2004-10-03
Editorial
Bernard J. Fine
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Mr. President:
In your first debate with John Kerry, you specifically emphasized to
the American public that everything was going well in Iraq. I have long been aware that what you said
was not true. However, I had no reason
to believe that if I wrote a personal letter to you, you would ever read it or,
for that matter, even be made aware of it.
However, I have now become aware of a better source than I am, someone
who is in Iraq and can speak directly to both of us about what the situation
there is like. And, of great
importance, her credibility is that she is a reporter for The Wall Street
Journal, a paper that has long supported your presidency.
I do hope that before the next debate you and Mr. Rove will have read
the article by Farnaz Fassihi and that you will tell the American people why
you have not been honest and open with them about the Iraq situation. Our young are dying there and you are lying
about the situation they are in.
*******
From Baghdad: A Wall Street Journal Reporter's
E-Mail to Friends
by Farnaz Fassihi
CommonDreams.org
Thursday 30 September 2004
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under
virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a
chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands,
discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in
Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very
good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and
never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in
restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for
stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of
breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside,
can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints,
can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and
can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near
our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern
every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our
Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a
reporter second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point'
exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the
Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S.
military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population,
became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency
began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of
Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If
under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been
transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to
haunt the United States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.'
When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi
government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going
off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people,
the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines
and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are
assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a
raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got
injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of
health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing
the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr
City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive
devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the
explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to
signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr
City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and
swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready
to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite
land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point
came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt
safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and
highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female
friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their
homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and
the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They
were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their
generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he
came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the
neighborhoods.
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no
signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more
sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals,
nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign
correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We
were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the
kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes:
criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in
turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al
Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French
journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no
word on release or whether he is still alive.
America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi
police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train.
The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the
insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the
U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just
trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe
for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After
two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction
only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated
for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow
routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a
barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because
Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America they got
freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security
over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if
Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of
the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week
to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public
on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq
into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about
democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq
before all is lost."
One could argue that Iraq is already lost
beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if
any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of
terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of
American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having
elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out
of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of
journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to
show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott
elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites
that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil
war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his
family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time
Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all:
"Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the
insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To
practice democracy? Are you joking?"
I have a feeling that Ms. Fassihi might have a difficult time answering
that question, Mr. President. Perhaps
you can be of some help.
Sincerely,
Bernard J. Fine