A Villager Attacks U.S. Troops, but Why?

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41178-2003Aug10.html

ALBU ALWAN, Iraq -- On a sun-drenched plain along a bluff of barren cliffs, a cheap headstone made of cement marks the grave of Omar Ibrahim Khalaf. His name was hastily scrawled in white chalk. Underneath is a religious invocation that begins, "In the name of God, the most merciful and compassionate." It is followed simply by the date of his death, Friday, Aug. 1.

But one word on the marker distinguishes Khalaf's resting place. His epitaph declares him a shahid, a martyr.

In a 15-minute battle so intense that villagers called it a glimpse of hell, U.S. forces killed Khalaf as he tried to fire rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy. A .50-caliber round tore off his skull. Machine-gun fire almost detached his left arm and ankle, which were left dangling from a corpse riddled with bullets and smeared with blood and the powdery dirt of the Euphrates River valley. snip

American officials contend that the vast majority of the attacks are driven by remnants of former president Saddam Hussein's government and the Baath Party he used for 35 years to hold power. Men like Khalaf, they say, are the foot soldiers lured by bounties that run as high as $5,000, perhaps motivated by loyalty to the fallen government, or by fear from threats to their family if they refuse to fight.

But the portrait of Khalaf that emerged from interviews last week suggests a more complicated figure.

A 32-year-old father of six, he was an army deserter who, villagers say, had nothing to do with the Baath Party. He prayed at the mosque on Fridays, although he was not a fervently religious man. His hardscrabble life was shaped by the grinding poverty of his village, whose burdens have mounted since the government's fall on April 9. In the end, many here speculated he was changed irrevocably by the perceived day-to-day humiliations of occupation.

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[CWebster]

1. It is necessary for the US to portray

any and all anti-American occupying forces as Saddam loyalists, even though the Bush administration proclaimed the Iraqis would be dancing in the streets on their liberation from Saddam. The pro-war factions--Right and Left, can't have it widely acknowledged that all Iraqis, with the exception of exiles appointed to represent US interests, would fight for their own freedom from the new boss.

Chances are that it will continue although the official status reports will be of the same caliber of lies prior to the invasion, with claims of progress and continuing cooperation. These claims will debuked on a regular basis, often juxtaposed on national news, but the common and oft repeated spin will offset the reality.

It will cost billions of dollars, put young US lives at risk, kill untold numbers of Iraqis, who still struggle on the edge of survival and destroy what little international respect we still can muster.

There will be no change until Bush is gone and the international community can be diplomatically courted to participate, since the Bush crowd wouldn't be in the position to dominate control of the coveted resources of Iraq.