Can’t Bush and Blair See Iraq Is About to Explode?

[Guest guest]

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7 & section=0 & article=49292 & d=2 & m=8 & y=2004

 

Can’t Bush and Blair See Iraq Is About to Explode?

Robert Fisk, The Independent

 

 

BAGHDAD, 2August 2004 — The war is a fraud. I’m not

talking about the weapons of mass destruction that

didn’t exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and

Al-Qaeda which didn’t exist. Nor all the other lies

upon which we went to war. I’m talking about the new

lies.

 

For just as, before the war, our governments warned us

of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us

the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen

outside the control of America’s puppet government in

Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are

made against US troops every month. But unless an

American dies, we are not told. This month’s death

toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 —

the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are

not told.

 

The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was

all too evident at Saddam Hussein’s “trial”. Not only

did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not

only did they effectively delete all sound of the11

other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein

to believe — until he reached the courtroom — that he

was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he

entered the room he believed that the judge was there

to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way

Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he

initially looked “disorientated” — CNN’s helpful

description — because, of course, he was meant to look

that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why

Saddam asked Judge Juhi: “Are you a lawyer? ... Is

this a trial?” And swiftly, as he realized that this

really was an initial court hearing — not a

preliminary to his own hanging — he quickly adopted an

attitude of belligerence. But don’t think we’re going

to learn much more about Saddam’s future court

appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted

fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans

with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago

that all media would be excluded from future court

hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a

Milosevic, he’ll want to talk about the real

intelligence and military connections of his regime —

which were primarily with the United States.

 

Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well

as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf.

Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are

murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police

vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70

miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am

sitting in my room in Baghdad watching British Prime

Minister Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons

as if he is the hero of a school debating competition;

so much for the Butler report.

 

Indeed, watching any Western television station in

Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars.

Doesn’t Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode?

Doesn’t Bush realize this? The American-appointed

“government” controls only parts of Baghdad — and even

there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed

and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya,

Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government

authority. Iyad Allawi, the “prime minister”, is

little more than mayor of Baghdad. “Some journalists,”

Blair announces, “almost want there to be a disaster

in Iraq.” He doesn’t get it. The disaster exists now.

 

When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of

recruits outside police stations, how on earth can

anyone hold an election next January? Even the

National Conference to appoint those who will arrange

elections has been twice postponed. And looking back

through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find

that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier

I have spoken to, not a single mercenary — be he

American, British or South African — believes that

there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq

is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we

journalists weren’t saying so.

 

But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush

telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is

improving, that Iraqis support the “coalition”, that

they support their new US-manufactured government,

that the “war on terror” is being won, that Americans

are safer. Then I go to an Internet site and watch two

hooded men hacking off the head of an American in

Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in

Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list

another construction company pulling out of the

country. And I go down to visit the friendly,

tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and

there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we

supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and

cursing as they carry their loved ones on their

shoulders in cheap coffins.

 

I keep re-reading Tony Blair’s statement. “I remain

convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most

difficult decision of my life.” And I cannot

understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to

war. Even Chamberlain thought that; but he didn’t find

it a difficult decision — because, after the Nazi

invasion of Poland, it was the right thing to do. And

driving the streets of Baghdad now, watching the

terrified American patrols, hearing yet another

thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors

after dawn, I realize what all this means. Going to

war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the most

difficult decision Blair had to take because he

thought — correctly — that it might be the wrong

decision. I will always remember his remark to British

troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British

soldiers was not Hollywood but “real flesh and blood”.

Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was shed.

 

“Deadly force is authorized,” it says on checkpoints

all over Baghdad. Authorized by whom? There is no

accountability. Repeatedly, on the great highways out

of the city US soldiers shriek at motorists and open

fire at the least suspicion. “We had some Navy Seals

down at our checkpoint the other day,” a1 st Cavalry

sergeant says to me. “They asked if we were having any

trouble. I said, yes, they’ve been shooting at us from

a house over there. One of them asked: ‘That house?’

We said yes. So they have these three SUVs and a lot

of weapons made of titanium and they drive off towards

the house. And later they come back and say ‘We’ve

taken care of that’. And we didn’t get shot at any

more.” What does this mean? The Americans are now

bragging about their siege of Najaf. Lt. Col. Garry

Bishop of the37 th Armored Division’s 1st Battalion

believes it was an “ideal” battle (even though he

failed to kill or capture Moqtada Sadr whose “Mehdi

army” were fighting the US forces). It was “ideal”,

Bishop explained, because the Americans avoided

damaging the holy shrines of the Imams Ali and

Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a

Muslim army occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury and

then bragged that they hadn’t damaged Canterbury

Cathedral? Would we be grateful? What, indeed, are we

to make of a war which is turned into a fantasy by

those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of

Iraq for fear of their lives, US Secretary of State

Colin Powell tells a press conference that

hostage-taking is having an “effect” on

reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are

now as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now,

they have only four hours of electricity a day; the

streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking

from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don’t

clear the way for them. This is the “safer” Iraq which

Blair was boasting of the other day. What world does

the British government exist in?