Fear and voting in Baghdad SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://tinyurl.com/3putz Fear and voting in Baghdad Friday, January 14, 2005
By ROBERT FISK BRITISH COLUMNIST Journalism yields a world of clich�s but here, for once, the first clich� that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful journalists. Jan. 30, that day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday. The latest Zarqawi video shows the execution of six Iraqi policemen. Each shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead. Then a gunman walks confidently up behind him and blows his head apart with bullets. These images haunt everyone. At the al-Hurriya intersection Tuesday morning, four truckloads of Iraqi national guardsmen -- the future saviors of Iraq, according to President Bush -- are passing my car. Their rifles are porcupine quills, pointing at every motorist, every Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army pointing their weapons at their own people. And they are all wearing masks -- black hoods or ski masks or kuffiyas that leave only slits for frightened eyes. Just before it collapsed finally into the hands of the insurgents last summer, I saw exactly the same scene in the streets of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Now I am watching them in the capital. At Kamal Jumblatt Square beside the Tigris, two American Humvees approach the roundabout. Their machine-gunners are shouting at drivers to keep away from them. A big sign in Arabic on the rear of each vehicle says: "Forbidden. Do not overtake this convoy. Stay 50 meters away from it." The drivers behind obey; they know the meaning of the "deadly force" that Americans have written onto their checkpoint signs. But the two Humvees drive into a massive traffic jam, the gunners now screaming at us to move back. When a taxi that does not notice the U.S. troops blocks their path, the American in the lead vehicle hurls a full plastic bottle of water onto its roof and the driver mounts the grass traffic circle. A truck receives the same treatment from the lead Humvee. "Go back," shouts the rear gunner, staring at us through shades. We try desperately to turn into the jam. Yes, the Russians probably would have chucked hand grenades in Kabul. But here were the terrified "liberators" of Baghdad throwing bottles of water at the Iraqis who are supposed to enjoy a U.S.-imposed democracy on Jan. 30. Lest anyone doubt this extraordinary scene, the rear Humvee has "Specialist Carrol" written on the windscreen. Specialist Carrol, I am sure, regards every one of us as a potential suicide bomber -- a killer on wheels -- and I can't blame him. One such bomber had just driven up to the police station in Tikrit north of Baghdad and destroyed himself and the lives of at least six policemen. Round the corner, I discover the reason for the jam: Iraqi cops are fighting off hundreds of motorists desperate for petrol, the drivers refusing to queue any longer for the one thing that Iraq possesses in Croeses-like amounts -- petrol. I drop by the Ramaya restaurant for lunch. Closed. They are building a 20-floor security wall around the premises. So I drive to the Rif for a pizza, occasionally tinkling the restaurant's piano while I watch the entrance for people I don't want to see. The waiters are nervous. They are happy to bring my pizza in 10 minutes. There is no one else in the restaurant, you see, and they watch the road outside like friendly rabbits. They are waiting for The Car. I call on an old Iraqi friend who used to publish a literary magazine during Saddam Hussein's reign. "They want me to vote, but they can't protect me," he says. "Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a hand grenade in my home three days later? The Americans will say they did their best, Allawi's people will say I am a 'martyr for democracy.' So do you think I'm going to vote?" At Moustansariya University, one of Iraq's best, students of English literature are to face their end-of-term exam. January marks the end of Iraqi semesters. But one of the students tells me that his fellow students had told their teacher that -- so fraught are the times -- that they were not yet prepared for the examination. Rather than giving them all zeros, the teacher meekly postpones the exam. I drive back through the Al-Hurriya intersection beside the Green Zone and suddenly there is a big black 4-by-4, filled with ski-masked gunmen. "Get back!" they scream at every motorist as they try to cut across the median. I roll the window down. The rear door of the 4-by-4 whacks open. A ski-masked westerner -- blond hair, blue eyes -- is pointing a Kalashnikov at my car. "Get back!" he shrieks in ghastly Arabic. Then he clears the median, followed by three armored pick-ups, windows blacked, tires skidding on the road surface, carrying the sacred westerners inside to the dubious safety of the Green Zone, the hermetically sealed compound from which Iraq is supposedly governed. I glance at the Iraqi press. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is again warning of "civil war" in Iraq. Why do we westerners keep threatening civil war in a country whose society is tribal rather than sectarian? Of all papers, it is the Kurdish Al Takhri, loyal to Mustafa Barzani, which asks the same question. "There has never been a civil war in Iraq," the editorial thunders. And it is right. So "full ahead both" for the dreaded Jan. 30 elections and democracy. The American generals -- with a unique mixture of mendacity and hope amid the insurgency -- are now saying that only four of Iraq's 18 provinces may not be able to "fully" participate in the elections. Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and realize -- as the generals, of course, all know -- that those four provinces contain more than half the population of Iraq. Robert Fisk writes for The Independent in Britain. � 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer *** Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Walter Lippmann (cubanews) [Outstanding comments which should be widely re-circulated and an eloquent rebuke to the notion that Alberto Gonzalez should become the top "law enforcement" official in the US.