Fisk : Powell's Baghdad Briefing Ignores High Price Of Failure

[Manix]

15 September 2003: (The Independent: UK) We had to walk through a quarter of a mile of barbed wire to reach Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, last night. We had to pass through four checkpoints, including three body searches. Apache helicopters circled the conference centre and Bradley fighting vehicles sat in the darkness outside.

But inside was air conditioning, brightness, optimism and Secretary Powell. He had just had a "very exciting meeting" with the new "Governing Council". He was "deeply impressed" by what he saw in Baghdad - "people hard at work rebuilding a nation, rebuilding a society". So forget the $87bn (£55bn) President George Bush needs to run Iraq for the next year, forget the dead Americans and the far greater number of dead Iraqis who pay the price each day for the folly of this occupation. Forget the American soldier killed near Fallujah yesterday when a bomb blew up beneath his Humvee, wounding seven of his colleagues. He didn't rate a mention from ex-General Powell. It was the Coalition of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Sure, there was the briefest of mentions of the latest catastrophe - the killing of nine Iraqi policemen by US forces outside Fallujah - and of the compensation that might be paid to their families. It was, as America's proconsul, Paul Bremer, put it mildly "a very regrettable incident" which "is still under investigation by our military". Tell that to the people of Fallujah who want revenge.

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