Hey Iraqis. That noise keeping you awake all night is the sound of freedom

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB13Ak01.html

Black Hawks down in Iraqi quagmire
By Iason Athanasiadis

TEHRAN - One of the most terrifying experiences of an embedded journalist in Iraq has to be skimming over the darkened landscape in the middle of the night in a Black Hawk helicopter.

On one such trip, a gunner hunched over his M60 machine-gun, scanning the blank spaces in between the rapidly retreating palm-tree tops for the Iraqi resistance. Sitting to my left and opposite me were fresh troops being sent out to Balad, the sprawling US air base in central Iraq that is said to be one of the busiest airports on Earth.

Huddled in the dimly lit cargo space, stuffing the ear-mufflers deeper into my ears, I could only think of how exposed the helicopter we were riding in was and the ear-shattering noise it made as it pounded through the night. It was the same noise, amplified a hundred times over, that is the constant accompaniment to every waking moment in Baghdad.

US helicopters patrol the Iraqi capital day and night, purposely flying over the Euphrates River to put some dead ground between themselves and any Iraqi fighters wanting to take advantage of the blind spot immediately beneath the flying machines. So ubiquitous is their presence that they keep Iraqis from sleeping and prompted US military spokesman Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, some time ago, to remind an interviewer that "the noise they hear is the sound of freedom".

[Amonester]

1. Oh, yeah... The freedom they have to either:

a) Get blown to bits while looking for a few carrots at the street market.
b) Get murdered "by accident" at any U.S. checkpoint...
c) etc.

I bet if Brigadier-General Kimmitt would dare ask the Iraqis which freedom they prefer, I'd be ready to bet 10 grand they would say they prefer the kind of freedom they had under Saddam...

[mcctatas]

2. And the fetid water, piled up garbage and smoldering remains

of buildings must be the smell of freedom. :grr:

[Imagevision]

3. Freedom is "just another word for nothing else to use"...

so when pray-tell, will Iraq get their first Wal-Mart and McDonald's??