(This in answer to an off list note from Lawry) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Lawry,
A woman reporter with the forward British tanks told us she was 5 km from the city center.
A lot depends on the Basrah situation. If the Brits can get into the city of about 1 million, kicking out the armed thugs with minimum civilian casualties, it could be a blueprint for Baghdad. They have apparently already taken a suburban city of 250,000 and last night were walking around in berets and Tam-O-Shanters talking in Arabic to people.
There is supposed to be a patriotic reaction to the invaders - and there may well be. More likely the resistance comes from the paramilitary - "Saddam's Fidayi ". These are the young men, beholden to Saddam - and answerable directly to him. These are the ones who shoot fellow Iraqi who try to flee, or hope to surrender.
They were probably responsible for filling the van with women and children and driving it through the check point. That's what a Muslim cleric says and it seems plausible. The threat to the women and the male driver was that their families would be killed.
The cleric was probably paid by Exxon to say that. The US military is always wrong.
Saddam's Fidayi are the ones who will be slaughtered by the sophistication of American weapons. They are effective in small groups in secured areas, where they can snipe at the soldiers. This has led to the new designation "secure, but not safe".
A touch bitterly, I said that Saddam has found a way to keep occupied young men without jobs. In Los Angeles, these are also in gangs. They shoot each other, but also do a lot of 'collateral damage' to innocent civilians. In a worst case, a couple of months ago, 17 civilians died over about a week.
The new police chief (from New York) said he intends directly to attack the gangs, which he might be doing, but the war has taken it off the front pages.
I think that at the moment, we are in a parallel situation in Iraq. We are attacking the gangs directly.
I tend to be practical. I had hoped the original troop build-up was intended to coerce Saddam into submitting to inspections - and so I wrote. The crack in the United Nation's front had an important consequence - it gave Saddam a chance to maneuver.
But the troops were still in place and I then made the point on the list that this put Bush in a position where he had to go to war. If the troop build-up ended and the men and women stood down, the US would be viewed as a paper tiger. At a future time this could mean much danger and death to Americans.
This is why without supporting the war, I said it was inevitable.
Once it started, opposing it seemed to me to be an exercise in futility. Now, the good parts of the war came to the front of my thinking. I don't much care about WMD - though it's likely that there is some around in Iraq.
I don't think oil is the intent. Some 75% of Iraq's pre-war export of oil is was being exported. With heavy French and Russian (perhaps Chinese) investment in Iraqi oil field development - this could be expected to increase fairly rapidly. Do Americans want to control Iraq oil? That's oxymoronic in a sense. Oil - perhaps above all other important things - is fungible. Iraqi oil is being burned in our cars now. Also, in the tanks that are rolling across the desert.
Regime change - if we can pull it off - is a wonderful goal. If we can stop Saddam's Fidayi decapitating women, torturing and terrorizing civilians, and Saddam's killing of children by starvation - that ain't half bad. Does this mean I support preemptive war? Not really, but some great good could come of it.
News this morning in Los Angeles concerns a Times picture. The original photograph showed a British soldier walking past a group of Iraqi sitting against a wall. His gun is slung over his shoulder, pointing down. His left arm is fully extended palm downward. He is obviously telling the Iraqi to keep down out of harms way.
This wasn't good enough. A Times' photographer removed the cautionary arm, so now it looked as if the Brit was pointing his gun at the sitting Iraqi. The photographer has been fired.
And so it goes.
Harry
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
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