Revolutionary Moderation

Too early to judge, but liberation isn't looking so hot just yet.



Robert Fisk has published some tales from Baghdad... they make for interesting reading.

One can hardly be moralistic about the spoils of Saddam's henchmen but how is the government of America's so-called "New Iraq" supposed to operate now that the state's property has been so comprehensively looted? And what is one to make of the scene on the Hillah road yesterday where I found the owner of a grain silo and factory ordering his armed guards to fire on the looters who were trying to steal his lorries. This desperate and armed attempt to preserve the very basis of Baghdad's bread supply was being observed from just 100 metres away by eight soldiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who were sitting on their tanks �V doing nothing. The UN offices that were looted downtown are 200 metres from a US Marine checkpoint.



...



After a gun battle in the Adamiya area during the morning, an American Marine sniper sitting atop the palace gate wounded three civilians, including a little girl, in a car that failed to halt �V then shot and killed a man who had walked on to his balcony to discover the source of the firing. Within minutes, the sniper also shot dead the driver of another car and wounded two more passengers in that vehicle, including a young woman.

I don't remember any of this in Berlin in 1989 at all.



Once again, I find myself drawing from the Information Clearing House. Good source.