Saw a TV documentary a few nights ago about the current situation in Baghdad. (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ma/3097864.stm ) It was pretty well balanced, interviewing both Iraqis and americans, ppl on the streets, soldiers and politicians (including de Mello, a few days before his death.) I won't go into details of the atrocities documented because someone will label it inflammatory, but suffice to say some of the footage was utterly horrific.
You all know where I stand on the war, so I'll try not to go over ground already covered, but I'll say this:
Soldiers do not make good policemen. I can see why the Iraqis are protesting against the US, despite their role in the fall of Saddam. From what I saw there are probably Iraqis out there now who were opposed to Saddam 12 months ago, but now find themselves wishing he'd come back.
I felt sorry for some of the US soldiers out there, who were doing their best to make peace with the locals, but many others came across as ignorant, brutal and arrogant. The office-bound military types had absolutely no clue (or at least were in complete denial) as to what was happening at street level. They flat out refused to even acknowledge the problems their own troops were showing the BBC's reporters.
However I feel most sorry for the random Iraqis getting beaten up and shot just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes I know these things and worse happened under Saddam as well, but these are supposed to be the good guys, aren't they? Surely the current situation was avoidable. Surely the power vacuum and the resultant lawlessness could have been predicted and planned for. It seems as though no planning at all has gone into the peace action, despite the overwhelming effectiveness and forethought of the war action.
The conspiracy theorist in me believes that Bush wants as much chaos and destruction in Iraq as possible, so that Halliburton and the rest can reap all those oil dollars in cleanup costs, but I accept that this kind of motive is only circumstantially provable. Nonetheless, even if it's all down to negligence rather than malice then it's just as bad for the people suffering there.
Just my 0.02 local currency. I really wish I could point you all to an mpeg of the documentary, I promise you it would add a lot of weight to what I've said. Did anyone see it?