-Caveat Lector-
------- Start of forwarded message -------
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 17:52:23 -0800
Subject:[pagans4peace] Basra
I don't know if this is true or not,but,if it is....what can possibly
justify such an act?If this happened as written here, and the water was
cut
off deliberately,the American public would be totally enraged and
appalled,
and would insist that the people of Basra be aided in any way
possible.Why
can't they send in tanks with water,for pity's sake? Surely the soldiers
inside the tank could wear riot gear to protect themselves against
attack,
and there must be someone in the military that could speak and write
Iraqi,so that the soldiers could go in and at least let these people
understand that they are only there to help by giving them water.Does
anyone
know the true situation? I really do not want to believe that this is true!!
Colleen
Basra
British military attempt to clean up after American war crime
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
03/26/03
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/basra.htm
It was one of the lowest moments in American military history, and
naturally, the captive American media barely mentioned it.
US military leaders had decided that the best thing to do about Iraq’s
second largest city, Basra (pop 400,000 ) was just go past it, cutting it
off from the rest of the country. It was a sound idea, even though
Rumsfeld’s military strategies in the rest of Iraq were rapidly coming
unwound because the geniuses in the administration failed to realize that
people who might not be willing to fight for Saddam would be more than
willing to fight for IRAQ, and because the weather was out and out
homicidal. Cut it off, come back and deal with it later after Baghdad has
fallen and, presumably, the fight would have been taken out of the city’s
defenders. For a cowardly bunch of chickenhawks, it was a good idea.
But in passing, the military committed an atrocity. They deliberately and
maliciously destroyed the city’s water supply.
Basra is a desert city. Even though the hot weather is still several weeks
off, it’s bone dry this time of year, when the equinoctial winds raise huge
sandstorms throughout much of the country.
Red Cross, Red Crescent, Kofi Annan and the British government all used
the
same phrase to describe what the American action created: A
humanitarian
disaster. Quite aside from the fact that the Americans left several
hundred
thousand to face the prospect of dying of thirst, the lack of water also
raised the spectre of cholera, and diarrhea, already a leading cause of
infant mortality in Iraq. The utter vileness of the American action is
breathtaking.
The administration, of course, didn’t give a damn. What’s a few hundred
thousand civilian deaths when there are a nation’s oil reserves to be
stolen?
So the British, who DO have some morals and humanity, are attempting to
enter Basra and save the inhabitants from the sort of fate one usually
associates with the victim nations that fell to Nazi Germany.
The British are reluctant. Their military, like the Pentagon, had decided
that any unnecessary urban combat was to be avoided if humanly
possible.
Middle eastern cities are famed for being convoluted mazes, and Basra is
no
exception to the rule. Ambushes and booby traps would be in every alley
and
sukh and street, every building a possible lair for snipers and grenade
launchers, every kid on a bicycle a potential terrorist attack. The time to
go in would be after the population had resigned themselves to the fact
that
they had been defeated, and that invaders held their land. Even then,
there
would be a thriving underground that lived only to kill as many
Westerners
as it could until they were driven out.
Well, what would you do if it was your city that some foreign army was
attacking with plans to invade? The right wing morons running this show
seem
to think that patriotism and love of country are emotions unique to
Americans.
For Tony Blair, it’s another Putsch-caused headache. With 80% of his
countrymen opposed to him, his hopes of being one of England’s finer
prime
ministers, in the ranks of Gladstone, Disraeli, Walpole, Pitt and Churchill,
have been dashed. He’ll be remembered as a popular politician who
squandered
it all in his need to play Sancho Panza to George W. Fustercluck.
Blair knows the army has to do the right thing, and try to save Basra. If
he
doesn’t, his leadership is finished, since to let hundreds of thousands of
non-combatants die of thirst and disease violates English notions of fair
play.
In the meantime, America is targeting heavily populated areas of Baghdad
with the bombing runs, presumably in the hopes that wholesale slaughter
will
reduce the unexpected resistance they are facing on the ground. The
administration sent troops in while believing their own propaganda that
elated Iraqis would greet their "liberators" with kisses and rose petals and
would be delighted to have America overthrow Saddam Hussein for them.
American right wingers all seem to have the unbelievably stupid notion
that
patriotism is a virtue unique to Americans, and that others won’t be
willing
to fight for their lesser, non-American countries. They believed that the
Vietnamese would be happy to be "saved" from communism, and they
weren’t.
They expected the Iraqis to be happy, and they aren’t.
It’s one thing to say that Saddam is a vicious, dictatorial toad who has
mistreated his people cruelly, and that he’s been a pain in the ass (albeit
a diminishing one) ever since he seized power almost 25 years ago. I’m
sure
quite a few Iraqis would agree with that assessment.
But they aren’t fighting for Saddam. They’re fighting for IRAQ. It is their
home they are defending, against a foreign and alien invader. I don’t care
how much you despise this current administration: if someone invaded
America, you would resist in any way you could, especially if the invaders
came with a foreign religion and values you found disgusting.
That’s why you have old men standing out in the open in the desert
shooting
at Apache helicopters with World War II vintage rifles. (With startling
success, it must be noted). That’s why, despite the horrific pictures of
mutilated men, women and children, and the "shock and awe" bombings,
nobody
in Iraq seems interested in giving up.
That’s why the inevitable American victory and occupation will prove to
be a
disaster. The Iraqis will never accept Americans as their foreign masters.
That’s why American support for this invasion, never strong to begin
with,
is eroding rapidly. Just last Wednesday, an AP poll showed that 72
percent
of Americans thought the war was going well. Yesterday, six days later,
that
number had dropped to 38%.
That’s why Iraqis are happy to see a huge sandstorm. Western
meteorologists
are calling the storm, which has stopped the American advance,
"extraordinary" and inevitably, Iraqis are seeing the hand of Allah in that.
That’s why Putsch pulled one of his characteristic sleights-of-hand when
talking about the war, sending a request to Congress that they allocate
$75
billion for the war. Buried deep in the request was the notation that the
$75 billion was predicated on the assumption that the war would be over
in
30 days, and that this doesn’t include budgeting for occupation and
reconstruction. The Senate responded by unexpectedly cutting his tax
cut for
the rich in half, and allocating most of the funds to social security.
Iraqis aren’t the only people, it seems, who feel a need to defend their
country from Putsch.
The British will try to prevent Putsch’s war crime from bearing its bitter
fruit, and we’ll commit more atrocities and wonder why nobody likes us.
Mark Tran, Business Editor of the Guardian, wondered in an editorial
yesterday if the world wasn’t rising up in revolt against American values. I
don’t think that was the right question.
The right question is if the world is rising up against the American LACK
of
values.
Americans have morals, to be sure. But the junta that has taken over
America
does not.
And that’s what the world sees.
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