Months later, nothing safe in Baghdad

[leftchick]

BAGHDAD -- "The first thing you should know is that the plane lands in a corkscrew landing -- perhaps appropriately a downward spiral."
Thus began a "visitor's guide" e-mail by Anne Barnard, The Boston Globe's woman in Baghdad. I was familiar with the landing technique, to avoid ground fire, from the bad old days in Cambodia 30 years ago. What surprised me was the downward spiral here, despite all I had read.

It seems impossible that two and a half years after the city's occupation began, life is still so precarious. Suicide car bombers strike when and where they want, and bombs are planted in dead dogs and old tires bringing death by IED, the ubiquitous "improvised explosive device" that has been responsible for half of America's deaths as well as uncounted Iraqis.

This is no longer the Baghdad I first knew 20 years ago, even then weary from Saddam's ruinous war with Iran. What seemed clean and modern then seems shabby now after two more wars, with piles of rubbish in the streets. Shattered buildings await the reconstruction that never seems to come. With electricity, the arterial blood of urban life, still in such short supply, the voice of the generator is heard in the land, so reminiscent of Beirut in that city's bad old days. American armored convoys sally forth into the city's traffic, with frightened young soldiers who, in practice if not intention, shoot first if you get too close, and find out who you were later.

Also, there are many more scarves on women's heads, for the old secular Baghdad is dying as religiosity floods in to fill the vacuum left by the old tyrant's departure.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=415579&category=OPINION&newsdate=11/3/2005

[ClintonTyree]

1. Freedom is on the march.........

:eyes: How much longer can we keep this charade up?

[indepat]

14. How much longer will the MSM be complicit in keeping this charade up?

[Missy M]

2. All I can say is 'what a mess' and I'm sure it is bound to get messier!!!

[UpInArms]

3. and what did we "win"?

One is buffeted by contradictions and mood swings between hope and despair. Last week four reporters were listening to the impressive vice president, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, speak of a brighter future of accommodation and compromise leading to a cessation of violence when a knock on the door brought unwelcome news.

"They have assassinated my brother," Abdul-Mahdi told us, and the interview was hastily concluded.

Perhaps 100,000 dead Iraqis?

Definitely (as of this moment) 2,035 dead US military.

Definitely another 15,000+ wounded and perhaps forever incapacitated US military.

Definitely BILLION$$ for Halliburton.

:cry:

[annabanana]

4. "some Iraqis wax nostalgic for Saddam's law and order."

How depressing it is. How avoidable it was. How much worse will it become?

" The assassin's hand is never far, and death squads of one faction or another roam the city. Sometimes they are disguised as the police. Sometimes they are the police."

[0007]

6. The middle class & the poor are getting bombed while the wealthy

receive tax breaks.

Better days are bound to be ahead somewhere!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

22. Iraq?

Or America?

[SharonAnn]

21. Like Mussolini who "made the trains run on time" in Italy.

[Callalily]

5. We have accomplished

absolutely nothing. Every single person who died because of this hellish war died in vain. Accomplishments? Well I suppose we could count alienation and loss of respect by the whole world.

[RedEarth]

7. Don't tell this to republicans, we don't want to rain on their parade....

They think everything is going great..new schools, roads, hospitals. Little due they understand, we destroyed much of the infrastructure during the invasion. One thing we can't rebuild is the 100,000 + Iraqi citizens we've killed.

[leftchick]

8. well said RE

you know, I had to listen to all of that RW crap from my nephew when I was home last month. What an idiot! He lives for the good news stories on faux to justify this illegal invasion. Where faux comes up with the stories I have no idea.

[Amonester]

9. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere at this link:

(faux news take their "fabricated" stories from BigOil&MIC's PNAC)

http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/pnac.html

And the "poor" souls paid/pay the "price tag" http://icasualties.org

[YDogg]

10. This may be a silly question, but how old is your nephew?

Why isn't he putting his money where his mouth is? If this is such a noble cause, surely he's willing to man up and join the armed forces.

[leftchick]

11. funny you should ask

He turns 31 this month and I told him he still had time to enlist. He said he would if he could but job, wife, kids.. blah blah.

I have printed up some enlistment forms to give him at Christmas. I will also inform him he does not have to worry about his pot smoking habit. The Recruiters will help him pass a drug test, they are so desperate for bodies!
;)

[ClintonTyree]

12. Right, and the Army will make sure his wife and kids are well....

taken care of. Just like all of the Army Reservists that are over there now. Ask their loved ones at home how great things are on the home-front. He has nothing to worry about, and his country NEEDS him! They've yet to find all of those WMD's and the nukes, don't forget the nukes! :nuke: THE U.S. of A. NEEDS HIM NOW! :patriot:
We have to find them. Rumsfeld KNOWS where they are. They're either north, south, east or west of Takrit so I think he should seriously consider volunteering for the Army. :shrug: It shouldn't take long.
That is unless, of course, he's "fighting the war of ideas here at home" like all of the other bush supporters. :eyes: If we had as many soldiers on the ground in Iraq fighting the REAL war bush started as we have fighting the war of ideas here at home, the damned thing would probably be over by now.
"War of ideas", that's just freep talk for "I'd soil myself over there".

[Gronk Groks]

15. Just call him what he is...

...a chickenhawk.

He is willing to have someone else to the dying and getting maimed.
He is willing for somebody else's wife to become a widow and raise the children by herself.
He is willing to have some other family go bankrupt on a soldier's pay.

But he doesn't have the gonads to do it himself.

[YDogg]

16. Why does he hate America?

:wtf:

[Gronk Groks]

13. When you can die at any moment it is hard to plan for the future...

Collateral Death to anything at any time...

"Nothing and no one is really safe in Baghdad today. I am told that when a suicide cement mixer tried to destroy the Palestine Hotel recently, its radiator flew through the air and landed in a nearby yard with feathers stuck to its twisted metal remains. In Baghdad, even the birds can be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

[FDR33]

17. What???

But Dick Cheney Version 4.5 said months ago that, "...the insurgency is in its last throes."

He wouldn't lie, would he?

[leftchick]

18. that is all he does...

everytime he opens his piehole.

welcome to DU FDR33

[newyawker99]

24. Hi FDR33!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[twaddler01]

19. Hey, but we won the war remember??

So who cares? :sarcasm:

[TahitiNut]

20. That "corkscrew landing" is how we landed at Bien Hoa ...

... in a planeload of new in-country "meat." It was about 6am on an early January morning in 1969. I could see pillars of dark smoke rising into the sky all around the airbase. The Continental Airlines 727(?) leaned onto its side and spiraled tightly downwards to the runway. (I thought we were landing during a battle. Everyone in the plane was deadly quiet.)

It turned out that the pillars of smoke were the shit being burned from the latrines. As we were hurried from the plane into a debarkation area, I saw my first Vietnamese woman about 40 yards away. She was wearing an Ao Dai (traditional attire) and walking between me and the sun. Woah!! Awesome! That wasn't going to be a morning I'd soon forget.

[leftchick]

23. apparently not!

That is a very vivid recollection TN. Thank you for sharing.

:)