Archived news and commentary: April 7 - 13, 2003

2003/06/23 - 2003/06/29
2003/06/16 - 2003/06/22
2003/06/09 - 2003/06/15
2003/06/02 - 2003/06/08
2003/05/26 - 2003/06/01
2003/05/19 - 2003/05/25
2003/05/12 - 2003/05/18
2003/05/05 - 2003/05/11
2003/04/28 - 2003/05/04
2003/04/21 - 2003/04/27
2003/04/14 - 2003/04/20
2003/04/07 - 2003/04/13
2003/03/31 - 2003/04/06

Sunday, April 13, 2003

News and commentary:

"Marines advance into Tikrit" (CNN.com, 2003/04/13)
"The battle for Tikrit has begun, according to a reporter embedded with U.S. Marines sent to Saddam Hussein's hometown in north-central Iraq.
Matthew Fisher, a National Post of Canada reporter, told CNN on Sunday that a large number of Cobra attack helicopters were engaging Iraqi forces inside the city, and some 250 armored vehicles from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit had entered the city as well."

"Marines Find 7 G.I.'s Who Were Captured by Iraqis" (Dexter Filkins and Charlie LeDuff, The New York Times, 2003/04/13)
"Seven American prisoners of war were found alive in a town north of Baghdad today, more than three weeks after they vanished during fighting with the Iraqis.
The seven prisoners included five Army soldiers missing since their convoy ran into an ambush near the central Iraqi city of Nasiriya on March 23. The other two were the pilots of an Apache helicopter shot down in an air assault on Republican Guard units near Karbala on March 24. ...
After the ambush, Iraqi state television broadcast pictures of seven frightened-looking American prisoners, which now appears to have been the seven found today. Iraqi television also showed images of at least five dead Americans. Those pictures, and the murky circumstances surrounding the ambush, led to rumors among American troops that American prisoners had been executed." (See also: "Still images from video shown on Iraqi television..." (Reuters, 2003/03/23))

"Armed Groups Order Shi'ite Leader to Quit Iraq" (Mehrdad Balali, Reuters, 2003/04/13)
"Armed radical groups have surrounded the house of Iraq's top Shi'ite Muslim cleric in the central city of Najaf, giving him 48 hours to leave the country, aides to the cleric said on Sunday.
"Armed thugs and hooligans have had the house of (Grand) Ayatollah (Ali) Sistani under siege since yesterday. They have told him to either leave Iraq in 48 hours or they would attack," Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abulqasim Dibaji told Reuters.
"Total terror reigns in Najaf. They have told other ayatollahs to leave too," Dibaji said. "This is the biggest catastrophe for Najaf."
Najaf is a holy Shi'ite city in central Iraq where Sistani and many other spiritual leaders live.
Dibaji said the house was surrounded by members of Jimaat-e-Sadr-Thani, a splinter group led by Moqtada Sadr, the 22-year-old son of a late spiritual leader in Iraq.
"Moqtada wants to take total control of the holy sites in Iraq," Dibaji said.
Iraq's senior Shi'ite leaders have blamed Moqtada's Jimaat-e-Sadr-Thani for orchestrating Thursday's killing of senior cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf's holiest mosque."

"Killer peaceniks" (Henry McDonald, The Observer, 2003/04/13)
"Mid-afternoon on Wednesday the phone rang and a jubilant Iraqi started crying down the other end of the line. He was watching his fellow countrymen and American Marines pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad. ...
How must this man have felt over the last few weeks and months when he strolled through the Old World charm of Trinity? What was he thinking when he witnessed the anti-war posters, the impromptu student demonstrations, the rantings and ravings of ageing leftists, veterans of other, older anti-war struggles, hanging out with people 30 years younger than them, drinking from the fountain of revolutionary youth? Sick no doubt and perhaps also a little despondent that Iraq's best chance for freedom since 1979 would be stopped; not by Saddam's reputed so-called elite Republican Guard but rather through the selfish force of Western public opinion.
Khalid needn't have worried. Bush and Blair, and more importantly, the Iraqi people themselves have paid no attention to the not-in-my-name narcissi."

"Through Arab eyes, blindly" (Fouad Ajami, usnews.com, from the 2003/04/14 issue)
"Cities beget their own legends, and there is a legend of Baghdad, and its conquest by the Mongols in 1258 - the end of the Islamic caliphate and the beginning of an age of decline and disorder. In the legend, the brilliant city of learning was thoroughly sacked; the books in its vast libraries were dumped in the Tigris, and thousands of the city's people were put to the sword. In the fevered imagination of the crowds chanting Saddam Hussein's name, in the Arab lands away from Baghdad, those men and women of the American-led coalition are the new Mongols. ...
You can't convince the millions of Arabs who receive their truth from the satellite channel al Jazeera, or from the London-based Arabic dailies, that these Western commanders are no rampaging "crusaders" bent on dispossessing Iraqis of their oil wealth. Pity a people left to such craven victimology and willful denial. A thoughtful Saudi commentator, Abdul Rahman Al Rashed, has seen in the fevered way this war is covered a continuity with the old ways of days past. The new technology and satellite channels, he says, mimic the journalism of the West. But the borrowed technology is put at the service of an old and stubborn refusal to face and name things as they are." (Note: Thanks to Barry Kaplovitz for the pointer.)

"Iraqi society had long ago lost its bearings" (James Buchan, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/04/13)
"The falling statues of Saddam Hussein, so satisfying to the consciences of the British and American publics, have given way in the Iraqi cities to sinister scenes of theft, murder and looting. By the end of last week, Baghdad had become a sort of accursed DIY store, where entire families pushing trolleys of pilfered housewares down boulevards turned into open-air aisles. United States Marines, desperately concerned about their own safety in this inferno, watched them trundle by. ...
Having driven the government from Baghdad and all the largest cities but Tikrit, routed the regular army and even maybe killed Saddam himself, the United States and Britain must confront a sullen and terrified population with its civil institutions in ruins. Broken formations of the old regime are exploiting the violence while the Arab regimes (and, possibly, Iran) will attempt to foment civil war in Iraq as a sort of advanced front line of their own defence against the United States. ...
To establish public order should now be as important as dealing with the last remnants of the Iraqi regular forces."

"Revealed: Russia spied on Blair for Saddam" (David Harrison, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/04/13)
"Top secret documents obtained by The Telegraph in Baghdad show that Russia provided Saddam Hussein's regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations between Tony Blair and other Western leaders.
Moscow also provided Saddam with lists of assassins available for "hits" in the West and details of arms deals to neighbouring countries. The two countries also signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to "obtain" visas for agents to go to other countries and to exchange information on the activities of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qa'eda leader.
The documents detailing the extent of the links between Russia and Saddam were obtained from the heavily bombed headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad yesterday. ...
Another document, dated March 12, 2002, appears to confirm that Saddam had developed, or was developing nuclear weapons. The Russians warned Baghdad that if it refused to comply with the United Nations then that would give the United States 'a cause to destroy any nuclear weapons.'"

"A War Waged With a Sword At His Throat" (Anthony Shadid,
The Washington Post, 2003/04/13)
An interview with Tahsin, a soldier in Saddam's Fedayeen who escaped: "Each group, he said, was joined by men he called "swordsmen." They were dressed in red shoes with a red belt, carrying three-foot-long swords, each with a gray wood handle. Their orders were to decapitate anyone who fled, and a swordsman was specially assigned to the group's commander.
"If they fled, they would cut off their heads," Tahsin said. ...
Like other Iraqis, he said he was now bracing for what's next - a moment unlike any in the past 35 years, when Iraq is without a government, without authority and with little sense of the future. For Tahsin, his priorities are simple. School is his priority and then "a good life."
"I wish for a car. When I get a car, I want an apartment. When I get an apartment, I hope I can get a wife," he said.
Nothing more? "That's it," he said."

