
or followed by insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans?
For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"
I heard General Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, the chief of Iraqi
intelligence, say that there were now 200,000 active fighters in the
insurgency.
I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct
that country. The Iraqi people are going to have to reconstruct that
country over a period of time." I heard him say that, in any event, "the
infrastructure of that country was not terribly damaged by the war at
all."
I heard that the American Ambassador, John Negroponte, had requested that
$3.37 billion intended for water, sewage, and electricity projects be
transferred to security and oil output.
I heard that the reporters from the al-Jazeera network were permanently
banned. I heard Donald Rumsfeld say: "What al-Jazeera is doing is vicious,
inaccurate, and inexcusable."
I heard that Spain left the Coalition of the Willing. Hungary left; the
Dominican Republic left; Nicaragua left; Honduras left. I heard that the
Philippines left early, after a Filipino truck driver was kidnapped and
executed. Norway left. Poland and the Netherlands said they were leaving.
Thailand said it was leaving. Bulgaria was reducing its few hundred
troops. Moldova cut its force from 42 to 12.
I heard that the President had once said: "Two years from now, only the
Brits may be with us. At some point, we may be the only ones left. That's
OK with me. We are America."
I heard a reporter ask Lieutenant General Jay Garner how long the troops
would remain in Iraq, and I heard him reply: "I hope they're there for a
long time."
I heard General Tommy Franks say: "One has to think about the numbers. I
think we will be engaged with our military in Iraq for perhaps three,
five, perhaps ten years.
I heard that the Pentagon was now exploring what it called the "Salvador
option," modeled on the death squads in El Salvador in the 1980's, when
John Negroponte was Ambassador to Honduras and when Elliot Abrams, now
White House Adviser on the Middle East, called the massacre at El Mazote
"nothing but Communist propaganda." Under the plan, the US would advise,
train, and support paramilitaries in assassination and kidnapping,
including secret raids across the Syrian border. In the Vice Presidential
debate, I heard the Vice President say: "Twenty years we had a similar
situation in El Salvador. We had a guerilla insurgency that controlled
roughly a third of the country. . . And today El Salvador is a whale of a
lot better."
I heard that 100,000 Iraqi civilians were dead. I heard that there was now
an average of 150 attacks a day on US troops. I heard that, in Baghdad,
700 people were being killed every month in "non-war-related" criminal
activities. I heard that 1400 American soldiers had been killed and the
true casualty figure was approximately 25,000.
I heard that Donald Rumsfeld had a machine sign his letters of condolence
to the families of soldiers who had been killed. When this caused a small
scandal, I heard him say: "I have directed that in the future I sign each
letter."
I heard the President say: "The credibility of the United States is based
upon our strong desire to make the world more peaceful, and the world is
now more peaceful."
I heard the President say: "I want to be the peace president. The next
four years will be peaceful years."
I heard Attorney General John Ashcroft say, on the day of his resignation:
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror
has been achieved."
I heard the President say: "For a while we were marching to war. Now we're
marching to peace."
I heard that the US military had purchased 1,500,000,000 bullets for use
in the coming year. That is 58 bullets for every Iraqi adult and child.
I heard that Saddam Hussein, in solitary confinement, was spending his
time writing poetry, reading the Qu'ran, eating cookies and muffins, and
taking care of some bushes and shrubs. I heard that he had placed a circle
of white stones around a small plum tree.
[11 January 2005]
Copyright c. 2005 Eliot Weinberger.
This may circulate freely on the internet.
For print publication, write: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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