US paranoid and isolated as Green Zone policy fails

[CShine]

An Iraqi friend, who feared for his life because he was close to the Americans, used to live inside the Green Zone, the heavily protected area in central Baghdad where the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has its headquarters. One day he fell into conversation with an American soldier guarding one of the gates. The soldier said he was of Iraqi origin and could speak Arabic. He added that security was not quite as tight as it looked since prostitutes were regular visitors to the zone.

My friend, a little alarmed, decided to investigate. He went to a house which was being used as a brothel. He says: "In the toilet I found that the women were writing pro-Baath party, anti-American and patriotic slogans with their lipstick on the mirrors." Their clients could not tell what they had written because it was in Arabic.

The story illustrates the way in which the CPA officials became wholly isolated from the real opinions of Iraqis. Arriving in the wake of the war last year they cut themselves off inside Saddam Hussein's old palace complex. They were as remote from the lives of ordinary Iraqis as if they lived in a Martian spaceship which had temporarily touched down in the centre of Baghdad.

This isolation helps explain the CPA's repeated mistakes. When it arrived 14 months ago Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied by the US. The CPA's own poll shows that just 2 per cent of Iraqis say they feel liberated and 92 per cent say they are occupied. The CPA may be the least successful organisation ever created by the US government. It is certainly one of the strangest. "It is really like living in an open prison,' said one CPA official.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=533058

[NMDemDist2]

1. and we are sending Negroponte

who has NO experience in the ME at all

sad

[UpInArms]

2. no, but just look at his record

on human rights! /sarcasm

[ElectroPrincess]

9. They don't call him John "What death squads?" Negroponte ...

for nothing.

[FlemingsGhost]

3. The inevitable U.S. defeat in Iraq is most deserved.

It will likely be a stunning one, at that.

[uptown ruler]

4. why....do ....we...

always end up invading someone else's country to protect our freedom?


Spread the Word
CausePimpingThePeopleAin’tEasy

[disinfo_guy]

5. so, these officers are partying it up with hookers in Saddam's palace?

Meanwhile, Iraqis can't even get electricity?

[JM]

6. If my friend's news is any indication...

...we are totally hosed.

He is a surgeon and was inside the Green Zone until very recently. His unit has been patching up our wounded. They moved the unit out of Baghdad to another more remote location because the Green Zone is no longer safe.

JM

[demoman123]

7. Map of Green Zone

Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/

[Disturbed]

8. Green Zone

Green because that's where the US money is.