"'Our Heritage Is Finished'" (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post, 2003/04/13)
"'Our heritage is finished,' lamented Nabhal Amin, the museum's deputy director, as she surveyed a Sumerian tablet that had been cracked in two. "Why did they do this? Why? Why?" ...
As she quickly walked through more than three dozen rooms, Amin did not catalog what was missing or damaged. There was just too much. But every few minutes, she would stop in front of an empty pedestal or a decapitated statue.
"This was priceless," she sobbed as she pointed to two seated marble deities from the temple at Harta that had been defaced with a hammer. Later, after observing more damage, she broke down again. "It feels like all my family has died," she wept.
Even storage rooms and workshops were trashed. An old Babylonian wooden harp was broken in two and its gold inlay scraped off. But most inexplicable to her was the destruction of rooms that contained no artifacts, just archaeological records and photographs.
"I cannot understand this," she said. 'This was crazy. This was our history. Our glorious history. Why should we destroy it?'" (See also: "Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2003/04/12))

Saturday, April 12, 2003

News and commentary:

"Mud covers a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein..."
(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, 2003/04/12)
"Mud covers a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the Saddam Center of Art in central Baghdad on Saturday April 12, 2003."

"Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2003/04/12)
This is just disastrous. Iraq stripped of its ancient memory: "The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters.
The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum only came to light today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital over the previous three days began to ebb.
As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat of the Iraqi spring, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history. ...
By that time, he and other museum officials said, the several acres of museum grounds were overrun by thousands of men, women and children, many of them armed with rifles, pistols, axes, knives and clubs, as well as pieces of metal torn from the suspensions of wrecked cars. The crowd was storming out of the complex carrying antiquities on hand carts, bicycles and wheelbarrows and in boxes. Looters stuffed their pockets with smaller items.
Mr. Muhammad said he found an American Abrams tank in Museum Square, about 300 yards away, and that five marines had followed him back into the museum and opened fire above the looters' heads. This drove several thousand of the marauders out of the museum complex in minutes, he said, but when the tank crewmen left about 30 minutes later, the looters returned."

"Mythical Garden of Eden now a wasteland" (AFP/Sify News, 2003/04/12)
Found via Drudge Report: "It is believed to be the Garden of Eden, the mythic place where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join, the cradle of mankind where Adam came to pray to God.
Today it is a desolate wasteland of excrement, cracked paving stones and bullet holes. The eucalyptus known as Adam's tree, a place of holy pilgrimage for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike, stands bleached and dead.
"Once we believed it to be a little parcel of paradise on earth," said Qassem Khalif, an English teacher.
"Every generation was taught that this was the true Garden of Eden and this was Adam's tree, the place where he first spoke to God. Now, as you can see for yourself, it is ruined, there is no respect, no humanity, no..."
He struggled for the words. "No loving or kindness." ...
But within years the war had been begun with next-door Iran, remembered here by a shelter sandbagged against attack. The site fell into neglect and disrepair. The walls and floor of the shrine are now cracked and warped. ...
In the wake of the last Gulf War, Saddam made the region a victim of his scorched earth policy, punishment for the southern support of British and American forces and the failed uprising against him.
The ruling Baath drained the water and destroyed the life of the indigenous Marsh Arabs, descendants of the ancient people of Sumeria and Babylon."

"Saddam's Top Science Adviser Surrenders, U.S. Says" (Jeff Franks, Reuters, 2003/04/12)
"Saddam Hussein's top scientific adviser, who once liaised with U.N. weapons inspectors and was on an American most wanted list, surrendered to U.S. forces on Saturday, the U.S. military said.
Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi was in custody after surrendering in Baghdad, but no other details were available, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command war headquarters in Qatar told Reuters. ...
"He is crucial to our understanding of what has been going on with their WMD (weapons of mass destruction) program for years," a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters in Washington. ...
In an interview, Saadi told ZDF he did not know where Saddam was and insisted that Iraq did not possess chemical or biological weapons, as alleged by the United States and Britain, who have cited that as the main reason for their war on Iraq."

"Why do they hate us?" (James C. Bennett, UPI, 2003/04/12)
A must-read essay, as always: "Why do they hate us? This question has been asked incessantly since Sept. 11, 2001. Sometimes it is asked about Muslims in general; sometimes about the Arab world in particular.
However, it is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe.
Just as the Baathist movement lately of Iraq and still in power in Syria is a localized variant of European fascism, the broader anti-Americanism currently fashionable on all continents comes ultimately from what some have called the Industrial Counter-Revolution. ...
Continental Europeans, helped by the Marshall Plan and American investment, rebuilt their countries with vigor after 1945. Led by the last generations to mature in the environment of the hybrid Jewish-European civilization, Europe seemed to pick up where it left off in 1933.
Gradually, however, Europe seemed to run out of creativity, in everything from arts, to academia, to demographic vigor, to the will to political reform. Endless rehashing of elsewhere-discredited Marxism replaced creative political thought. Overt fascism and national chauvinism were banned, but a new Euro-chauvinism took its place, loudly proclaiming the superiority of European ways over crude American ones - a new chauvinism on a wider scale, based like the old national chauvinism primarily on resentment."

"Murderous regimes don't merit a march" (Michael Duffy, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/12)
Found via Tim Blair: "One of recent history's most bizarre events will occur tomorrow, when good and decent people will march through Sydney to express sorrow Iraq has just been delivered from an odious tyranny.
I know that is not how the marchers feel about it. I know they believe they will be marching for peace and the United Nations and international law. But to judge the real implications of their opposition to the war, let us consider what will be happening tomorrow in a city on the other side of the world.
In Baghdad, the people will be exulting in the first peace for a generation and looking forward to freedom for the first time in their history.
They will be happy and joyful – as they have been since the US soldiers arrived and Saddam Hussein's army dropped its weapons and fled.
Yet, if Australia's peace marchers had had their way and this war never occurred, what would the residents of Iraq have been doing?
In the State Security headquarters in Basra it would have been business as usual, the regime's jailers torturing away, hanging people from hooks, whipping them with electric cables, prodding their flesh with lit cigarettes. Once they had finished, many of their victims would have been shot or killed more slowly."

"Lest We Forget" (Michael Gonzales, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/04/12)
"'How did we get here?' asked a former French minister in a newspaper column recently. "Here" is a situation in which French Jews are being beaten up in the streets of Paris and in which President Jacques Chirac has to write to Queen Elizabeth to apologize for the desecration of British tombs in France, and in which one-third of the French have been pulling for Saddam Hussein to win. ...
Mr. de Villepin, sources say, last week told members of the National Assembly that "hawks" in the U.S. administration are "in the hands of [Ariel] Sharon." According to the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine, he went so far as to attack a "pro-Zionist" lobby made up of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, White House staffer Elliot Abrams and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, all Jews. ...
In Belgium, I've witnessed the defense and foreign ministers feed the beast of anti-Americanism, only to protest later that they want to defang it. At a debate last month at the University Libre de Bruxelles, I saw Messrs. Michel and Flahaut inflame a crowd with their comments. Belgians, said the former, are beginning to look on the U.S. as they once did the Soviet Union. "I am beginning to fear the U.S.," he added, his voice rising, to much applause from a 2,000-strong crowd. Not to be outdone, Mr. Flahaut promised to do all he could to kick Tony Blair out of the Socialist International.
By "debate," incidentally, I mean a representative of Republicans Abroad and me on one side, and on the other the two ministers, two pro-government university professors, a journalist who was supposed to act as moderator, and Iraq's ambassador to Belgium. The Iraqi was twice interrupted by the crowd with applause; I was accused of being a CIA agent. When one student stood up to complain that a representative of Saddam's regime was applauded while I was booed, the crowd shouted her down."

"The future is now" (David Warren, Ottawa Citizen/davidwarrenonline.com, 2003/04/12)
"The sight of Iraqis in Baghdad pulling down the statue of Saddam, beating its face with their shoes, and kissing photographs of President Bush thus arrived like a missile into what Fouad Ajami has so discerningly called, "the dream palace of the Arabs" - the collective fantasy into which powerful media such as Al-Jazeera had been playing. It was no mere surprise; it was a profound shock to the entire nervous system of the Arab world. It was the first shock on anything like this scale since June 1967, when another generation of Arabs woke to the discovery that tiny Israel had destroyed the massed armies of all the most powerful Arab states, in just six days. But that did not happen with the immediacy of live television. ...
Wherever this spectacle appeared, there was weeping, anger, then flicking off the TV. But the anger previously concentrated by the Arab world 's media and leaders upon the United States, Britain, and Israel, was suddenly deflected upon the same media and leaders; or else meaninglessly against the euphoric crowds in Baghdad. Those who swore were suddenly swearing not at CNN but at Al-Jazeera, not at George W. Bush, but at Saddam, and Saudi sheikhs, and Hosni Mubarak. Suddenly, all at once, this terrible recognition that they had been lied to - lied to by everyone; lied to on an extraordinary, systematic scale; told the biggest Lie that had ever been told."

