'A better and safer place', Robert Fisk In Najaf

[mom cat]

'A better and safer place'

Tony Blair justifying the Iraq war in his response to the Butler report

Robert Fisk In Najaf

20 July 2004 "The Independent" -- For mile after mile south of Baghdad yesterday, the story was the same: empty police posts, abandoned Iraqi army and police checkpoints and a litter of burnt-out American fuel tankers and rocket-smashed police vehicles down the main highway to Hillah and Najaf. It was Afghanistan Mk2.

Iraqi government officials and Western diplomats tell journalists to avoid driving out of Baghdad; now I understand why. It is dangerous. But my own fearful journey far down Highway 8 - scene of the murder of at least 15 Westerners - proved that the US-appointed Iraqi government controls little of the land south of the capital. Only in the Sunni Muslim town of Mahmoudiya - where a car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi military recruiting centre last week - did I see Iraqi policemen.

They were in a convoy of 11 battered white pick-ups, pointing Kalashnikovs at the crowds around them, driving on to the wrong side of the road when they became tangled in a traffic jam, screaming at motorists to clear their path at rifle point. This was not a frightened American column - this was Iraq's own new blue-uniformed police force, rifles also directed at the windows of homes and shops and at the crowd of Iraqis which surged around them. In Iskanderia, I saw two gunmen near the road. I don't know why they bothered to stand there. The police had already left their post a few metres away.

Yes, it is a shameful reflection on our invasion of Iraq - let us solemnly remember "weapons of mass destruction" - but it is, above all, a tragedy for the Iraqis. They endured the repulsive Saddam. They endured our shameful UN sanctions. They endured our invasion. And now they must endure the anarchy we call freedom.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6523.htm

[LibertyorDeath]

1. Reading Fisk is like a breath of Fresh Air

A real Journalist not like the Posers at the Networks.

CNN MSNBC ABC NBC Faux Pure Propaganda Shite for Bushco.

[hansolsen]

2. America once had a free press -- no more

Our news networks are owned and managed by corporate America, and there will no unmanaged news until we take back the free press.

Electing John Kerry will be a good step, but so long as five corporate conglomerates own all the major news outlets in this country, we might as well live in Russia in 1950. Thank God for the Internet.

[pfitz59]

3. I am reminded of Road Warrior

Mad Mel,...err Max, would fit right in the post-apocalyptic Iraq!