Iraqis are right to ask why the Americans don't search for this information, just as they are right to demand to know why the entire Saddam cabinet - every man jack of them - got away. The capture by the Americans of Saddam's half-brother and the ageing Palestinian gunman Abu Abbas, whose last violent act was 18 years ago, is pathetic compensation for this.
The biggest mystery seems to be why the ministries are all being set on fire. Fisk doesn't speculate on who might be behind it. But he does observe that it seems to be an organized operation, and that the arson is separate from the looting. Why would an organized team of men specifically go to all the ministries--minus the Ministry of Oil and Ministry of the Interior--and burn them down? Who would finance this operation? What do they have to gain?
- Then there's the fires that have consumed every one of the city's ministries - save, of course, for the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Oil - as well as UN offices, embassies and shopping malls. I have counted a total of 35 ministries now gutted by fire and the number goes on rising.
Yesterday I found myself at the Ministry of Oil, assiduously guarded by US troops, some of whom were holding clothes over their mouths because of the clouds of smoke swirling down on them from the neighbouring Ministry of Agricultural Irrigation. Hard to believe, isn't it, that they were unaware that someone was setting fire to the next building?
Then I spotted another fire, three kilometres away. I drove to the scene to find flames curling out of all the windows of the Ministry of Higher Education's Department of Computer Science. And right next to it, perched on a wall, was a US Marine, who said he was guarding a neighbouring hospital and didn't know who had lit the next door fire because "you can't look everywhere at once".
Now I'm sure the marine was not being facetious or dishonest - should the Americans not believe this story, he was Corporal Ted Nyholm of the 3rd Regiment, 4th Marines and, yes, I called his fiancée, Jessica, in the States for him to pass on his love - but something is terribly wrong when US soldiers are ordered simply to watch vast ministries being burnt by mobs and do nothing about it.
Article comments
1 - SlackMFer
wow, you really care about the poor suffering iraqi's...now that it fits with your anti-bush agenda. before, when it wasn't against bush to give a shit about the iraqi's, left-wingers just said "fuck 'em."
2 - san
I think concern for the Iraqis has always been a big part of us "left-wingers'" argument against this war.
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
3 - SlackMFer
US out of iraq, huh? if you care so much about them why would you want us to abandon them to certain misfortune? do you think it wouldn't be disastrous to just leave now? some new dictator would just take over (if not saddam himself) and the country would be back where it was.