"Movers and shakers have moved on to the next 'disaster'" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/12)
"On to the next quagmire! Don't get mired in the bog of yesterday's conventional wisdom, when the movers and shakers have already moved on to new disasters. America may have won the war but it's already losing the peace! Here's your at-a-glance guide to what the experts who got everything wrong last week will be getting wrong next week:
1) "Iraq's slide into violent anarchy" (Guardian, April 11). Say what you like about Saddam, but he ran a tight ship and you didn't have to nail down your nest of tables: since the Brits took over, Basra's property crime is heading in an alarmingly Cheltenhamesque direction. MBITRW (Meanwhile Back In The Real World): A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs."

"Where was the BBC news?" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/12)
"The BBC has had a terrible war. Despite the undoubted courage of many of its correspondents, it has failed in its task, and it has failed in many ways. The first is bias. Throughout the conflict and before it, the BBC gave disproportionate coverage to opponents of the war. More subtly, it has sought, on almost every day of the fighting, to put the most pessimistic construction on events.
Thus it refused to acknowledge, over the weekend, that American troops were in Baghdad, even though you had only to switch to Sky to see them there. Thus, even on the day of the fall of Baghdad, it asked everyone it could find whether it hadn't been terribly wicked of that American soldier to put the Stars and Stripes on Saddam's statue's head.
Thus, the next day, when the biggest story was the Kurdish capture of Kirkuk, the Six O'Clock News led with a film of a fight near a mosque in Baghdad, implying that the Americans were back in trouble. Thus, during the middle of the campaign, the BBC dwelt incessantly on how everything was "bogged down" and how the allies were unwelcome. To anyone watching the BBC alone, victory must have come as a complete surprise."

"Marines find suicide bomber vests" (AP/MSNBC, 2003/04/12)
"U.S. Marines have found a cache of suicide bomb vests in an elementary school in central Baghdad. On the floor of the science classroom — with a picture of Saddam Hussein on the green chalk board — there lay nearly 50 black leather vests each packed with C4 explosives and ball bearings.
In a middle school less than 500 feet away Saturday, Marines displayed hundreds of crates filled with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles, shoulder-launched rockets and ammunition.
In the first school, less than 20 feet from the nearest home, the suicide vests nearly covered the floor, sealed in plastic and still on hangers. Each powerful bomb weighed at least 20 pounds and was lined with long rectangular blocks of C4 explosives and hundreds of ball bearings. Wires ran through them.
"They were indeed dedicated to do something if they strapped on that vest," said Marine Lt. David Wright, 27, of Goldsboro, N.C. He worried that a few hangers were empty and some of the vests might have gone missing. "Odds are high that someone is out there wearing one," he said."

"Arms scientists said to have fled to Syria" (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 2003/04/12)
"Some of Iraq's top weapons scientists already have fled their country and are in Syria, from where they may seek political safety in France, administration sources said yesterday.
The officials said among those believed to have made it to Syria are Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash and Rihab Taha, both top scientists in Iraq's biological-weapons program. The administration sources said there are intelligence reports that one, or both, made it to Damascus.
Mrs. Taha is a British-trained microbiologist, who led Iraq's drive to cultivate and weaponize deadly anthrax. Nicknamed "Dr. Germ," she is believed to hold vast knowledge concerning all of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's development of weapons of mass destruction."

"Saddam's secret foreign legion" (Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2003/04/12)
"President Saddam Hussein imported hundreds of well-trained Islamic guerrillas before the war to spearhead his fight against American and British forces, The Times has learnt.
Documents and captives seized by British troops in Basra reveal that the recruits were arriving in Baghdad from Muslim countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as little as ten days before the war began.
They came to wage jihad against the Western military, and provided some of the fiercest resistance as the coalition advanced northwards. Survivors are still mounting occasional attacks in Baghdad and other cities. ...
Documentary evidence found by British troops in Basra shows that several hundred of the fighters were brought to Iraq using a variety of official documents provided by the Baghdad regime.
Many posed as students, enlisting at the university's school of Koranic studies or in its language school. Airline ticket stubs and other paperwork show there was a rush of new recruits in early March, and that they were still arriving in Iraq ten days before the war began. Some of their Iraqi visas list "jihadi" in the space giving the passport holder's reason for visiting Iraq."

Friday, April 11, 2003

News and commentary:

"This photo released by the US Department of Defense..."
(AFP/DOD, 2003/04/11)
"This photo released by the US Department of Defense shows one of the deck of cards being handed out to US forces to aid in identifying Iraqi government officials. This card shows ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as the ace of spades in the deck." (UPDATE: See also "Iraqi Top 55" (U.S. Central Command, 2003/04/12))

"CNN executive: Iraq targeted network's journalists" (CNN.com, 2003/04/11)
"Iraqi intelligence agents planned to attack CNN journalists working in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in March, three months after Iraq's information minister warned of the "severest possible consequences" if CNN were to send reporters to the region, said CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan. ...
The men planned to use nearly a ton of explosives in the attack, but they were arrested before they could carry out the plan. In their confessions, the men said they had been told that CIA and Israeli agents were working out of the hotel, using CNN as a cover.
In December, Jordan said, he met with Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to ask permission for CNN to send journalists into areas of northern Iraq that had been under Kurdish control since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
"He bristled, and he said, 'Mr. Jordan, if you send a CNN team there, the severest possible consequences will come to them,'" Jordan said. 'And I said, 'What does that mean?' He just snapped back. He said, 'Don't you understand? The severest possible consequences.' It was clear he was talking about assassinating those journalists.'" (See also: "'We were the team that was targeted'" (Brent Sadler, CNN.com, 2003/04/11): "We were aware, many, many times, of deep Kurdish concerns about our safety. To correspond with those concerns, we went to extraordinary security precautions in terms of placing sandbags [around the hotel] and [hiring] around-the-clock guards, to make sure we had a good chance of withstanding such an attack.")

"Syria denies hiding Iraqi weapons" (CNN.com, 2003/04/11)
Found via Best of the Web Today: "De Villepin arrived in Syria for meetings with Syrian President Basher al-Assad the day after Syria, responding to U.S. pressure, closed its border with Iraq. ...
Then, talking about the Bush administration's military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sharaa questioned the United States' motive.
"Look at all these things: Is Afghanistan stable? Have their objectives been achieved? Have they found Osama bin Laden?" he asked, before mentioning the "looting and lawlessness" that followed the fall of Saddam's regime.
"They've left a mess in both these countries and they're not finished. Now turning their attention to a third country," he said. "Historians talk about the Second World War and how the Germans should have been stopped earlier."
Then, just before Sharaa was about to compare the Bush administration to Nazi Germany, France's de Villepin stopped him.
"You do not want to make this comparison," de Villepin said. 'Don't do this.'"

"DoD News Briefing - Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers" (United States Department of Defense, 2003/04/11)
Rumsfeld on the lack of law and order in liberated Iraq: "I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny - "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot - one thing after another. It's just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country! ...
This is fascinating. This is just fascinating. From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously."

"Iraqi Army Troops Surrender in Mosul" (Thomas W. Lippman, The Washington Post, 2003/04/11)
"Another key city in northern Iraq, Mosul, fell without resistance to Kurdish military forces today after an entire corps of the Iraqi Army surrendered. All across Iraq, the last vestiges of Saddam Hussein's rule are shriveling away, leaving behind a country of 25 million people the size of California where no one is in charge and lawlessness is spreading. ...
Military units of Iraqi Kurds entered Mosul unopposed after a U.S. commander "accepted a signed cease-fire agreement from the Iraqi 5th Corps commander, regular army," Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks said at the daily press briefing at U.S. Central Command field headquarters in Doha, Qatar. ...
The people of Mosul poured into the streets to celebrate the end of Hussein's iron-fisted control - and to help themselves to whatever they could carry out of government buildings, a state-owned bank, the university and even hospitals. Journalists in the city of more than 1 million residents reported near-anarchy as the small number of U.S. troops in the city refrained from interfering with the looters."

"The Arab shock wave" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2003/04/11)
"There is a vast conspiracy theory abroad in the Middle East, that a handful of pro-Israeli neo-conservatives in Washington have a master plan to re-order the Arab world in order to make it safe for Israel, Exxon and U.S. military bases. Beyond this, they fear a deeper American cultural plot to impose a Reformation on Islam in order to make it safe for Christians, Jews and secular infidels.
The Arab world is in shock right now. Just as they were told by Radio Cairo throughout the 1967 Arab-Israel war that the Egyptians "are swatting down Israeli warplanes like flies," so they spent the last three weeks being told of heroic Iraqi resistance, of a popular rising against the new crusaders, of Basra's heroic defense and of valiant diplomatic work by France and Russia to force the Anglo-Americans to back down. The disillusion has been cruel. The future reality could be even worse. Osama bin Laden's recruiting officers are going to be busy."

"Baghdad's Easy Fall Fuels Arab Conspiracy Theories" (Paul Taylor, Reuters, 2003/04/11)
"Lebanese Parliament speaker Nabih Berri was among the first to air such rumors of a covert arrangement to bundle Saddam out of Iraq in exchange for an end to the bloodshed.
As U.S. tanks swept almost unopposed into Baghdad on Wednesday, Berri suggested Saddam might have taken refuge in the Russian embassy, prompting an immediate denial from Moscow. ...
An aide to Berri joined the dots, saying his boss meant to suggest Saddam had been granted sanctuary in a U.S.-Russian deal in return for an end to Republican Guard resistance. ...
The respected London-based, pan-Arab daily al-Hayat spoke in a front-page banner headline on Friday of a purported "deal" that brought about the collapse of Iraqi resistance.
"Informed Iraqi sources said the absence of an effective role of the Republican Guard over the past three weeks of the war can be attributed to contacts between the 'allies' and some leaders of these units, during which they gave assurances not to harm them," al-Hayat said."

"The end of the beginning" (Michael Ledeen, The Spectator, from the 2003/04/12 issue)
"Today, both Iran and Syria are engaged in a desperate terrorist campaign against coalition forces in Iraq. ... They do not think they have any good soft option. The Americans are coming, and the Syrians and the Iranians are going to fight now, in Iraq. To be sure, they are not going to send their armies against us (quite aside from certain defeat, they no doubt fear massive defections), but rather a swarm of terrorists, from Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad, Hamas, al-Qa'eda, Ansar al-Islam, and the rest of the jihadist mafia. ...
They are an integral part of the terror network that produced 11 September. Left undisturbed they will kill us in Iraq and Afghanistan, and will mount new attacks on our homelands. We cannot give them time to organise these attacks, all the while developing the weapons we all properly dread. But unlike Iraq, there is no need for a military campaign. Our most potent weapons are the peoples of Syria and Iran, and they are primed, loaded and ready to fire. We should now pull the political lanyards and unleash democratic revolution on the terror masters in Damascus and Tehran."

"Pax Americana" (William Shawcross, The Spectator, from the 2003/04/12 issue)
"The results in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan today are not perfect. But all those countries are better off than they were, and only America could make those changes. American participation is essential to the world. American power is often the only thing that stands between civility and genocide, order and mayhem. ...
You don't have to love President Bush, but, I repeat, don't make the mistake of underestimating him. You don't have to accept the neo-conservative doctrine in toto, though much of it is very optimistic and attractive, particularly to the Iraqi people at this moment. The point is that the USA is the only country that has the capability to defend and expand the liberal democratic world. It is a vital force for progress, in the Islamic world as much as anywhere else.
Europe can never replace America. And if it tries to hobble it, Europe will undermine if not destroy its own security."

"The Ironies of War" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/04/11)
"We have no idea of the nature of eventual peace settlements, but already the roll into Baghdad as an act of liberation and a military masterpiece will rank along with Epaminondas's trek to free the helots, Sherman's March, and Patton's long race to the German border. Meanwhile, everyone seems either to have criticized or belatedly praised "the plan"; but so far no one seems to quite know how 250,000 brave American, British, and Australian young men and women in the field are actually pulling it off."

"The News We Kept to Ourselves" (Eason Jordan, The New York Times, 2003/04/11)
Jordan is chief news executive at CNN: "Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff. ...
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us."

"The allies got it so right: how did the pundits get it so wrong?" (John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/11)
"Perhaps the most intriguing subject for retrospection lies outside Iraq, not within: why did so many otherwise rational people get their predictions wrong? ...
Yet perfectly sensible people, who surely know better, clutter up their minds with such irrelevant factors as "the Arab street", "international opinion", the anti-war movement at home, votes in the UN and so on. They then predict that "American success is not certain", "this could be a long and bitter war" and "the spectre of Vietnam looms over George W Bush".
If they were employed by the City editor, or the sports desk, they would have been given their cards three wars ago. I wonder if any of them will make a better shot of it next time."

"The left has lost the plot" (John Lloyd, The Guardian, 2003/04/11)
In a farewell article in The New Statesman, Lloyd explains why why the paper's extreme anti-war stance (in the same issue John Pilger writes on a "piratical war that brought terrorism and death to Iraq") has driven him to resign: "A large part of the British left - and the left elsewhere - has made a fundamental mistake. In opposing the invasion of Iraq, it has shown itself incapable of thinking through not only the nature of the world as it is today, but also its own claims to be the leading force in making the world better. ...
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, UN leaders have spread the message that their organisation could now enter into its own - as a protector of the downtrodden who, most often, are trodden on by their own rulers. This movement culminated, less than two years ago, in a Canadian-sponsored report, A Responsibility to Protect - a brilliant summation of the arguments for stripping tyrants of sovereign inviolability. Of the major government leaders, only Blair has embraced the report, as the logical extension of the ethical dimension in foreign policy that Labour promulgated when it came to office.
Most of the left refused to follow this line. For some, it has been enough to declare all ethical dimensions phoney, since states such as Britain continued to shake hands with tyrants. For others, state sovereignty seems a necessary protection against what they see as the largest threat to the world: US imperialism. ...
Will the end of the war and the effort to rebuild decent government in Iraq change the view of the left? It would seem unlikely: the anti-US reflex is too ingrained, the dislike of Blair too great."

"Baghdad: the day after" (Robert Fisk, Independent, 2003/04/11)
Radically conservative chic. Of course, anarchy and chaos is a serious concern, but it is pretty ironic to note the total focus on it by "radical" reporters and commentators. After all, the looting by poor Iraqis of the palaces and banks of the rich and powerful seems quite "revolutionary", a spontaneous "reclaiming of the streets" which many on the far left probably would cheer if it happened in London, Paris or New York. But far from being inspired by this mass Robin Hooding, the Fisks of the world react as outraged Victorian gentlemen.
The underheading of Fisk's report the day after the liberation? "Arson, anarchy, fear, hatred, hysteria, looting, revenge, savagery, suspicion and a suicide bombing":
"It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later. ...
The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves – they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty – seem to have a different idea of what liberation means."

"Farewell, France" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2003/04/11)
"Chirac, abetted by his sorcerer's apprentice, Foreign Minister Dominque de Villepin, has done his country's status nothing but harm through "l'affaire Iraq." Grotesquely overestimating France's influence and authority, Chirac garnered an empty round of applause with his self-adoring performance in support of a heinous dictator.
But the end effect was to bring Charles de Gaulle's inflated legacy to a sputtering end. Since the close of the Second World War, France had been permitted a louder voice than its stature merited. That era is over, murdered by Chirac. While calling President Bush a shoot-from-the-hip cowboy, Chirac shot his own country in the back.
France defied the United States, not wisely but too well. Chirac's foreign minister went out of his way to humiliate Colin Powell, the Bush Cabinet's most congenial member from a European perspective. But the astonishing thing is that Chirac genuinely seems to have believed that France could force a bit into Washington's mouth, then jerk the reins.
Well, France fell off the horse before the race got underway.
There will be handshakes with Paris, too, and hollow hugs and kisses. But France will never again be allowed even the illusion of a voice in shaping American policy. Chirac has thrown away the last rags of influence France could wear to the diplomatic ball."

