– fordi tiden kræver et MODSPIL

14. Mar 2006

Irak: Hvor meget værre kan det snart blive?

 
Juan Cole skrev i går om angrebene i søndags, som han kaldte "Black Sunday":
Dawn estimates that mortar attacks and bombings in Iraq killed 80 persons on Sunday. Other sources suggest the number of wounded may exceed 200. Some 52 of the dead were killed by carbombings at markets in Shiite Sadr City, east Baghdad. The violence is aimed at provoking sectarian warfare, in hopes it would force the US out and pave the way for a coup by the guerrillas.
(...)
Three years after the US military conquered Baghdad Airport, it is still not secure. US Embassy personnel have been forbiddent to fly civilian airliners in and out of it after explosives were discovered there. And they still do those corkscrew landings, just in case there is a guerrilla around with a shoulder-held missile.

[Ar.] Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the Iraqi Labor Ministry has announced that unemployment in the capital has reached an unprecedented 132,000. Persistent unemployment is dangerous since it plays into the guerrilla insurgency. The unemployed can be given small stipends to join up, and their economic despair makes them easier to convince. But not that so much of Baghdad's economy must be in the marginal sectors (peddling, smuggling, etc.) that I'm not sure what the statistic above really means.

SA also reports a study that examines the negative effect of the current situation on Iraqi women. They are 62% of the population, and face the practical effects of the unemployment and poverty mentioned above, which contributes to higher rates of divorce and abandonment, as well as of prostitution.

The Bush administration keeps crowing about having liberated Iraqi women. It is to weep.

Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor give a whole host of reasons for which Donald Rumsfeld should be fired and if possible put on trial. They review the horrible mistakes made during the 2003 Iraq War, in which Rumsfeld showed repeated incomprehension that the Fedayee Saddam were getting up a guerrilla war against the US forces, and did bizarre things like cancelling the deployment of 16,000 troops and flying Ahmad Chalabi with 575 unarmed "freedom fighters" into the war theater, to give the latter a Karzai-like leg up in the race to become ruler of Iraq.

Revisionist historians of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but Bush administration good will. Two historians dispute Bush's and Cheney's lies about how the Iraq War began.

For those with strong stomachs, here are the photos from Iraq that the American news organizations mostly decline to print. Warning: graphic and disturbing, just as you would expect from a war.
Læs mere hos Informed Comment.

I dag tager tingene så en usædvanligt ubehagelig drejning:
80 halvafklædte, bagbundne og torterede lig er fundet i Bagdad, mens politikere under massivt pres stadig ikke har dannet en regering.

Ligene af mindst 80 mennesker, der tilsyneladende er blevet dræbt i forbindelse med religiøst sekteriske angreb, er blevet fundet rundt omkring i Iraks hovedstad, Bagdad, siden tidligt mandag morgen.
(...)
Ligene, hvoraf mange var bagbundne, bar tegn på, at have været udsat for tortur.

En minibus med 15 henrettede mænd blev fundet i et overvejende sunnimuslimsk kvarter i det vestlige Bagdad - ikke langt fra det sted, hvor 18 lig blev fundet i en anden minibus for en uge siden.

Andre 40 lig er blevet fundet gemt forskellige steder i hovedstaden. Alle er ifølge indenrigsministeriets talsmand, major Falah al-Mohammedawi, blevet skudt og flere var bagbundet.
Hvem kan efterhånden være i tvivl om, at invasionen af Irak - udover at være iscenesat på en grov, lodret løgn - var en forfærdende, blodig fejltagelse. Det kan desværre næppe vare længe, før USA må trækkke sig ud med halen mellem benene - og med den for både tropperne og regeringen smertelige erkendelse, at man intet godt har udrettet; bortset måske fra, at man har fyldt nogle få, korrupte firmaers lommer.

Lad os håbe, erkendelsen når at komme, inden man får rodet sig ud i noget langt, langt værre ved en tilsvarende "nem lille krig" mod Iran.

Kommentarer: