Eye witness: Inside America's Baghdad comfort Zone

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=470802

By Phil Reeves
07 December 2003


As the sun sets over Baghdad, the call to prayer uncoils from the city's minarets. A young American soldier is manning a checkpoint. He puts a megaphone to his lips and imitates the sound.

This soldier does not appear to mean harm. His performance is intended to amuse. He clearly has no idea of how offensive his actions are to the millions of Muslims who live on the other side of the razor wire and concrete blocks and sand bags that separate him from them. Another soldier, evidently more senior, tells him to "knock it off" - not for the first time, says the cheerful joker with the bullhorn.

We're entering the Green Zone, the fortress town of four square miles in which several thousand diplomats, civil servants, consultants, spies, soldiers and contractors live in the heart of Baghdad. The comic-in-khaki is on guard duty.

To ordinary Iraqis this is a parallel universe, a place that is as remote from their own reality - from the frightening house searches by sudden squads of troops and the tedious power cuts - as Michael Jackson's Neverland.

<snip>

[Cooley Hurd]

1. How to make friends and influence people...

#1 - Make fun of their religion.

Paging Dale Carnegie...

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

2. One of the tried and true methods... Right after killing their dog. n/t

[Mika]

9. Right after feeling up their wives and tying up their kids.

[NJCher]

3. that is pathetic

Particularly the ending (Fox News).

So it essentially says they have made their own little world: where they live in a fortress and listen to Fox News.

Which is essentially what they'd like to do for all of America.


Cher

[Dhalgren]

4. God!

If it weren't so pathetic it would be funny. What in the name of fornication are we doing? You know, Bill, it no longer "can" make sense. We have crossed that threshold where making sense is gibberish and gibberish is god's law.

[Oilwellian]

5. These people are sitting ducks

Forces are gathering against them and I hope they get out before it's too late.

[IndianaGreen]

6. "TV sets...will be showing the neo-conservative, war-mad Fox News."

As for the banks of TV sets, if they are not tuned to American football then they will be showing the neo-conservative, war-mad Fox News. This is channel of choice for the entire US military, as it is for the CPA's Republican-appointed civilian press officers - who, say sources, consider the BBC to be anti-American and often refuse to talk to its staff.

This is an unparallel level of indoctrination not seen since the good Doctor Goebbels was running Hitler's propaganda ministry. The danger here is that the propaganda on Faux doesn't match the reality the troops see on the ground. I suspect that the troops are undergoing a deep crisis in their belief system, as the German and the Russian armies underwent at the end of World War I, and the Red Army at the end of the Afghan-Soviet War.

[Racenut20]

7. My nephew

came back enamored with Fox News, and he is a Marine Lt. Colonel. Scheeze. There was no talking to him. Then again, how do you talk to a lifer marine in the first place.

[pinto]

11. You hit on one human tragedy being played out,

besides the day to day killing. A friend's father was a German POW in Russia in WWII. Somehow survived, but came home with a total disconnect between the "realities" portrayed by the Reich, then the Russians, then the US occupation forces in their area of Germany. In the end he only knew what he had actually seen first hand and refused to ever speak of it. Apparently, was essentially vacant 'till he died.

Information is more accessible today, but your point is so true. I bet even Faux "news" is censored in Baghdad.

[pinto]

8. "When the occupation began,

some British officials were unhappy that the American military officials insisted that "coalition" lock themselves away for weeks after the fall of Baghdad, only ever venturing out with a heavily armed sucurity detail."

American authorities KNEW what was going to happen after the fall of Saddam, didn't care and deemed it worth the costs.

[enough]

10. channel of choice: Fox

snip>

As in their military bases elsewhere in Iraq, the Americans have re-created the world from which they came. Their cafeterias serve burgers with barbecue sauce, peanut butter and jelly, even lobster - all imported, not least as a precaution against poisoning. As for the banks of TV sets, if they are not tuned to American football then they will be showing the neo-conservative, war-mad Fox News. This is channel of choice for the entire US military, as it is for the CPA's Republican-appointed civilian press officers - who, say sources, consider the BBC to be anti-American and often refuse to talk to its staff.

more>

[UpInArms]

12. kick

[realFedUp]

13. The Doonesbury comic today reflects this

(interesting that the LA Times didn't print
whole comic)