"Sontag Award Nominee" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/04/11)
"'In Britain, we call this sort of thing criminal damage, and you can get three months in jail for it, as 37-year-old Paul Kelleher discovered recently when he beheaded a marble effigy of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Poor Mr Kelleher: wrong time, wrong place, wrong statue.' - Brian Whitaker, in the Guardian, comparing the toppling of Saddam's statue with British vandalism." (See also: "Symbolic in more ways than one" (Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, 2003/04/11))

"An Iraqi Official's Better Home and Garden" (Jonathan Finer, The Washington Post, 2003/04/11)
An article on "Snippets of American Pop Culture on Display at Aziz's Mansion" and in one of Saddam's mansion: "A cassette recording of "The Sound of Music" sits by a tape player in an upstairs office. The master bathroom is stocked with Christian Dior towels, and a treadmill and several workout videos are in an adjoining exercise room.
Upstairs in a child's room with a small wooden bed is a cluttered collection of American toys and pop culture trinkets: stuffed animals and cartoon characters such as the Tasmanian Devil, Popeye and Sylvester the cat. The walls are decorated with posters of Snoopy and photographs of Disney World, along with photos of the pop singer Britney Spears, apparently torn from magazines.
An Advent calendar sits on a desk, next to a host of plastic figurines: Spiderman, Batman and the dwarfs from Snow White."

"Looting and a Suicide Attack in Baghdad" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2003/04/11)
"For the second day, bands of looters had the free run of wide areas on both banks of the Tigris, breaking into at least six government ministries and setting several afire, as well as attacking the luxurious mansions of Mr. Hussein's two sons and other members of his ruling coterie.
Looters made off with liquor, guns and paintings of half-naked women from the home of Uday, one of Mr. Hussein's sons. They also took the white Arabian horses he kept. ...
The looters appeared, mainly, to concentrate on sites associated with Mr. Hussein, sparing most private homes and businesses.
Among the attacks that had a strong political edge were those on the German Embassy and the French cultural center, both in east Baghdad. ...
The French and German buildings were stripped of furniture, curtains, decorations, and anything else that could be carried away.
At the French cultural center, where looters burst water pipes and flooded the ground floor, books were left floating in the reading rooms and corridors, and a photograph of Jacques Chirac, the French president, was smashed."

Thursday, April 10, 2003

News and commentary:

"Thousands Cheer Kirkuk Fall as Iraqi Soldiers Flee" (Mike Collett-White, Reuters, 2003/04/10)
"Jubilant residents poured onto the streets of Kirkuk on Thursday to welcome Kurdish fighters in the latest city to fall in the war against Saddam Hussein. ...
"Thank you, thank you!" screamed young children in what looked like a genuine show of relief at the end of the siege.
A huge statue of Saddam wearing traditional Arab dress was daubed in red paint. Residents climbed on to his shoulders and began hitting his head and face with a sledgehammer.
Portraits adorning government buildings were shot at and defaced. People trampled on a carpet bearing Saddam's image.
Away from the celebrations, young children and old men looted official buildings, taking out anything from sofas and air conditioners to refrigerators and desks."

"Top Iraqi cleric killed in Najaf" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/10)
"A leading Shia cleric has been assassinated in the holy city of Najaf just days after returning to Iraq following more than a decade of exile in Britain.
Sayed Abdul Majid Al-Khoei, 41, was stabbed to death by an angry mob outside the shrine of Imam Ali, one of Shia Islam's most holy sites.
Reports said the mob was made up of angry members of a rival religious group.
They hurled verbal abuse at Mr Majid al-Khoei before rushing him and hacking him to death with knives and swords. The cleric's aide Haidar Kelidar was also murdered in the attack."

"Bush, Blair Tell Iraqis Their 'Nightmare' Ending" (Andrew Cawthorne and Michael Holden, Reuters/The Washington Post, 2003/04/10)
"The U.S. and British leaders launched a new TV service into Iraq on Thursday with a pledge to Iraqis that they would control their own future once the "nightmare" of Saddam Hussein was over.
"You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torture chambers... Your nation will soon be free," President Bush said in a pre-recorded message.
"The nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over," he added.
The messages from Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were being beamed into Iraq via a new Arabic TV network, produced by the U.S. and UK governments, called Nahwa Al-Hurrieh or 'Toward Freedom.'"

"April 10" (Kanan Makiya, The New Republic, 2003/04/10)
"Baathism died in Iraq yesterday. The sight of the oversized bronze head of Saddam rolling in the dust and being beaten with shoes by exuberant Iraqis is perhaps the most important image of Iraqi politics of the last 50 years. It was the end of the republic of fear. Two Iraqis with whom I was camping out in Washington, D.C., woke me up at 5 a.m. yesterday so we could watch the images of a free Iraq. Tears rolled down our cheeks uncontrollably. ...
Yesterday was also a special day for the people of the United States. Their army triumphed. It fought a just war more or less alone and in spite of opposition from countries that put commercial and other interests before the destruction of tyranny. We will remember those who stood by our side. The road ahead is, no doubt, very difficult. And now the burden shifts onto our shoulders, the shoulders of Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq. We thank you people of the great United States for the gift that you have bestowed on us. I cannot promise that we will succeed in making good of it. But I do promise that we will try very hard."

"Death, satire, Hildebrandt, Hitler" (Eamonn Fitzgerald, Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day, 2003/04/10)
Fitzgerald on German anti-Americanism, including this translation from an interview with Dieter Hildebrandt, "doyen of German political entertainers": "Mr Hildebrandt, America is at war in Iraq. As liberator?
The Americans are behaving in a manner that is dismaying. One could believe that the former Minister of Justice, Däubler-Gmelin, who had compared Bush with Hitler a little, was not that wrong. I've learned that George W. Bush is being led by providence.
That distinguishes him from us.
But not from Hitler. I would gladly like to see Mrs Däubler-Gmelin vindicated. Her comparison may not have been that adroit, but perhaps it wasn't that far from the truth either." (Note: Found via InstaPundit. See also: "U.S. Slams German Minister for Bush-Hitler Comment" (Reuters, 2002/09/19))

"Liberation, etc." (Jonathan V. Last, The Weekly Standard, 2003/04/10)
"Yet the far left appears, on the whole, to have already dismissed Firdos Square. Buzzflash.com (an extremist version of the Drudge Report) carried no fewer than five stories about Iraqi civilian deaths yesterday and mentioned Firdos only once, and tangentially at that, with the headline "Ah, Yes, Democracy. Iraqis Looting and Dancing in Baghdad." Buzzflash carried more stories about Haliburton and Enron than yesterday's Iraqi celebrations. ...
The liberal site Indymedia mentioned Firdos not at all on their front page, but on April 7 carried a feature headlined "Peace-Activists Enter Baghdad," which approvingly noted that more human shields were entering the city to protect Iraqi civilians. No mention of the banner being held up yesterday which read, "Go Home Human Shields." The liberal site Indymedia mentioned Firdos not at all on their front page, but on April 7 carried a feature headlined "Peace-Activists Enter Baghdad," which approvingly noted that more human shields were entering the city to protect Iraqi civilians. No mention of the banner being held up yesterday which read, 'Go Home Human Shields.'"

"Antiwar: Movement, or Cult?" (Mark Goldblatt, New York Post, 2003/04/10)
A prediction that no doubt - sad at is is - will prove true: "You'd think the fact that the liberation of 22 million oppressed people was accomplished with minimal civilian casualties (indeed, minimal military casualties) would give pause to those who've been marching against the war.
It won't, of course. For the antiwar movement consists not of thinkers but of true believers; indeed, it's more akin to a religious cult than a political cause, hoist on tenets of faith rather than points of evidence - and, thus, in the final analysis, no more responsive to counterarguments than guys who stand on street corners in sandwich boards forecasting the end of the world next weekend . . . no, next weekend . . . no, next weekend.
As the Iraqi people rise up to cheer the American troops, the true believers will claim the scenes are staged. As chemical and biological weapons are uncovered, the true believers will claim they were planted. As an interim government is established, the true believers will claim it's a puppet for American interests. As the oil wealth of Iraq is translated into prosperity for the people, the true believers will claim American companies are hogging profits."

"Von Hoffmann Award..." (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/04/10)
Nominees for the Von Hoffmann Award, for "awful wartime predictions": "'In Baghdad the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors. They are not like countryside. They seldom capitulate, least of all when their backs are to the wall. It took two years after the American withdrawal from Vietnam for Saigon to fall to the Vietcong. Kabul was ceded to the warlords only when the Taleban drove out of town. In the desert, armies fight armies. In cities, armies fight cities. The Iraqis were not stupid. They listened to Western strategists musing about how a desert battle would be a pushover. Things would get 'difficult' only if Saddam played the cad and drew the Americans into Baghdad. Why should he do otherwise?' - Simon Jenkins, the Times of London, in an article called - yes! - "Baghdad Will Be Near Impossible to Conquer," March 28." (See also: "Baghdad will be near impossible to conquer" (Simon Jenkins, The Times, 2003/03/28). UPDATE: Here's a copy of the article.)

