Resentful Iraqis Find U.S. Optimism Hard to Share

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-frustration.html

September 30, 2003
Resentful Iraqis Find U.S. Optimism Hard to Share By REUTERS


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Bush administration says Iraq is a better place to live than before the war. Try telling that to Baghdad citizens, whose frustrations are growing daily. Months after Saddam Hussein's fall, frequent power cuts and water shortages disrupt the city's rhythms, unemployment and crime loom large, and anger is rising against a U.S.-led occupation that shows few signs of ending soon.Makeshift checkpoints are becoming permanent, webs of razor wire and concrete slabs divert traffic, frisking and demands for identity cards humiliate a nation renowned for its pride.
Iraqis feel their destiny has been taken out of their hands. The Governing Council was handpicked by Washington, the police force trained by foreigners. Iraqis are impatient to take back the reins.<snip>

"...We feel like hostages.''...Iraq's U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, acknowledged "...Some Iraqis are beginning to regard us as occupiers and not as liberators.''<snip>

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrote in the Washington Post last week: ``I believe the plan to win the peace in Iraq will succeed -- just as the plan to win the war succeeded.``We have made solid progress: Within two months, all major Iraqi cities and most towns had municipal councils -- something that took eight months in postwar Germany,'' he went on, citing the formation of an Iraqi cabinet by the Governing Council and independent central bank.
But the U.S. army's accidental killing of civilians and the deaths of Iraqis in anti-American guerrilla attacks have heightened hostility toward the occupiers...Iraqis complain that U.S. soldiers treat Baghdad as their own. A security guard at the zoo complained that when a group of soldiers wanted to come in after hours for a party, they just waved a piece of paper at him and went straight in.
``It was in English, I didn't understand it,'' he said. ``What did you want me to do? Stop them? They are the occupiers.''...The lawlessness in Baghdad presents Iraqis with a unanswerable conundrum. Many want the Americans to leave, but are scared too of the chaos that could ensue if they did.But people are impatient to see change, to start the new lives they were promised when the United States invaded.<snip>

[ameriphile]

1. That's the price of non-planning

Thanks to Bushco for this absolute, god-awful mess.