One year after "liberation"
IT STILL SUCKS TO BE AN IRAQI
Even the former president of the university, Dr Mohamed Arawi - a surgeon shot at his clinic a year ago - was regarded as a liberal, humane man. But professors now watch the doors of their lecture theatres as carefully as they do their students. And who can blame them? After all, Dr Sabri al-Bayatiy of the department of geography was shot dead only a month ago, just outside the arts department, in front of many of his students.
"Maybe the Kuwaitis want to take their revenge for what we did to them in 1991," a lecturer said. "Maybe the Israelis are trying to make sure that we can never have an intellectual infrastructure here.
"Yes, you suggest it could be the 'resistance'. But what is the 'resistance'? We don't know who it is. Is it nationalist? Why should they want to get rid of us? Is it religious? The arts department has become a pulpit for Islamism. But these people are part of the university.
So who are they, this army of arsonists? I recognised one the other day, a middle-aged, unshaven man in a red T-shirt, and the second time he saw me he pointed a Kalashnikov at me. What was he frightened of? Who was he working for? In whose interest is it to destroy the entire physical infrastructure of the state, with its cultural heritage? Why didn't the Americans stop this?
Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience in San Francisco that "it's worse".
They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death". 
US forces have been in Iraq for over a year now, and, surprise, surprise, it is arguably much worse for the average Iraqi than it was under Saddam's brutal tyranny. Here are some excerpts from three articles that only hint at just how bad it is over there.
First, from ZNet, longtime British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk on the mysterious surge in murders of Iraqi professors:
The War on Learning
Since the Anglo-American invasion, they have murdered at least 13 academics at the University of Baghdad alone and countless others across Iraq. History professors, deans of college and Arabic tutors have all fallen victim to the war on learning. Only six weeks ago - virtually unreported, of course - the female dean of the college of law in Mosul was beheaded in her bed, along with her husband.
Just who the modern-day Mongols are remains a painful mystery of our story. Disgruntled students they are not. Baathist-hunters some of them might be - all heads of academic departments were forced to join Saddam's party - but none of the murdered Baghdad university staff were believed to be anything more than card-carriers.
Even the former president of the university, Dr Mohamed Arawi - a surgeon shot at his clinic a year ago - was regarded as a liberal, humane man. But professors now watch the doors of their lecture theatres as carefully as they do their students. And who can blame them? After all, Dr Sabri al-Bayatiy of the department of geography was shot dead only a month ago, just outside the arts department, in front of many of his students.
And
Other university staff suspect that there is a campaign to strip Iraq of its academics, to complete the destruction of Iraq's cultural identity which began with the destruction of the Baghdad Koranic library, the national archives and the looting of the archaeological museum when the American army entered Baghdad.
"Maybe the Kuwaitis want to take their revenge for what we did to them in 1991," a lecturer said. "Maybe the Israelis are trying to make sure that we can never have an intellectual infrastructure here.
"Yes, you suggest it could be the 'resistance'. But what is the 'resistance'? We don't know who it is. Is it nationalist? Why should they want to get rid of us? Is it religious? The arts department has become a pulpit for Islamism. But these people are part of the university.
Click here for the rest.
There's some weird, bizarre stuff going on in Iraq. Last year when Fisk was reporting on the looting of archives and galleries (which turned out to be pretty bad, despite reports to the contrary), he also noted what seemed to be organized arsonists coming in after the looters:
The looters make money from their rampages but the arsonists have to be paid. The passengers in those buses are clearly being directed to their targets. If Saddam had pre-paid them, they wouldn't start the fires. The moment he disappeared, they would have pocketed the money and forgotten the whole project.
So who are they, this army of arsonists? I recognised one the other day, a middle-aged, unshaven man in a red T-shirt, and the second time he saw me he pointed a Kalashnikov at me. What was he frightened of? Who was he working for? In whose interest is it to destroy the entire physical infrastructure of the state, with its cultural heritage? Why didn't the Americans stop this?
Click here for this earlier report on the post-invasion chaos.
Like I said, there's something mysterious and bizarre going on in Iraq, a real X-Files, black-ops, kind of business to which our soldiers seemingly have been ordered to turn a blind eye. This is pretty creepy if you get right down to it, and I wonder if Fisk is going to end up beheaded by "terrorists" if he keeps digging.
But here's something that's maybe even worse than the campaign to murder university professors. A brief blurb from the London Independent courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:
'Secret film shows Iraq prisoners sodomised'
Young male prisoners were filmed being sodomised by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to the journalist who first revealed the abuses there.
Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience in San Francisco that "it's worse".
It's pretty short, but click here for the rest.
Seymour Hersh, you may not know, originally broke the My Lai massacre story back during the Vietnam War. It's good to know that he's still doing the same kind of work, kicking the asses of pompous, evil US officials. Abu Ghraib is now officially worse than it was before. Is anybody going to pay for this crap? And can it possibly get worse than raping young boys?
Probably.
After all, it now turns out that the new, US approved, interim Prime Minister of Iraq is seemingly just as brutal and bloodthirsty as Saddam Hussein was. From the Sydney Morning Herald courtesy of Eschaton:
Allawi shot prisoners in cold blood: witnesses
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.
They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.
They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".
And, just to drive the point home, here's the kicker:
One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy: "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk."
Click here for the rest (and it might ask you to register, but there's a direct link on that page that goes directly to the story).
Remember a couple of weeks ago when I described the new US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, as the new Saddam? This is exactly the kind of crap I was getting at. When Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras during the bloody Reagan years, he was essentially an American proconsul, presiding over the brutal torturing and murders of dissidents and just about anybody else who got in the way. This is standard US operating procedure when dealing with the third world: have US soldiers commit a few atrocities, and have the puppet leaders of the subjugated nation commit many, many more. It is important to note that numerous figures in the Bush administration cut their teeth on this sort of evil when they served in the Reagan administration, but American involvement in such brutality goes even further back, as this photo reveals:
History Repeats Itself
Murder of a Suspected Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief, 1968
Photo Credit: Eddie Adams
It's happening all over again. We'd best not bury our heads in the sand, as has happened so many times before. We're responsible. We're allowing our leaders to do this. It's time to make it stop.
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