Eyewitness Says USA Encouraged Looting

[Ivo Skoric]

Now, when I think, Bush was right using the word "liberation" - first, 
I thought: well, 'liberation' was exactly the part of the communist 
doublespeak vocabulary that Soviets used when they rolled their 
tanks into Hungary and into Czech republic. In other words, 
'liberation' was just the politicaly correct term for plain, down to 
earth occupation.

But, if our beloved, great leader, blessed be his providence, told me 
that under 'liberation' he meant killing the cops, hell, yeah. That's 
LIBERATION, for sure. With Saddam releasing most of the 
prisoners before the war, and USMC killing the police during the 
war, looting was a logical consequence.

Now, that Bush 'liberated' Iraq so perfectly well, why doesn't he 
'liberate' the U.S. as well? Why bringing just to Iraqi people the 
benefits of Wild West chaos and anarchy? While in the meantime 
imperial authorities stiffen Americans with Patriot Act I, Patriot Act 
II, Homeland Security Department and other tools generally more 
appropriate for a dictatorship, than for a democracy.

I would like to post a selfish request to our great leader, that in his 
quest for return to genuine American value of FREEDOM, he does 
not forget his homeland! In particular, I would like the DMV building 
in Montpelier, VT, blasted into pieces, since they keep records of 
my points, then Vermont Judicial Bureau in White River Junction, 
that feeds of my meager wages for quite too long now, and a 
couple of small town courts along the NY State Thruway, that all 
want my hide for speeding. 

I don't know should I submit the GPS coordinates to Pentagon or 
to CIA? Who is calling the shots? Or would it be easier just to go 
there and point my laser pointer, that my cat is so crazy about, to 
the building and wait? Also, an Apache helicopter, or, maybe an A-
10 airplane to smither State Trooper vehicles on the Thruway with 
its cancerogenic, pyroformic, DU ammunition, would be a really 
nice touch. LIBERATION.

I saw the face of that new-found liberty on the front-pages of 
American daily newspapers: Iraqi kids playing on the face of 
Saddam statue, and, more intriguingly, a liberated young American 
soldier, who, judging by his youthful face, would most certainly be 
ID-ed, if he tried to buy a pack of cigarettes, in any US country 
store, on a front page of The New York Times, with a gun in his 
hands, and a cigarette in his mouth. Perfect product placement! 
How much did Phillip Morris, the company that lists "freedom of 
choice" as one of its core values, paid for that?

The freedom did not last for long in Iraq, though. As the USMC tank 
downed the larger-than-life Saddam statue in the center of Bhagdad 
for the embedded journalist's benefit, and alowed, or even 
encouraged, the day or two of freedom, it started CO-OPERATING 
with the Iraqi security forces soon afterwards. Collaboration with 
enemy? Is Tomy Frank going to be court-martialed? On the other 
hand - there is really no need to establish Homeland Security 
Department and pass Patriot Acts in Iraq: they already have a well 
established dictatorship in place, with people ready, willing and 
able to enforce it, so why just don't use the available resources?

Meanwhile, President's brother, who is still a Governor, rolled out a 
food aid program. For Iraqis? No. For Americans! Not only are 
Iraqis starving because of the war, but the families of US soldiers 
are going hungry as well, because of the war. Who goes in the 
army? The poor go in the army. And when they are gone overseas, 
their families don't see much money. And when one sees razed 
houses of families who could not meet the mortgage payments in 
American poor small towns, one understands why it is so easy to 
see stickers "we support our troops" on the lawns of the 
delapidated homes that are still standing: probably a husband, or a 
son, or a brother, or a close relative, or maybe a friend is those 
"troops", and is their sole hope for survival.

It is easy to be anti-war on the intellectual level. After all, there is 
nothing that can justify this war expedition. The famous weapons of 
mass destruction, are not found and are not even talked about in 
media, although they were the primary reason Bush used to justify 
the war. And the US abandoned the world, by acting unilaterally in 
face of certain defeat in the UN Security Council vote. When a 
country, which military spending accounts for 1/3 of entire world's 
military spending, acts unilaterally, it is cause for a global alert. I 
say we are all on orange right now - and NOT because of Arabs, 
but because of Americans. Is Syria next? Or Iran? And what about 
North Korea, whose wacky leader is in his personal war with the 
US already, regardless of Americans not being willing to play ball 
with him?

But then, a lot of people on the left, and in academic circles in the 
US, don't even know how to spell duct-tape, much less they have 
connection with people who actually use that rather ugly, but 
inexpensive fix-all product. Which is why it is easy for Bush's 
message, that is all body language and very little content, to 
penetrate to the 'silent majority'.

We need global disarmament. Not only disarmament of so-called 
rogue regimes. But also of democratic, well-meaning countries. 
There is no sense in having all those nuclear weapons that nobody 
sane would ever going to use. There is no sense in spending such 
vast amounts of money on military and weapons, if the only thing 
we really want is peace, freedom and commerce. The US should 
be leading the world with example of disarming itself, not by 
example of further militarization and war mongering.

