"baghdad burning" an insider's blog

[Don't panic]

I came across this blog
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
an interesting read from what appears a very moderate iraqi's point of view

a couple of excerpts:

on terror+WMD

"Terror isn't just worrying about a plane hitting a skyscraper…terrorism is being caught in traffic and hearing the crack of an AK-47 a few meters away because the National Guard want to let an American humvee or Iraqi official through. Terror is watching your house being raided and knowing that the silliest thing might get you dragged away to Abu Ghraib where soldiers can torture, beat and kill. Terror is that first moment after a series of machine-gun shots, when you lift your head frantically to make sure your loved ones are still in one piece. Terror is trying to pick the shards of glass resulting from a nearby explosion out of the living-room couch and trying not to imagine what would have happened if a person had been sitting there.

The weapons never existed. It's like having a loved one sentenced to death for a crime they didn't commit- having your country burned and bombed beyond recognition, almost. Then, after two years of grieving for the lost people, and mourning the lost sovereignty, we're told we were innocent of harboring those weapons. We were never a threat to America...

Congratulations Bush- we are a threat now. "

on elections
There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we don't know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we don't know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren't making the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.

Another problem is the selling of ballots. We're getting our ballots through the people who give out the food rations in the varying areas. The whole family is registered with this person(s) and the ages of the varying family members are known. Many, many, many people are not going to vote. Some of those people are selling their voting cards for up to $400. The word on the street is that these ballots are being bought by people coming in from Iran. They will purchase the ballots, make false IDs (which is ridiculously easy these days) and vote for SCIRI or Daawa candidates. Sunnis are receiving their ballots although they don't intend to vote, just so that they won't be sold.


a christmas list
Ok- what is the typical Iraqi Christmas wishlist (I won't list 'peace', 'security' and 'freedom' - Christmas miracles are exclusive to Charles Dickens), let's see:

1. 20 liters of gasoline
2. A cylinder of gas for cooking
3. Kerosene for the heaters
4. Those expensive blast-proof windows
5. Landmine detectors
6. Running water
7. Thuraya satellite phones (the mobile phone services are really, really bad of late)
8. Portable diesel generators (for the whole family to enjoy!)
9. Coleman rechargeable flashlight with extra batteries (you can never go wrong with a fancy flashlight)
10. Scented candles (it shows you care- but you're also practical)

[mactastic]

Sounds like at least one person who gave the US a chance but has now become our enemy.

[diamond geezer]

another blog

“The soldiers are doing strange things in Fallujah,” said one of my contacts in Fallujah who just returned. He was in his city checking on his home and just returned to Baghdad this evening.

Speaking on condition of anonymity he continued, “In the center of the Julan Quarter they are removing entire homes which have been bombed, meanwhile most of the homes that were bombed are left as they were. Why are they doing this?”

According to him, this was also done in the Nazal, Mualmeen, Jubail and Shuhada’a districts, and the military began to do this after Eid, which was after November 20th.

He told me he has watched the military use bulldozers to push the soil into piles and load it onto trucks to carry away. This was done in the Julan and Jimouriya quarters of the city, which is of course where the heaviest fighting occurred during the siege, as this was where resistance was the fiercest.

“At least two kilometers of soil were removed,” he explained, “Exactly as they did at Baghdad Airport after the heavy battles there during the invasion and the Americans used their special weapons.”

He explained that in certain areas where the military used “special munitions” 200 square meters of soil was being removed from each blast site.

In addition, many of his friends have told him that the military brought in water tanker trucks to power blast the streets, although he hadn’t seen this himself.

“They went around to every house and have shot the water tanks,” he continued, “As if they are trying to hide the evidence of chemical weapons in the water, but they only did this in some areas, such as Julan and in the souk (market) there as well.”

He first saw this having been done after December 20th.

Again, this is reflective of stories I’ve been told by several refugees from Fallujah.

Just last December, a 35 year-old merchant from Fallujah, Abu Hammad, told me what he’d experienced when he was still in the city during the siege.

“The American warplanes came continuously through the night and bombed everywhere in Fallujah! It did not stop even for a moment! If the American forces did not find a target to bomb, they used sound bombs just to terrorize the people and children. The city stayed in fear; I cannot give a picture of how panicked everyone was.”

“In the mornings I found Fallujah empty, as if nobody lives in it,” he’d said, “Even poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah-they used everything-tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground. Nothing is left.”

In Amiriyat al-Fallujah, a small city just outside Fallujah where many doctors from Fallujah have been practicing since they were unable to do so at Fallujah General Hospital, similar stories are being told.

