Text 3184, 73 rader
Skriven 2004-10-09 08:16:38 av Stephen Hayes (5:7106/20.0)
Ärende: Chris_Soc: This is so sad
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* Forwarded (from: CHRIS_SOC) by Stephen Hayes using timEd/2 1.10.y2k.
* Originally from family.chris_soc@family-bbs.net (8:8/2) to All.
* Original dated: Fri Oct 08, 05:29

From: family.chris_soc@family-bbs.net (Chris_Soc)
To: chris_soc3@fmlynet.org
Reply-To: family.chris_soc@family-bbs.net

From: "Steve Hayes" <khanyab@lantic.net>

>From Baghdad --
A Wall Street Journal Reporter's E-Mail to Friends

by Farnaz Fassihi

"Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being
abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone
call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women
had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans,
who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a
residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the
clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed
one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded
body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any
thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The
various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are
cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and
embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would
largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined
we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up
to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash
and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals.
My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has
been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units
we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by
the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating
their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6
million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them
quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that
almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion
Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has
been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign
of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and
oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly
benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda
is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity.
Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it
means having a dictator ruler."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-15.htm

This is so sad. Is this what over a thousand Americans and over ten thousand
Iraqi civilians -- inadvertantly killed by Americans -- have died for?

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