As we understand all too well from the example of the dissolution 
of the Yugoslav experiment following president Tito's death - and, 
by the way, as per the Associated Press Almanac of 1973, 
Yugoslavia was extolled as the country that adopted the 
Jeffersonian maxim "that government is best which governs least" - 
the lack of vision in leadership is often substituted for with finding 
an enemy and waging a war. Politicians, that are particularly short 
on vision, need a couple of wars to carry them through their terms. 

Demilitarization is going to be hard for the US. But it is possible. 
Corporations that make military hardware, can start making civilian 
hardware. People that work in military, may open their own 
businesses or start working in private sector. Some sort of New 
Deal would be necessary in the transition period, given the 
immense size of US military in terms of both equipment and 
personnel. Gradually, military budget can be trimmed to zero - 
meanwhile re-directing large chunks of it to help defense 
contractors re-structure their production lines to new civilian use 
products, and to re-train military personell to be able to compete in 
the civilian job-market. That would be the vision that US can offer 
the world, and the vision with which US could lead the world in the 
21st century and beyond.

Now, we have to unsubstantiated victories at hand: Afghanistan, 
with Osama Bin Laden at large, and Iraq, with Saddam Hussein on 
the lam. And we have the world of democracy divided: the Anglo-
American sphere akin to ancient Sparta and the Euro sphere akin 
to old Athens, on one side, and the axis of evil, that just happens 
to be centered at the same place where it was in those ancient 
times: Bhagdad/Babylon. A lot of American artists are looking for 
funding in Europe these days - because it is harder and harder to 
get money for art in the US that spends all on WAR, like Sparta 
did. History teaches us that Athens prevailed as a concept in the 
end, and its spirit lived through the Roman Republic, Roman 
Empire, Catholic Church, and it is still alive and vibrant in the 
various democracies of today (to the point that White House pillars 
are built to resemble some ancient Greek temple...).

In order to really lead the world, which it can, given it size of 
economy and population, the US, however, needs to reform its 
ancient democracy. Its concept was way ahead of its time in 18th 
century. Not so much in the 21st. The danger, if that reform does 
not happen, is for the US to gradually become a totalitarian state.

In former Yugoslavia the nominal ownership of corporations was 
public, an amorphous mass of general population, while the real 
control over the economy was in the hands of general directors 
(CEO-s) which were all high ranking members of the communist 
party, which central committee served as a board that run the 
country as a monopoly. Eventually, eight republics/provinces, that 
each acted as a sovereign political-economic monopolies, started 
fighting. And their "security council" - the Presidency - got 
gridlocked and incapable of stopping the largest and militarily 
strongest monopoly of Milosevic's Serbia of physically attacking 
the other monopolies. This analogy proves why George Bush's 
move to by-pass UN Security Council is so much more dangerous 
for the global security, than anything that Saddam Hussein might 
have or might have not done.

In the US large corporations are also publicly owned, with that 
public here being identifiable and quantifiable, not amorphous, 
ideological construct like in former Yugoslavia. That fortunate fact 
is, however, meaningless, since the real control over the economy 
rests with an oligarchy of over-paid CEOs that sit on each others 
boards and move through the revolving doors between private 
corporations, government posts, and academia. They do not belong 
to the same political party. Instead, they all hold either law or 
business degrees from a dozen of asorted universities, which, in 
the end, brings about the same results: they are all bred and 
indoctrinated, belonging to the similar ideological paradigm of 
beliefs, values, and habits, just as their counterparts were in former 
Yugoslavia.

The political system allows for more political parties, but only two 
of them, benefitting the abovementioned revolving doors practice, 
have enough resources to compete for any political post above 
strictly local level. The president of the US is chosen between 
nominees of those two political parties, that essentially, more and 
more, represent the same class interest. The one is elected, who 
wins a majority of votes in most States (i.e. NOT necessarilly a 
majority of votes in the Union). This all makes quite a bore of the 
world's first democracy.

But the horse-trading behind the scenes is what makes it 
questionable whether this is still a democracy at all. The bread and 
butter of this democracy is not the President, but the House of 
Representatives. Many congresspersons run unopposed in their 
districts now as single candidates, kind of like one would expect to 
see in Cuba. No more that 20 of the 435 races looked competitive 
in 2002. And the Congress is divided almost 50:50 for years now. 
The real reasons for that is not that American people are 
necessarilly divided 50:50, but that the system in place makes the 
50:50 division possible and even logical.

The congressional districts, pieces of populated territory that elect 
a congressperson, change their shapes in time to account for 
demographic changes. That shape-changing, or re-districting, is in 
U.S. done by the State's ruling politicians, and, oh boy, aren't they 
cheating. There is even a term in US language (gerrymandering - 
according to the name of the person that established this uncanny 
practice) that describes the process of shaping districts to serve 
the interests of the ruling party. Of course, there is always horse-
trading with the other party (cutting deals to protect incumbents), 
so the States are becoming evenly divided between Democratic 
and Republican voting districts, creating the 50:50 scenario. Some 
states, with longer Republican governorship, are becoming more 
Republican, the others with longer Democrat governorship, are 
becoming more Democrat. A mathematic model could probably be 
worked out to estimate how long it would take for this country to 
become a single-party dictatorship with this system in place, if, for 
some reason, the stronger party at some point decided to stop 
cutting deals.

