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Day 15: No cheers, no sweets, no flags Posted: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 The Reason Why Thanks to the most crudely partisan decision in the history of the Supreme Court, the nation has been given a President of painfully limited wisdom and compassion and lacking any sense of the nation's true greatness. Appearing to enjoy his role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces above all other functions of his office, and unchecked by a seemingly timid Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a largely subservient press and a corrupt corporate plutocracy, George W. Bush has set the nation on a course for one-man rule.  Small bombs look like rations: UNUnited Nation children's fund UNICEF has called on the United States military to change the colour of yellow food packets being given out by coalition forces in Iraq. Spokeswoman Jo Bailey says it is feared Iraqi children could mistake the packets for small bombs that are the same colour. "If [the bombs] don't explode and if a kid who's playing or whatever comes across them, they're identical in colour," she said. "We're really concerned a kid could be injured or even killed if they confuse the ration and the unexploded ordnance." [Source] Observations on the Behavior of the Empire Perhaps the most Orwellian quote to come out of the Vietnam war, now a classic, was "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." Now comes Mr. Rumsfeld, speaking of US "precision bombing" in Iraq: "It looks like it's a bombing of a city, but it isn't."  Red Cross tells horror of war The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is reporting high numbers of civilian casualties throughout Iraq. ICRC spokesman in Baghdad Roland Huguenen-Benjamin says an average of 100 civilian casualties a day are being recorded at hospitals in the capital. Downplaying weapons of mass destruction Bush has shifted emphasis of war to liberation of Iraqis US forces rounding up Iraqi civilians International condemnation of Guantanamo Bay plan Cluster Bombs Leaves a Trail of Death The wounds are vicious and deep, a rash of scarlet spots on the back and thighs or face, the shards of shrapnel from the cluster bombs buried an inch or more in the flesh. The wards of the Hilla teaching hospital are proof that something illegal - something quite outside the Geneva Conventions - occurred in the villages around the city once known as Babylon. Destruction for reconstruction The US ground and air invasion of Iraq is now entering its third week. This period has seen many a myth explode and quite a few mysteries unravel. World was shocked to see the real face of United States' rhetoric about democracy and human tights in other countries. West vs East, at daggers drawn Of course, the self-styled successors of Imperial Rome, the hawks in the US administration, had hoped to emulate Caesar after a few days of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the cities of Basra, Baghdad and Kirkuk. But the reality has been quite disillusioning - even to the point of bringing some "Shock and Awe" home to the States. Welcome to Saddam country No cheers, no sweets, no flags There are no white flags here. Children wave, shyly. Women under black burqas turn away. But young men stand defiant, glaring near a painting of Saddam Hussein plastered on a building in the centre of town. US marines look on, nervous and ready to fire as a long convoy of US tanks, armoured vehicles and supply trucks rolls through the cluster of low, mud-brick houses south of Ad Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, in central Iraq's irrigation belt. "We're in Saddam territory now," says Sergeant-Major John Racine. Hussein's jihad cry resonates in Mideast Muslim nations made uneasy by U.S. invasion   Printer friendly version  Send page by E-Mail |