Last month one refugee who had just arrived at the hospital in the small city explained that he’d watched the military bring in water tanker trucks to power blast some of the streets in Fallujah.

“Why are they doing this,” explained Ahmed (name changed for his protection), “To beautify Fallujah? No! They are covering their tracks from the horrible weapons they used in my city.”

Also last November, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area, Abu Sabah told me, “They (US military) used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces feel from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.”

He explained that pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt peoples skin even when water was dumped on their bodies, which is the effect of phosphorous weapons, as well as napalm. “People suffered so much from these, both civilians and fighters alike,” he said.

My friend Suthir (name changed to protect identity) was a member of one of the Iraqi Red Crescent relief convoys that was allowed into Fallujah at the end of November.

“I’m sure the Americans committed bad things there, but who can discover and say this,” she said when speaking of what she saw of the devastated city, “They didn’t allow us to go to the Julan area or any of the others where there was heavy fighting, and I’m sure that is where the horrible things took place.”

“The Americans didn’t let us in the places where everyone said there was napalm used,” she added, “Julan and those places where the heaviest fighting was, nobody is allowed to go there.”

On 30 November the US military prevented an aid convoy from reaching Fallujah. This aid convoy was sent by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, but was told by soldiers at a checkpoint to return in “8 or 9 days,” reported AP.

Dr. Ibrahim al-Kubaisi who was with the relief team told reporters at that time, “There is a terrible crime going in Fallujah and they do not want anybody to know.”

With the military maintaining strict control over who enters Fallujah, the truth of what weapons were used remains difficult to find.

Meanwhile, people who lived in different districts of Fallujah continue to tell the same stories.

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 18, 2005 06:16 PM

blog (http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/)

[zimv20]

if the US is using chemical weapons, those are very serious charges and i'd like to know the truth. it occurs to me that washing down streets and removing earth may be an effort to remove fragments of depleted uranium rounds, though.

[pseudobrit]

if the US is using chemical weapons, those are very serious charges and i'd like to know the truth. it occurs to me that washing down streets and removing earth may be an effort to remove fragments of depleted uranium rounds, though.

That was my first thought, too. But a larger question comes into play:

why bomb a city with DU munitions? Why turn a war zone into a HazMat site too?

If we need DU munitions to kill these insurgents, they're better armored than our own troops.

[blackfox]

Here is a rather interesting interview with the blogger DG linked to. It is long, and I don't agree with all of the assessments made, but it is a good read for an alternate viewpoint on things, if nothing else:
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue19/features/DahrJamail.php

Also, linked on the blog page of the first post, was an interesting tidbit about the movie "Red Dawn", it is pretty short so I will just quote it below:

"Back in the 1980s, a film came out that was a masterpiece of Cold War propaganda. The film 'Red Dawn' depicted an invasion of the United States by a combined Soviet/Cuban force that came up through Central America and down from Alaska.
'Red Dawn' centered around the patriotic struggle of a bunch of kids from a small Colorado town, who armed themselves and took to the hills to fight the invaders. They were afraid and angry, and over the course of the movie most of them are killed. Each of the fallen is treated as a hero, their names etched upon a rock that eventually becomes a national monument once the war ends.
I was young enough that this movie had a pretty profound effect on me. In short, it scared the hell out of me and got me all jacked up at the idea of defending my country against an invasion by commie Huns.
... I am casting it now in a new context that throws the whole premise into a cocked hat. These Soviet/Cuban commie invaders kept the lights on, kept the stores open, and saw themselves bringing 'freedom' to a nation held in thrall by capitalist oppressors.
Why, then, did those kids fight? In other words, this film glorifies armed resistance by patriotic fighters bent on repelling invaders.
...Yet in Iraq today, the kids playing the role of the resistance are vilified as terrorists and thugs. Are they not doing what those all-American kids did, to great applause, in 'Red Dawn'?
....We're the 'liberators' this time around, trying to get the lights on, trying to hold some sort of election. Why do they fight us? They fight, I think, because home is home, and because invading armies are never, ever welcome (my italics).
All the neo-cons in the Bush administration who thought this was going to be a 'cakewalk' should have probably watched 'Red Dawn' before undertaking this farce.

[mactastic]

And more to the point, can the Bush supporters around here not see themselves joining in patriotic resistance to any outside force that were to invade and occupy their land, no matter how noble they claimed their cause was?

If you saw checkpoints where 18 - 21 year old foreign kids were humiliating, disrespecting, and even abusing your family, your friends, your neighbors, would you not want to plot against them?

If it was your town, would you be in the resistance or would you join the invaders?