[Peace-discuss] The real occupation

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Our Member of Congress, Tim Johnson, assured us on WILL yesterday that
the occupation of Iraq was going well and Americans were being welcomed as
liberators.  But as we have insisted, occupation is not liberation, and
here's a real account of it, from the redoubtable Robert Fisk.  --CGE]

	Published on Friday, September 19, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
	Another Day, Another Death-Trap For The US 
	by Robert Fisk

The American Humvee had burnt out, the US troop transporter had been
smashed by rockets and an Iraqi lorry - riddled by American bullets in the
aftermath of the attack - still lay smoldering on the central reservation.

"I saw the Americans flying through the air, blasted upwards," an Iraqi
mechanic with an oil lamp in his garage said - not, I thought, without
some satisfaction. "The wounded Americans were on the road, shouting and
screaming."

The US authorities in Iraq - who only report their own deaths, never those
of Iraqis - acknowledged three US soldiers dead. There may be up to eight
dead, not counting the wounded. Several Iraqis described seeing arms and
legs and pieces of uniform scattered across the highway.

It may well turn out to be the most costly ambush the Americans have
suffered since they occupied Iraq - and this on the very day that George
Bush admitted for the first time that there was no link between Saddam
Hussein and the 11 September assault on the United States. And as American
Abrams tanks thrashed down the darkened highway outside Khaldiya last
night - the soft-skinned Humvee jeeps were no longer to be seen in the
town - the full implications of the ambush became clear.

There were three separate ambushes in Khaldiya and the guerrillas showed a
new sophistication. Even as I left the scene of the killings after dark,
US army flares were dripping over the semi-desert plain 100 miles west of
Baghdad while red tracer fire raced along the horizon behind the palm
trees. It might have been a scene from a Vietnam movie, even an archive
newsreel clip; for this is now tough, lethal guerrilla country for the
Americans, a death-trap for them almost every day.

As usual, the American military spokesmen had "no information" on this
extraordinary ambush. But Iraqis at the scene gave a chilling account of
the attack. A bomb - apparently buried beneath the central reservation of
the four-lane highway - exploded beside an American truck carrying at
least 10 US soldiers and, almost immediately, a rocket-propelled grenade
hit a Humvee carrying three soldiers behind the lorry.

"The Americans opened fire at all the Iraqis they could see - at all of
us," Yahyia, an Iraqi truck driver, said. "They don't care about the
Iraqis." The bullet holes show that the US troops fired at least 22 rounds
into the Iraqi lorry that was following their vehicles when their world
exploded around them.

The mud hut homes of the dirt-poor Iraqi families who live on the 30-foot
embankment of earth and sand above the road were laced with American rifle
fire. The guerrillas - interestingly, the locals called them mujahedin,
"holy warriors" - then fired rocket-propelled grenades at the undamaged
vehicles of the American convoy as they tried to escape. A quarter of a
mile down the road - again from a ridge of sand and earth - more grenades
were launched at the Americans.

Again, according to the Sunni Muslim Iraqis of this traditionally
Saddamite town, the Americans fired back, this time shooting into a crowd
of bystanders who had left their homes at the sound of the shooting.
Several, including the driver of the truck that was hit by the Americans
after the initial bombing, were wounded and taken to hospital for
treatment in the nearest city to the west, Ramadi.

"They opened fire randomly at us, very heavy fire," Adel, the mechanic
with the oil lamp, said. "They don't care about us. They don't care about
the Iraqi people, and we will have to suffer this again. But I tell you
that they will suffer for what they did to us today. They will pay the
price in blood."

Jamel, a shopkeeper who saw the battle, insisted - and in Iraq, it is what
people believe that governs emotion, not necessarily reality - that 60
Americans were killed or wounded in a mortar attack on the former Iraqi
(and former RAF) air base at Habbaniyeh last week. Untrue, of course. But
as we spoke, mortar fire crashed down on Habbaniyeh, its detonation
lighting up the darkness as explosions vibrated through the ground beneath
our feet. This was guerrilla warfare on a co-ordinated scale, planned and
practiced long in advance. To set up even yesterday's ambush required
considerable planning, a team of perhaps 20 men and the ability to choose
the best terrain for an ambush.

That is exactly what the Iraqis did. The embankment above the road gave
the gunmen cover and a half-mile wide view of the US convoy. They must
have known the Americans would have opened fire at anything that moved in
the aftermath - indeed, the guerrillas probably hoped they would - and
angry crowds in the town of Khaldiya were claiming last night that 20
Iraqi civilians had been wounded.

Six days ago, American soldiers killed eight US-trained Iraqi policemen
and a Jordanian hospital guard 14 miles away in Fallujah, claiming at
first that they had "no information" on the shootings, and then
apologizing - but without providing the slightest explanation for the
killings. Several Iraqis in Khaldiya suggested that yesterday's ambush may
have been a revenge attack for the slaughter of the policemen.

True or false, that is what the guerrillas may well claim. Do they, many
Iraqis wonder, follow the political trials of President Bush and Prime
Minister Blair? Was the devastating attack timed to coincide with Mr
Bush's increasing embarrassment over the false claims that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction? Unlikely. But yesterday when the former UN
weapons inspector Hans Blix condemned the "culture of spin, the culture of
hyping" - in reference to the Anglo-American exaggeration of Saddam
Hussein's threat to the world - some of his words may have found their
mark in Iraq. "In the Middle Ages," Mr Blix said, "when people were
convinced there were witches, they certainly found them."

Now Mr Bush is convinced he is fighting a vast international "terrorist"
network and that its agents are closing in for a final battle in Iraq. And
the Iraqi mujahedin are ready to turn the American President's fantasies
into reality.

I couldn't help noticing the graffiti on a wall in Fallujah. It was
written in Arabic, in a careful, precise hand, by someone who had taken
his time to produce a real threat.

"He who gives the slightest help to the Americans," the graffiti read, "is
a traitor and a collaborator."

C 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd