Fear and loathing in militia hell

[demobrit]

The Arab League sent a 10-man delegation to Baghdad this past weekend to try to drum up support for a "national reconciliation" conference in Iraq - to be held after the referendum on the draft constitution Saturday. The welcoming committee included highway guerrillas armed to the teeth. Although no Arab League members were shot, two (Shi'ite) Interior Ministry commandos protecting them were killed and six wounded.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ12Ak02.html

Part of the editorial reads,
Controlling day and night
Two-and-a-half years into the occupation, Baghdad - which during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s was one of the world's cleanest cities - remains an archipelago of rubble, garbage and fetid lakes. Writing for the Saudi-financed al-Sharq al-Awsat, Maad Fayyad, a London-based Arab journalist, captured the mood, "I wonder - did the Mongols descend on it only yesterday, led by the captain of catastrophe and devotee of death, Hulagu Khan, such that was transformed into debris?"

The law of the jungle rules - coupled with the collapse of social life. Baghdad is inundated with messages telling people not to congregate anywhere, otherwise they become targets for suicide bombing. Any foreign visitor is a target for kidnapping. Every government official is a prisoner in his or her own office.

[bemildred]

1. An informative piece from Pepe. Read the whole thing. nt

[EST]

2. Fetid lakes instead of flowered lakes?

And fearless leader goes blundering on...and on.
(To the tune of "The Caissons go Rolling Along.")

[0rganism]

3. if only HST had taken one last journey to Iraq instead of killing himself

I can just imagine him hanging out with mid-level bureaucrats, dosing up for the Iraqi constitutional conventions, then typing away until the wee hours in his Baghdad hotel room to meet impossible deadlines.