This system badly needs a reform soon. The only states in the 
union that introduced such a reform so far are Iowa (it has handed 
redistricting to an independent bureau that is not allowed to take 
political consideration such as voting patterns and party 
registration into account when drawing boundaries), and Arizona 
(whose citizens recently voted by referendum to adopt a similar 
system). Such a reform nation-wide would breathe some life in this 
stale, old democracy, and maybe enable its citizens to REALLY 
elect a president, capable of leading them into the new millenium.

ivo

Date sent:      	Tue, 15 Apr 2003 22:52:48 -0400
To:             	CERJ at igc.org
From:           	CERJ at igc.org
Subject:        	Eyewitness Says USA Encouraged Looting
Copies to:      	Kenneth Rasmusson <rasken at kulturservern.se>

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/

Eyewitness Charges US With Encouraging Looting

The following article is from Sweden's largest daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, and was published Friday April 11, 2003

Translation by Kenneth Rasmusson <rasken at kulturservern.se>

US Forces Encourage Looting
by Ole Rothenborg

Malmoe, Sweden -- April 11, 2003 -- Khaled Bayomi looks a bit surprised while watching  the American officer on TV express his regrets that they don't have any resources to stop the looting in Baghdad.

"I happened to be there just as the US forces told people to commence looting."

Khaled Bayomi departed from Malmoe, Sweden to Baghdad as a volunteer 'human shield', and arrived on the same day the fighting began.  About this he is able to tell plenty, and for a long time, but the most interesting part of his story is his eyewitness account about the great surge of looting 
now taking place.

"I had visited a few friends that live in a worn-down area just beyond Haifa Avenue, on the west bank of the Tigris River.  It was April 8, and the fighting was so heavy I couldn't make it over to the other side of the river.  In the afternoon, though, it became perfectly quiet, and four American 
tanks pulled up into position on the outskirts of the slum area.  From these tanks we heard anxious calls in Arabic, which told the population to come closer.

"During the morning, everyone who tried to cross the streets had been fired upon.  But during this strange silence people eventually became curious.  After three-quarters of an hour, the first Baghdad citizens dared to come forward.  At that moment the US solders shot two Sudanese guards posted 
in front of a local administrative building on the other side of the Haifa Avenue.

"I was just 300 meters away when the guards where murdered.  Then they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic translators in the tanks told the people to run 'for grabs' inside the building.  Rumors spread rapidly, and the offices were cleaned out.  Moments later tanks broke down 
the doors to the Justice Department, which was located in a neighboring building, and the looting was carried forward into there as well.

"I was standing in a big crowd of civilians that saw all this together with me.  They did not take any part in the looting, but were to afraid to take any action against it.  Many of them had tears of shame in their eyes.

"The next morning, the looting spread to the Museum of Modern Art, which lies another 500 meters to the north.  There as well, two crowds were present -- one that was looting, and another one that saw this disgrace happen."

Do you mean to say that it was the US troops that initiated the looting?

"Absolutely.  The lack of scenes of joy had the US forces in need of images of Iraqis who in different ways demonstrated their disgust with Saddam's regime."

But people in Baghdad tore down a big statue of Saddam ...

"They did?  It was a US tank that did this, close to the hotel where all the journalists live.  Until noon on the 9th of April, I didn't see a single torn picture of Saddam anywhere.  If people had wanted to turn over statues, they could have gone for some of the many smaller ones, without the 
help of an American tank.  Had this been a political uproar then people would have turned over statues first and looted afterwards."

Back home in Sweden, Khaled Bayomi is a PhD student at the University of Lund, where for ten years he has been teaching and researching conflicts in the Middle East.  He is very well informed about the conflicts, as well as on the propaganda war.

Isn't it good that Saddam is gone?

"He is not gone.  He has dissolved his army into tiny, tiny groups.  This is why there was never any big battle.  Saddam dissolved Iraq as a state already in 1992, and since then has had a parallel tribal structure going, which has been altogether decisive for the country.  When the USA began the 
war, Saddam completely abandoned the state, and now he depends on this tribal structure.  This is 
why he left the big cities without any battle.

"Now the USA is forced to do everything themselves, because there is no political force from within
 that would challenge the structure in place.  The two challengers who came in from the outside wer
e immediately lynched."

Khaled Bayomi refers to what happened to general Nazar al-Khazraji, who escaped from Denmark, and S
hia Muslim leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who were both chopped to pieces by a raging crowd in Najaf 
because they where perceived to be American puppets.  According to the Danish newspaper BT, al-Khaz
raji was picked up by the CIA in Denmark and then brought to Iraq.

"Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq that has not said how long they will stay, has not
 brought forward any timeline for civilian rule, and thus far offers no date for general elections.
  What will ensue is chaos."

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