meehawl

all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned

Baghdad “Pacified”

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In the year it has controlled Baghdad, the Coalition Provisional Authority still hasn’t managed to get the traffic lights working or to provide the most basic security for civilians. So in Sadr City, Sadr’s so-called “outlaw militia” can be seen engaged in such subversive activities as directing traffic and guarding factories. It was Bremer who created Iraq’s security vacuum; Sadr simply filled it … At Al Thawra Hospital, I met Raad Daier, an ambulance driver with a bullet in his abdomen, one of 12 shots he says were fired at his ambulance from a U.S. Humvee. At the time of the attack, according to hospital officials, he was carrying six people injured by U.S. forces, including a pregnant woman who had been shot in the stomach and lost her baby. I saw charred cars, which dozens of eyewitnesses said had been hit by U.S. missiles, and I confirmed with hospitals that their drivers had been burned alive. I also visited Block 37 of the Chuadir District, a row of houses where every door was riddled with holes. Residents said U.S. tanks drove down their street firing into homes. Five people were killed, including Murtada Muhammad, age 4. And Thursday, I saw something that I feared more than any of this: a copy of the Koran with a bullet hole through it.

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