"Who got it right and who got it wrong?" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/10)
A very telling collection of "predictions made by politicians and commentators at home and abroad regarding the likely course of the war in Iraq":
"The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in The Telegraph Nov 5, 2002: In 1939, we risked our own lives and safety in resisting a tyranny. In this instance, we are more likely to risk the lives of hundreds and thousands in a region that could rapidly spiral down into chaos.
Leaked UN document Guardian, Feb 15, says: 1.5 million refugees will try to flee Iraq and 30 per cent of the country's under-fives would be at risk of death from malnutrition if war takes place.
Richard Littlejohn, columnist, The Sun, Jan 14: This war could last for decades.
Robert Fisk, The Independent, 20 March: At the Alastrabak grocery store, I bought 25 loo rolls, a mountain of biscuits and a stack of red and green candles . . . After a siege or two - the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut was my first - you develop an uncanny knack of knowing what to hunt for. ...
Robert Fisk, The Independent, April 2: The Iraqi army's defences seem impenetrable. ...
Andrew Stephen, New Statesman, Mar 31: And they thought it was going to be so easy. They really did believe it: that troops would be welcomed in Iraq, with flowers and hugs and kisses, as liberators for whom they had been waiting so long."

"'Cakewalk' Revisited" (Ken Adelman, The Washington Post, 2003/04/10)
"On Feb. 13, 2002, I wrote a sleeper-cell op-ed for this page. It lay dormant, being virtually ignored, until springing to life more than a year later. Its title, "Cakewalk in Iraq," contained that "c" word (also found in the piece), which was scantly speakable one week ago. ...
The piece was "taking exception" to one of the host of fear-mongering articles then being put out, this by Brookings Institution analysts Philip H. Gordon and Michael E. O'Hanlon. They had concluded, among other dire warnings, that "the United States could lose thousands of troops" in any war in Iraq. ...
Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters was the respected former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. His influential Wall Street Journal piece of Aug. 15, 2002, said Israel "would have to expect to be the first casualty," which could easily cause that country "to respond, perhaps with nuclear weapons, unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East." We in the liberate-Iraq camp have been castigated for exaggeration, but nothing any of us said, or even suggested, can match that." (See also: "Cakewalk In Iraq" (Ken Adelman, The Washington Post, 2002/02/13))

"Don't listen to the Arab elites, the Iraqis didn't and they're the ones cheering today" (Amir Taheri, The Times, 2003/04/10)
"Much of the Arab media went hysterical about imaginary battles in which resisting Iraqis supposedly inflicted massive losses on "the invaders". They forecast a war that would last "for years", if not "until the end of time".
Al-Ahram, the Egyptian government daily, promised that "the heroic Iraqis, ready to fight to the last of their blood", would turn their country into "a vast graveyard for America’s imperial dreams”. Many Arab newspapers imported their illusions from the West. Throughout the war, the Saudi, Egyptian and Lebanese press syndicated hundreds of articles from British and French anti-war newspapers. (The Saudi Arab News, for example, ran up to ten articles from The Independent each day.)
The headlines screamed "Americans slaughter civilians" and "Thousands of Iraqis prepare for suicide missions". None of that happened. The Iraqis proved to be wiser than some of their Arab brethren had assumed. ...
These days the Arab media are full of articles about how the Arabs feel humiliated by what has happened in Iraq, how they are frustrated, how they hate America for having liberated the people of Iraq from their oppressor, and how they hope that the Europeans, presumably led by Jacques Chirac, will ride to the rescue to preserve a little bit of Saddam’s legacy with the help of the United Nations.
Thank God, the peoples of Iraq, not deceived by Arab hyperbole, are ignoring such nonsense."

"The Shot Seen Round the World" (Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 2003/04/10)
"It was a spontaneous moment, a natural moment, a dramatic moment, but it soon became a stage-managed moment.
The sight of Iraqis trying to topple Saddam's towering statue in downtown Baghdad yesterday morning was worth a thousand news conferences, a thousand op-ed pieces, a zillion propaganda leaflets dropped from U.S. planes. Finally, here was proof, for all the world to see, that at least some of Saddam's former subjects were feeling liberated.
The problem, as Ted Koppel put it, was that he remembered seeing anti-Soviet crowds trying to bring down a statue of Lenin, and "it took them 17 hours."
Television wanted the pictures faster than that. And daylight would soon be gone.
As if sensing the impatience, some Marines brought in a tank to speed the statue's destruction. Then one of them clambered up the statue and threw an American flag over Saddam's head – producing precisely the wrong image, that of a foreign occupying force."

"Victory in the 21-day war" (Stephen Farrell, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/10)
"'Yankee bastard,' yelled the young British peacenik at the first American tank to roll up to the Palestine Hotel. "Go home."
She picked a man who had waited for 576 days to give his answer. Marine First Lieutenant Tim McLaughlin leant from the turret of his Abrams tank — nickamed "Satan's Right Hand" — and screamed back: "I was at the Pentagon September 11. My co-workers died. I don’t give a f***."
Lieutenant McLaughlin had with him a Stars and Stripes that he had been given at the Pentagon that fateful day. In Baghdad's Paradise Square, he handed the flag to Corporal Edward Chin, who climbed a giant statue of Saddam and draped it over the deposed dictator's head."

"Emotional Torrent Greets G.I. Arrival in Central Baghdad" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2003/04/10)
"Much of Baghdad became, in a moment, a showcase of unbridled enthusiasm for America, as much as it metamorphosed into a crucible of unbridled hatred and contempt for Mr. Hussein. ...
American troops, but almost as much any Westerner caught up in the tide of people rushing into the streets, were met with scenes that summoned comparisons with Europe's liberation from the Nazis.
Iraqis on foot, on motorscooters, in cars and minivans and trucks, alone and in groups, children and adults and elderly, headed for any point on the map where American troops had taken up positions — at expressway junctions, outside the United Nations headquarters, at two hotels on the Tigris River where western newsmen had been sequestered by Mr. Hussein's government — and erupted with enthusiasm and gratitude.
Shouts to the American soldiers of "Thank you, mister, thank you," in English, of "Welcome, my friend, welcome," of "Good, good, good," and "Yes, yes, mister" mingled with cries of "Good, George Bush!" and 'Down Saddam!'"

"Iraqi Leaders Are Nowhere To Be Seen" (Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, 2003/04/10)
"Secret CIA and military teams in Iraq and surveillance devices set up to monitor Saddam Hussein's inner circle reported yesterday that nearly the entire Iraqi leadership had vanished.
U.S. military commanders said they suspected that some leaders had headed to Hussein's hometown of Tikrit for a final bloody showdown and that others had fled to Syria. ...
As Baghdad slipped from Hussein's control yesterday, covert CIA and Special Operations teams dedicated to killing or capturing the Iraqi president and senior leaders discovered that the Baath Party leaders, Republican Guard leaders, troops and high-level government officials they had targeted were not at their usual posts. Even the information minister, who had been briefing journalists with outlandish versions of daily events, did not go to work.
"All of a sudden, all communications ceased and the regime didn't come to work," was the way one senior administration official described what happened in Baghdad. "Even the minders for [foreign] journalists did not go to work," he added."

"Iraq's U.N. Envoy Concedes Defeat in War" (AP/The Guardian, 2003/04/10)
"With the fall of Baghdad, Iraq's U.N. ambassador declared Wednesday, "the game is over'' - and became the first Iraqi official to concede defeat in the U.S.-led war.
Mohammed Al-Douri expressed hope that the Iraqi people will now be able to live in peace.
"My work now is peace,'' he told reporters outside his New York residence. "The game is over, and I hope the peace will prevail. I hope the Iraqi people will have a happy life.''
Al-Douri was asked what he meant when he said "the game is over.''
"The war,'' he responded.
His comments were the first admission by an Iraqi official that coalition forces had overwhelmed Iraqi troops after a three-week campaign.
In an AP interview Wednesday night, Al-Douri said he will continue to work at the United Nations and had no intention of defecting.
"Defecting from who?'' he asked. 'I think the government has already defected. There is no more Iraqi government to be defected from.'"

