Inside Baghdad: A city paralysed by fear (Patrick Cockburn reports "mayhem")

[Barrett808]

Inside Baghdad: A city paralysed by fear
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 25 January 2007

Baghdad is paralysed by fear. Iraqi drivers are terrified of running into impromptu checkpoints where heavily armed men in civilian clothes may drag them out of their cars and kill them for being the wrong religion. Some districts exchange mortar fire every night. This is mayhem beyond the comprehension of George Bush and Tony Blair.

Black smoke was rising over the city centre yesterday as American and Iraqi army troops tried to fight their way into the insurgent district of Haifa Street only a mile north of the Green Zone, home to the government and the US and British embassies. Helicopters flew fast and low past tower blocks, hunting snipers, and armoured vehicles manoeuvred in the streets below.

Many Iraqis who watched the State of the Union address shrugged it off as an irrelevance. "An extra 16,000 US soldiers are not going to be enough to restore order to Baghdad," said Ismail, a Sunni who fled his house in the west of the city, fearing he would be arrested and tortured by the much-feared Shia police commandos.

It is extraordinary that, almost four years after US forces captured Baghdad, they control so little of it. The outlook for Mr Bush's strategy of driving out insurgents from strongholds and preventing them coming back does not look good.

...

On Monday, a helicopter belonging to the US security company Blackwater was shot down as it flew over the Sunni neighbourhood of al-Fadhil, close to the central markets of Baghdad. Several of the five American crew members may have survived the crash but they were later found with gunshot wounds to their heads, as if they had been executed on the ground.

(more)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2183852.ece

[saigon68]

1. a helicopter belonging to the US security company Blackwater was shot down

Played for pay and lost

[LynnTheDem]

2. Send george & the bLiar to Baghdad...

with just as much protection as our soldiers have.

And for just as long a time.

And that will cure the world of the dual problems of bush & bLiar.

Forever.

[aquart]

5. I'm fine with it. Can Tony Snowe go too?

The guy who thinks Iraqis like Americans more than American college professors do?

[Amonester]

3. Intended mayhem to profit XXonMobilBPHelliburton

"This is mayhem beyond the comprehension of George Bush and Tony Blair."

Wrong. Fully intended from the start as stated in the PNAC agenda.

[JoFerret]

4. bushco have driven this great city into the dark age

All the elements of civilization have been upturned by their rash and criminal acts. What a tragedy for all of us. But how so very terrible for all those Iraqis who were biding their time, waiting and hoping and working for a better time to come post Saddam.

[goforit]

6. Very sad times folks.

[bdrube]

7. Once Again, Cockburn Shows Why He is the Best Reporter in Iraq

[oasis]

8. Dear Speaker Pelosi: Please come home.

P.S. A big thanks to you and Jack Murtha for going.