-WL] The South Florida Sun-Sentinel - January 12, 2004 http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-12forum12jan12,0,3859824.story?coll=sfla-news-opinion Op-Ed: Our own Devil's Island By Wayne S. Smith, CIP senior fellow Reports coming out of Guantanamo continue to horrify. The International Red Cross speaks of the systematic abuse of prisoners "tantamount to torture." FBI agents describe detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position and left for up to 24 hours without food or water. And agents also confirm stories from the prisoners themselves of beatings and other abuses, often leading to serious injury or death. A nightmare. And we are not speaking in the past tense. No, these abuses continued, perhaps continue still. Disgraceful. Can we really be talking about the treatment of prisoners on an American military base? A base that some are now calling "America's Devil's Island." And a Devil's Island that, if the Bush administration has its way, will become a permanent symbol of our descent into inhumanity. The decision has been made to construct a special facility at Guantanamo -- one where some 200 so-called "illegal enemy combatants" are to be held indefinitely. The government judges them, on the basis of evidence it never intends to present, to be a danger and so will continue to hold them -- without any form of due process whatever. Indeed, the U.S. government argues that the Geneva Conventions do not even apply to these prisoners. Held forever for reasons never explained! It is a scenario right out of Franz Kafka. I read all this with a profound sense of loss and sadness. The sadness of an old man with memories of more hopeful days -- days when one could foresee sensible, humane solutions. Days when one could assume our country would do the right thing. No more. As we first re-engaged with Cuba back in 1977, we began to discuss a whole series of problems that stood between us. One of these, of course, was the status of the Guantanamo Naval Base. As the American side made clear, so long as Cuba was the ally of our principal global rival, the Soviet Union, the U.S. would be most reluctant to negotiate the base's return to Cuba, lest that give the Soviets some advantage. At the same time, in various conversations with Ramon Sanchez Parodi, the first chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, we acknowledged that at some point in the future -- albeit probably a distant one -- Guantanamo, rightfully, would be returned to Cuba. During one of these conversations, a golden vision emerged as to how that might happen. It was that at an appropriate moment, Guantanamo would be returned to Cuba, which would then turn it into a major international research and medical center, perhaps specializing in the treatment of diseases prevalent in the Caribbean. The animosities of the past would be replaced by a cooperative effort to serve humankind. Unfortunately, re-engagement did not result in any greater harmony and new problems arose between us. Neither side was without blame, but the result was that the golden vision remained as distant as ever. But for a brief moment after 9-11, it seemed the two sides might be brought together in a common cause. Cuba, after all, was part of the almost universal surge of sympathy and support for the U.S. following the terrorist attacks that day. Ironically, it seemed that tragedy might result in a world in which the vast majority of nations, including Cuba, would work together, in harmony with the U.S., against the terrorist threat. Cuba had immediately condemned the attacks and expressed its solidarity with the American people. Moreover, Castro pledged that Cuban territory would never be used for terrorist actions against the people of the United States. Cuba signed all 12 U.N. anti-terrorist resolutions and offered to sign agreements with the United States looking to cooperation against terrorists. But the Bush administration had come to office committed to regime change in Cuba. Rather than exploring Cuban overtures offering cooperation, it hardened its position. Forget about cooperation against the terrorists! And by invading Iraq in virtual defiance of the U.N., with a sneer for "old Europe," it squandered the opportunity to lead a world united against terrorism. For Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. Saddam Hussein was a thug and a tyrant, yes, but he was not an ally of Osama bin Laden. We went to war against a country that had not attacked us and in the process lost the support of much of the world. Support was further undercut by the images of abused prisoners. Is there any hope that the abuses will not continue? One cannot be reassured by the elusive testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 6 of Alberto Gonzales, the man whose memos opened the way to the worst of abuses. The Geneva Conventions, he said, would be honored, but then added, "whenever they apply." And you can imagine who will decide that. "Torture and abuse," he went on to say, "will not be tolerated by this administration." Ah, but you see, it's all a matter of definitions. And Gonzales apparently doesn't define being shackled hand and foot in a fetal position as torture or abuse. What has happened to us as a country -- that this man could be confirmed as our attorney general? Now a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., Wayne Smith was director of Cuban affairs in the State Department, 1977-79, and chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1979 until 1982. To subscribe: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr *** Pacifica National Board Meeting January 13 - 17, 2005 Sportsman's Lodge 12825 Ventura Boulevard, at Coldwater Cnyn. Blvd. Studio City, CA 91604 800.821.8511 Studio City (Los Angeles), California SATURDAY, JANUARY 15 9 am - PNB Reconvenes, Committee reports (15 minutes each): - Finance, Archives, Governance, Programming, Audit 10:15 am - Election of Officers (chair, vice chair, secretary) (30 minutes) 10:45 - Break (15 minutes) 11 am - Elections of committee members (12 minutes each) - Finance, Archives, Governance, Programming, Audit Noon - PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (60 minutes) 1-2 (LUNCH) 2 pm - ED Report, Dan Coughlin (35 minutes) CFO Report, Lonnie Hicks (35 minutes) Audit Report, Ross Wisdom via speaker phone (20 minutes) 3:30 - Break (15 minutes) 3:45 - Reports (10 minute presentation each, followed by 10 minute questions by PNB) - WBAI GM, Don Rojas - WPFW GM, Ron Pinchback - KPFT GM, Duane Bradley - KPFA GM, Roy Campanella II - KPFK GM, Eva Georgia - Archives Director, Brian DeShazor - Affiliates Director, Ursula Reudenberg 6 pm - Adjourn for the evening SUNDAY, JANUARY 16 9 AM - Executive Session to discuss legal and personnel matters Noon - PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (60 minutes) 1-2 pm - LUNCH 2 pm - Committees of Inclusion, Race & Nationality Presentation (Ambrose Lane, 4 hours) 6 pm - Adjourn Afternoon Activity: Jazz in Leimert Park Hosted by Donna Warren MONDAY, JANUARY 17 Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade Check-in at 10:45am ------------------------ Yahoo! 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