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

News and commentary:

"Kurds in Sulaimaniya, Iraq, celebrated the fall of Baghdad."
(Chang W. Lee, The New York Times, 2003/04/09)

"Opposition leader: Saddam is alive" (CNN.com, 2003/04/09)
"Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told CNN Wednesday the unconfirmed reports indicated that the Iraqi president had taken refuge in the city of Baqubah, northeast of the Iraqi capital.
"We have no evidence they have been killed in that attack. We know at least that Qusay, his son, has survived and he is occupying some houses in the Diyala area," Chalabi said.
The same reports indicated that Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majeed - nicknamed "Chemical Ali" - was wounded but alive and in the same area."

"Special Gloat and Quote Edition: Media's Erroneous Predictions" (Brent Baker, Media Research Center, 2003/04/09)
A collection of erroneous predictions concerning the war:
"Conventional Idiocy
"Steadfast, but his war cluelessly flings open the gates of hell, making any sort of victory Pyrrhic."
- Newsweek’s April 7 "Conventional Wisdom" column, explaining why President Bush deserved a "down arrow" for the week.
"British P.M. can actually explain this thing coherently. He's Churchill to Bush's Red Buttons."
- The next item in the same column, assigning an "up arrow" to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Tells Meet the Press just before the war, 'We will be greeted as liberators.' An arrogant blunder for the ages."
- The next item in the same column, assigning a "down arrow" to Vice President Dick Cheney."

"The dogs were yelping. They knew bombs were on the way" (Robert Fisk, Independent, 2003/04/09)
Found via Best of the Web Today, who has a great round-up of "Scenes from the Liberation" today, plus a compilation of some who certainly not are celebrating, including Robert Fisk, accusing "Iraqis of being ignorant while shamelessly displaying his own cluelessness": "On my way back past the Ahrar Bridge, I found a crowd of spectators standing on the parapet, watching the American tanks with a mixture of amusement and fear. Did they not know what was happening in their city, or - an idea that has possessed me in recent days - are the poor of Baghdad kept in such ignorance of events that they simply do not realise that the Americans are about to occupy their city? Could it be that the cigarette sellers and the bakery queues and the bus drivers just don't know what lies down on the banks of the Tigris?"

"A Jordanian in Amman cover his face..."
(Ali Jarekji, Reuters, 2003/04/09)
"A Jordanian in Amman cover his face in front of a television showing a U.S. Marine cover the face of a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with a U.S. flag in Baghdad April 9, 2003. Jubilant Iraqis tied a noose around a huge statue of Saddam Hussein in the heart of Baghdad and pelted it with shoes as the Iraqi president's 24-year rule collapsed in chaos."

"Arabs Watch Saddam's Demise in Disbelief" (Lucy Fielder, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/04/09)
More reactions from the Arab world: "Arabs watched in disbelief on Wednesday as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, described by one Moroccan as the Arab world's "best dictator," lost Baghdad to U.S.-led forces without a fight. "It's like a movie. I can't believe what I'm seeing," said Adel, a lawyer in Beirut. ...
Rabat perfume shop owner Lahoucine Lanait described Saddam as the Arab world's "best dictator."
But few Arabs had a kind word for him as his 24-year rule collapsed on Wednesday.
"Saddam is not an Arab champion. The war is practically over, did he win? No, and Iraq is destroyed," said Ayman Abdel Rahim, a Cairo butcher. ...
In Oman, some said Saddam, whose fate is unknown after he was targeted by U.S. planes, symbolized resistance.
"It is irrelevant whether Saddam is dead or not. His memory will live on to inspire many Arabs to stand up against all the injustices committed by the U.S. and its friends in Israel," Belqees Hamood, a university student, said.
"Saddam was not an angel to his own people but he will be missed since many Arabs see him as a leader who was not afraid to challenge the American and Israeli aggressions over Palestinians," said Juma Backer, a businessman."

"Saddam's spokesman and the big lie" (Ian MacLeod, The Ottawa Citizen, 2003/04/09)
"Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf was speaking to reporters yesterday outside Baghdad's Palestine Hotel just after a U.S. tank shell slammed into the building.
Undaunted, he triumphantly announced: "All is under control." ...
The smirks exploded into laughter Monday when Mr. al-Sahhaf, with a wry smile, proclaimed the western invaders were about to be slaughtered. As he spoke, acrid black smoke billowed across the city's skyline and unopposed U.S. troops stormed a presidential complex a few hundred metres away.
"Baghdad is safe," he insisted to reporters gathered on the roof of a downtown building. "U.S. soldiers are being slaughtered in their hundreds."
"The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds," he continued. "We besieged them and we killed most of them and I think we will finish them soon."
When one correspondent pointed out that U.S. armour was visible by the Tigris River, the minister added: 'There is no presence of American infidels ... at all.'" (UPDATE: For collections of quotes by the former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, see for example: "Quotes from Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf" (mongabay.com, 2003/04/07) and "'We will slaughter them all'" (Liebreich.com, 2003/04/16): "And finally, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf's Famous Last Words: 'I now inform you that you are too far from reality.'"))

"Baghdad: a battle that did not happen" (Dalal Saoud, UPI, 2003/04/09)
Meanwhile, sadness and conspiracy theorizing in the Arab world: "'Baghdad without a regime' and "Baghdad in Chaos" were the main headlines on Arab TV stations that were broadcasting images of widespread looting in the Iraqi capital. ...
"Where are the Iraqi army, the Republican Guards and the Baath paramilitary combatants?" asked an analyst who wished not to be identified. "Was there a deal with the U.S. to neutralize the army?" ...
For Tewfic Mishlawi, editor of the English-language Middle East Reporter, the collapse of resistance in Baghdad was "a very sad thing."
"No one regrets Saddam's departure but the war in Iraq is wrong as a whole," Mishlawi said. "The way it happened was wrong: a superpower that ignores all legitimacy, charters and everything." ...
Mishlawi said he was surprised that Iraqis did not resist the coalition forces. He explained that the fear of Saddam's regime and lack of confidence in the coalition forces were some of the reasons.
"Despite that, Iraqis want to see Saddam removed from power and have suffered from his brutal regime, they will resent a foreign power," he said. 'If there will be an escalation of popular resistance, I will be extremely happy.'"

"As the Cheering Starts" (Martin Kramer, National Review, 2003/04/09)
Comments on the celebrations in Baghdad, including this sobering reflection by Martin Kramer:
"The long-awaited scenes of celebration from Iraq tell us this: Iraq's own people have lost their fear of Saddam. They know that even if he still lives, he will not return. A chapter is closed.
But in Baghdad, a joyous crowd celebrates every regime change. In 1958, a military coup destroyed the royal family. The crowd seized the body of the regent and dismembered it. The trunk was secured to the balcony of the Defense Ministry. "A young man with a knife in his hand climbed a lamp-post nearby," wrote an Iraqi witness, "and began cutting off the flesh, working from the buttocks upwards."
No doubt, there are many in today's crowds who would do the same to the body of Saddam — including people who, only last week, pledged themselves willing to sacrifice their spirit and blood for him.
The Iraqis, in the end, did not rise up. They waited to see the whites of American eyes before they headed into the streets. They did not earn their freedom; they had it delivered to them, U.S. federal express. It is doubtful they are ready to assume its responsibilities.
This is the time to put illusions aside, and take a hard look at the people whose fates we now control. Just as they could not remove the dictator without American lifting, they cannot make a civil order without American prodding. There's nothing exceptional about an excitable crowd in Baghdad. "Liberation Day" will come only when the Iraqis go to the polls, and convene a parliament."

"Freedom & Dignity" (Amir Taheri, National Review, 2003/04/09)
"The Don't-Touch-Saddam lobby in Europe and the U.S. had prophesied that Baghdad would become Stalingrad 1942.
On Thursday, Baghdad became Paris after liberation in 1945. ...
Here is the first lesson to draw from the liberation of Baghdad: Iraqis, and Arabs in general, are no different from other human beings. They, too, prefer to live in freedom and dignity. They, too, are grateful to those who come to their aid in their hour of need. They, too, reject the disease of anti-Americanism that prevents so many otherwise sane people from acknowledging that the United States can be a force for the good."

