The Day of Looter!

Robert Fisk in his recent report from Baghdad says

It was the day of the looter. The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves – they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty – seem to have a different idea what liberation means. As the occupying power, America is responsible for protecting embassies and UN offices in their area of control but, yesterday, its troops were driving past the German embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate……It is a scandal, a kind of disease, a mass form of kleptomania that American troops are blithely ignoring.

To all this, the Americans have turned a blind eye, indeed stated specifically that they had no intention of preventing the "liberation" of this property. One can hardly be moralistic about the spoils of Saddam's henchmen but how is the government of America's so-called "New Iraq" supposed to operate now that the state's property has been so comprehensively looted?…Yesterday..I found the owner of a grain silo and factory ordering his armed guards to fire on the looters who were trying to steal his lorries. Understandably, the poor and the oppressed took their revenge on the homes of the men of Saddam's regime who have impoverished and destroyed their lives, sometimes quite literally, for more than two decades….

And already America's army of "liberation" is beginning to seem an army of occupation. I watched hundreds of Iraqi civilians queuing to cross a motorway bridge at Daura yesterday morning, each man ordered by US soldiers to raise his shirt and lower his trousers – in front of other civilians, including women – to prove they were not suicide bombers.

Mr Fisk!! Do not worry! They have already sorted out this puzzle. In comnig days, they will say that we must stay here to control these barbarous people!!. They need time to show the world that they have to stay there. Librators should complete their job!!.
(posted by Iman)



Posted:Friday, April 11, 2003 |