{"id":1488,"date":"2003-04-12T19:58:00","date_gmt":"2003-04-12T23:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1488"},"modified":"2003-04-12T19:58:00","modified_gmt":"2003-04-12T23:58:00","slug":"the-sack-of-baghdad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2003\/04\/12\/19\/58\/the-sack-of-baghdad\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sack of Baghdad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a great article demonstrating the extraordinary farce and tragedy<\/a> displayed in the ongoing destruction of Baghdad. I can’t help but think there’s some element of perverse vindictiveness in this directed against the Iraqis by the Pentagon. By failing to rise up as one on queue during the early hours of the war they invalidated all the Bush Gang’s fantasies about liberation and the “democratic domino effect” and so I have to think that this is their reward: a little taste of chaos and rapine to chasten them, courtesy of the occupying Power, the US. When they are reduced to abject desperation, when food and water supplies are exhausted, then they will welcome their new Rulers more eagerly… Of course, the Geneva Protocols specifically deal with this issue in an attempt to ameliorate the savagery of military occupation by enjoining the occupiers to provide basic policing and infrastructure support… but since when have a few humanitarian protocols bothered the Bush Gang?<\/p>\n

Outside the gutted home of one former minister, a fat man was parading in a stolen top hat, a Dickensian figure who tried to direct the traffic jam of looters outside.
\n…
\nOn the other side of the Saddam Bridge, an even more surreal sight could be observed – a truck laden with chairs but with the two white hunting dogs, which belonged to Saddam’s son Qusay, tethered by two white ropes and galloping along beside the vehicle. Across the city, I even caught a glimpse of four of Saddam’s horses – including the white stallion he used in presidential portraits – being loaded on to a trailer.
\n…
\nan American Marine sniper sitting atop the palace gate wounded three civilians, including a little girl, in a car which failed to halt – then shot and killed a man who had walked on to his balcony to discover the source of the firing. Within minutes, the sniper shot dead the driver of another car and wounded two more passengers in his vehicle, including a young woman.
\n…
\nIn the suburb of Doura, the bodies of Iraqi civilians – many killed by US troops in a battle between American and Iraqi forces earlier in the week – still lay rotting in their smouldering cars.
\n…
\non the corner of Bab al-Moazzam St, were a small group of Mujahedin fighters, firing their Kalashnikov rifles at the American tanks on the other side of the waterway. It was brave, of course, and utterly pathetic and painfully instructive. <\/p>\n

For the men turned out to be Arabs from Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Palestine. Not an Iraqi was among them. The Baathist militiamen, the Republican Guard, the greasy Iraqi intelligence men, the so-called Saddam “fedayeen” had all left their posts and crept home. Only the foreign Arabs fought on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

For Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed? … petrol must have been used to set fire so expertly to the building. The heat was such that the marble flooring had buckled upwards and the concrete stairs that I climbed had been cracked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>Earlier here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a great article demonstrating the extraordinary farce and tragedy displayed in the ongoing destruction of Baghdad. I can’t help but think there’s some element of perverse vindictiveness in this directed against the Iraqis...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}