Abstract: ABSTRACT It has become clear, very quickly, that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an country. We became familiar with the term occupied during World War II. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Sovietoccupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who other countries. We liberated them from occupation. Now we are the occupiers. True we liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the United States established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. U.S. corporations moved in to Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The U.S. was deciding what kind of Constitution Cuba would have, just as our government is now forming a constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation. An occupation. And it is an ugly occupation. On August 7, the NY Times reported that U.S. General Sanchez in Baghdad was worried about Iraqi reaction to the occupation. Iraqi leaders who were pro-American were giving him a message, as he put it: you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family. (That's very perceptive) CBS News reported on July 19: Amnesty International is looking into a number of cases of suspected torture in Iraq by American authorities. One such case involves Khraisan al-Aballi. Al-Aballi's house was razed by American soldiers, who came in shooting and arrested him and his 80-year old father. They shot and wounded his brother... The three men were taken away.. .Khraisan says his interrogators stripped him naked and kept him awake for more than a week, either standing or on his knees, bound hand and foot, with a bag over his head. Khraisan said he told his captors ? don't know what you want. I don't know what you want. I have nothing.' ? asked them to kill me' says Khraisan. After eight days, they let him and his father go... U.S. officials did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the case...' We are in fact, carrying out our international obligations, which I'm satisfied we are doing' said Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq.' June 16, two reporters for the Knight-Rider chain wrote: about the Faluji area: dozens of interviews during the past five days, most across the area said there was no Baathist or Sunni conspiracy against U.S. soldiers, there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops... One woman said, after her husband was taken from their home because of empty wooden crates which they had bought for firewood, that the United States is guilty of terrorism. According to the same reporters, residents in At Agilia - a village north of Baghdad - said two of their farmers and five others from another village were killed when U.S. soldiers shot them while they were watering their fields of sunflowers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. The ancient city of Ur, 6000 years old, reports the London Observer, has been pillaged by the occupying army. Alongside an ancient pyramid, which people from all over the world come to see, a military base has been established. Soldiers who are set down in a country where they were told they would be welcomed as liberators and find they are surrounded by a hostile population become fearful, trigger-happy, and unhappy. We've been reading the reports of GIs angry at their being kept in Iraq. In mid-July, an ABC News reporter in Iraq tells of being pulled aside by a sergeant who said to him: I've got my own 'Most Wanted List'. 'He was referring to the deck of cards the U.S. government published, featuring Saddam Hussein, his sons and other wanted members of the former Iraqi regime. …
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-05-14
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 3
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