"You Call This Liberation?" (Clifford D. May, National Review, 2003/04/09)
"So there you have it: Saddam's mighty military machine has collapsed, civilian casualties have been held to a minimum, our troops are not being showered with chemical weapons, the oil wells aren't ablaze, the Turks aren't fighting with the Kurds, the Israelis aren't being hit by Scuds, a hundred bin Ladens haven't managed to detonate 1,000 suicide bombers in America's shopping malls, Arab leaders friendly to the U.S. aren't being hanged from street lamps — but how come we still haven't dealt with the burglaries in downtown Basra? It's an outrage! Quick someone, call Sean Penn and Michael Moore!"

"The fall of Baghdad" (Bob Graham, The Evening Standard, 2003/04/09)
The liberation spinned into a nightmare: "Baghdad is today rapidly disintegrating into a lawless city with hordes of looters taking to the streets.
Initial jubilation as US troops took control of five main districts of the city has swiftly been replaced by concerns that the sudden collapse of Saddam Hussein's hold has created a new and dangerous security nightmare. ...
The mood of wild euphoria among the five million-strong population of Baghdad was mixed with menace. One man waved an AK47 in the air as he shouted: "Liberty, Liberty. This is the day we have been waiting for for years and years."
Marines were showered with flowers during their unopposed street-by-street approach towards the regime's last stronghold on the east bank of the Tigris. ...
BBC reporter Paul Wood said there were occasional bursts of machinegun fire in the city centre but he said that could be from shopkeepers fending off looters.
He added: 'A lot of shopkeepers have Kalashnikovs and there is a real fear this could tip into a form of civil war.'"

"Smiles and Flowers for U.S. Marines in Baghdad" (Sean Maguire, Reuters, 2003/04/09)
"Hundreds of jubilant Iraqis mobbed a convoy of U.S. Marines on Wednesday, cheering, dancing and waving as American troops swept toward central Baghdad through slums and leafy suburbs from the east.
Crowds threw flowers at the Marines as they drove past the Martyrs' Monument, just three km (two miles) east of the central Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris river.
Young and middle-aged men, many wearing soccer shirts of leading Western clubs like Manchester United, shouted "Hello, hello" as Marines advanced through the rundown sprawl of Saddam City and then more prosperous suburbs with villas and trim lawns.
"No more Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed. "We love you, we love you."
One young man ran alongside a Marine armored personnel carrier trying to hand over a heavy belt of ammunition.
An older man made a wild kicking gesture with his foot, saying "Goodbye Saddam."
Women waved from balconies, girls threw flower petals at young Marines leaning across gun turrets. One woman held her baby aloft.
Tank crews picked the flowers from the tops of their fighting machines, smelt them and grinned.
One man shouted to a soldier: "Is it over?."
"Almost," came the Marine's reply."

"U.S. Military: Hussein No Longer Controls Baghdad" (Thomas W. Lippman, The Washington Post, 2003/04/09)
"After three weeks of war, Saddam Hussein no longer rules Baghdad.
U.S. tanks rolled unmolested into the center of Baghdad today to a tumultuous welcome from the city's jubilant residents. The White House and U.S. military leaders proclaimed an end to Hussein's control of the capital city, stopping just short of declaring victory in the campaign to oust the Iraqi president and destroy his regime. ...
Television cameras showed stunning images of American troops, weapons at the ready, walking on the streets of Baghdad among residents celebrating the downfall of Hussein after more than two decades of police-state control.
Baghdadis poured into the streets in celebration, waving at U.S. troops and tearing down posters and busts of Hussein. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. troops joined a group of Iraqis in a city square to topple a giant statue of Hussein, pulling it off its pedestal with a rope around the neck."

"A U.S. soldier watches as a statue..."
(Reuters/Goran Tomasevic, 2003/04/09)
"A U.S. soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad April 9, 2003. Iraqis danced on the fallen statue in contempt for the man who ruled them with an iron grip for 24 years. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Iraqis earlier took a sledgehammer to the marble plinth under the statue of Saddam. Youths had placed a noose around the statue's neck and attached the rope to a U.S. armored recovery vehicle."

"An Iraqi woman and child greet advancing U.S. Marines..."
(Reuters/Oleg Popov, 2003/04/09)
"An Iraqi woman and child greet advancing U.S. Marines on the way to the center of Iraqi capital Baghdad on April 9, 2003. A senior U.S. commander said on Wednesday that U.S. forces had secured the center of Baghdad and said the combat phase of the Iraqi war would end in a few days' time, at least in the capital and in southern Iraq."

"Why the Left will never put its hands up" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/09)
"I have this delightful fantasy of George Galloway, Shirley Williams, Chris Smith, Frank Dobson, most of the BBC newsroom, the entire Liberal Democrat Party and the Guardian comment page editorial staff putting their hands up en masse and saying: "Well, actually we got that a little bit wrong." And maybe even deciding that, since their analysis of the war was mistaken, their diagnosis of the peace might be open to question, too.
But I'm not holding my breath. Those for whom America is always wrong will not be slowed down by this momentary setback. Rather like Mr al-Sahaf, they will not even appear to notice the tanks in the streets of their ideological neighbourhood. They will look away from the welcoming crowds of Basra (yes, they really did cheer, once it was safe to do so) and just move smartly on to the next American 'crime against humanity.'"

"Empty boasts and bluster" (Jack Kelly, The Washington Times, 2003/04/09)
"The fighting, such as it's been, in Iraq pretty much illustrates the Arab way of war for the last 10 centuries: treachery, brutality toward the helpless, cowardice in the face of the enemy and constant empty boasting. Arabs bluster, then retreat.
A good example of this came last Saturday. A battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) launched a lightning raid into the heart of Baghdad, driving up the main road from the south into the center of the city, then leaving town on the main road coming in from the west. The battalion killed between 2,000 and 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and irregulars in the course of that raid, at a cost of one U.S. soldier killed, three wounded and one Abrams tank destroyed. After the raid, Iraqi irregulars crowded around the disabled tank, mugging for the cameras of Arab TV. They shook their fists in the air, fired off their Kalashnikovs and acted as if they had won a great victory. In their minds, they had. ...
The amazing thing is that there are millions of Arabs who still take Sahhaf seriously. According to Al Jazeera and other Arab networks, Saddam's forces have been moving from triumph to triumph. When it comes to anti-American propaganda, you can sell Arabs the Brooklyn bridge not just once, but over and over again."

"Resisting Superpowerful Temptations" (Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 2003/04/09)
"The United States can win hearts and minds in Europe, and maybe even in the Arab world, by convincing people, in retrospect, that the war was more just than they thought. Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find - and there will be plenty. But enormous efforts should also go into documenting and publicizing the brutal nature of the Saddam Hussein regime in all its horrifying detail. Some billionaire should finance the equivalent of a "holocaust museum" in Baghdad, memorializing the human suffering brought on the Iraqi (and Kuwaiti and Iranian) people over the past quarter-century. Those voices should finally be heard by everyone, including those who managed to plug their ears to Iraqi pleas while shaking their fists at the United States.
All in all, America's ability to lead effectively in the future will depend a lot on how this war is understood and remembered by the world. This battle is just beginning, and if the administration can be as clever in diplomacy as it is in war, it can win that one, too."

"Plus ça change" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/04/09)
"So Jacques Chirac is going for broke. Anyone who thought that the French president would swiftly seek a rapprochement with les Anglo Saxons following the success of the allied military campaign in Iraq will have been gravely disappointed by his remarks yesterday.
Just hours after George W. Bush and Tony Blair had stated at their summit in Belfast that the United Nations had a "vital role" to play in the future of Iraq - a nicely vague concept - Mr Chirac opined that it was up to the UN "alone" to conduct the political, economic and humanitarian reconstruction of that benighted land. It was, he claimed, the sole repository of legitimacy for such a venture.
What does Mr Chirac hope to achieve by this intervention? He presumably cannot be deluded enough to think that he will much impress America, where the UN's prestige ranks only a little higher than his own after France's failed attempt to stop America and Britain from liberating Iraq. ...
And by adopting the pose of "my UN, right or wrong", Mr Chirac has found a suitable springboard for the emerging Franco-German-Russian triple alliance to counterbalance American hyper-power."

"Why Europe chooses extinction" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2003/04/09)
"Demographics is destiny. Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death, a combination of bubonic plague and likely a form of mad cow disease, observes American Enterprise Institute scholar Ben Wattenberg. "The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe's population will relive — in slow motion — that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050 and more as the decades roll on."