Transcript
from PBS Newshour 2003/03/26:
Ray
Suarez talks with John Burns of The New York Times for the view from inside
Baghdad
PBS Real Audio original: "Ray Suarez talks with John Burns of The New York Times for the view from inside Baghdad"
(PBS, 2003/03/26)[...]
Ray Suarez: The department of defense says that it didn’t target any attacks to the area that the Iraqis are now saying was hit by cruise missiles. Did the Iraqi government have much to say on the subject today?
JB: Oh, they absolutely did. The impact you’re talking about... the explosions occurred something in the nature of 11:30 this morning in north-central Baghdad in a low rent district and on the main boulevard running out of the city to the north to the city of Kirkuk. We were taken there about two hours later. The circumstances had made it very difficult to determine exactly what had happened. First of all, sandstorm. Second of all, rain, turning the sandstorm into a kind of mud-rain. Beyond that there was the problem that all the bodies from these blasts had been removed. What ever had happened had happened sufficiently ahead of our arrival for even the cars which had been carbonized by these two explosions — one on either side of the road — to cool. There was no heat left in any of the chassis of the vehicles that were there. So we were left in the end relying if you will only on what the Iraqis told us. They of course said these were American bombs. Later on we were told these were cruise missiles.
What I can tell you is that the craters made by these blasts were a good deal smaller, certainly than anything you would expect from a cruise missile and certainly a good deal smaller than the big bombs that they’ve used in the “stunning” campaign. I am not an ordinance expert. I cannot tell you how a bomb crater would look different if the bomb had fallen from the air than it would, for example, if the bomb had been underground in the first place. I can’t tell you that.
What I can tell you with certainty is that 14 people died, about 45 people were injured, that they were undoubtedly signs that the government made of this, you would expect, a major propaganda event. The information minister immediately summoned us to the news conference to talk about the villainous gang in Washington and London that is busy murdering Iraqi civilians. We were taken to the hospitals where the doctors — I must say admirably eschewing politics — spoke only of the injuries that people had suffered. The surgical director of the al Kindi hospital was interesting, I thought, a man who took us around the hospital and showed us some of the injured. In his resolute refusal, even when invited to do so by the question, to make any kind of politics out of this event. He simply talked about traumatic injuries. He was not interested in attributing blame either way.
Now this evening I’ve learned that the Defense Department is saying that they had no cruise missiles targeted in that area. Perhaps the Pentagon isn’t absolutely sure what happened. We noticed that there was a military base [...] some several hundred of yards, perhaps about 800 yards further in towards Baghdad. Now whether that was a significant factor or not I don’t know but in some ways the politics of this were as interesting as anything else.
Of course, there as a gathering of a sort of Greek chorus as there is at every one of these incidents of Ba’ath party officials in uniform with pistols with Kalashnikov rifles leading local people and men in tribal headdresses in denunciations of Bush, denunciations of the United States and singing the praises of Saddam Hussein that we see every time. Amongst the ordinary people there, the remarkable thing, and this is the story I tell again and again, was absolute absence of hostility. When they asked us Where are you from?“England,” I said. “England good country,” they would say, shaking my hand. There was Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker, an American. “Where are you from?” “I’m from the United States.” “America good country.” This could be only that Iraqi citizens are decent enough and sensible enough to distinguish between government and citizen — I don’t know — or else indeed something else. As usual, there’s more we don’t know about this than we do know.
RS: John Burns, thanks for being with us tonight.
JB: It’s my pleasure.
[Transcription from the streaming audio by contributing reader Douglas.]
[Posted 2003/03/28]
Copyright © Watch 2001-2006. Copyrights of quoted materials
belong to their respective owners.
"When
people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."
Articles
of the week
"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)
"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)
"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)
"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)
›
AOTW Archive
From the archives
Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.
"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)
"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)
"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)
"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)
Weekly archive
2006/12/04
- 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13
- 2006/11/19
2006/11/06
- 2006/11/12
2006/10/30
- 2006/11/05
›
From
2001/09/11 -
Monthly
index
December
2006
November
2006
October
2006
September
2006
August
2006
July
2006
›
From
September 2001 -
Author index
›
Ajami,
Fouad - Johnson, Paul
›
Kagan,
Robert - Ye'or, Bat
Support
Watch
Please
feel free to donate if you enjoy the daily content and links Watch provides:
Contact Watch
Email:
watch-at-windsofchange.net
