Comments on: Betrayed

Betrayed

kirkaracha — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:40:46 -0800

George Packer on the dangers facing Iraqis who cooperate with the US. [more inside]

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:40:53 -0800

From the hotel window, Othman could see the palace domes of the Green Zone directly across the Tigris River. "It's sad," he told me. "With all the hopes that we had, and all the dreams, I was totally against the word ‘invasion.' Wherever I go, I was defending the Americans and strongly saying, ‘America was here to make a change.' Now I have my doubts." Laith was more blunt: "Sometimes, I feel like we're standing in line for a ticket, waiting to die."

By: TonyRobots

TonyRobots — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:43:13 -0800

This is an amazing article. Read it.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:49:42 -0800

'Betrated'? That word makes my head hurt.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:57:48 -0800

I heard this dude on Fresh Air this week.

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:02:33 -0800

It reminds of when Bush Sr. secretly urged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam after the first Iraq war, hinting at military support if they did.

By: hwestiii

hwestiii — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:25:06 -0800

My wife and I were just listening to the Fresh Air interview with Packer mentioned above while out shopping today. We each alternated between speechlessness and outrage. The negligent treatment of Iraqis by American civilian contractors seemed particularly egregious.

By: scody

scody — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:26:00 -0800

I was reading the print version of this article last night; it includes a photograph that's not reproduced in the online version. In it, the body of a murdered Iraqi man, his hands bound behind his back, lays face-down in a trash heap, literally thrown out like garbage. And seeing that man, and wondering about his family and his last minutes, I just started crying -- out of anguish and helplessness and white-hot fucking fury at what the fucking government of this country (and every one of its fucking enablers, domestic and foreign) has done to Iraq, and the fact that not one of them -- not one! -- will ever be held responsible.

By: i_am_a_Jedi

i_am_a_Jedi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:33:15 -0800

The Assassin's Gate was a great read. Phase 4 was a fuck-up from A to Z. We are fighting a colonial war in a post-colonial era, and doing an extremely shitty job of it.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:48:46 -0800

It reminds of when Bush Sr. secretly urged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam after the first Iraq war, hinting at military support if they did. That was the Shia.

By: Dagobert

Dagobert — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:52:12 -0800

Very interesting read. Well written, good points. This is a difference I've noticed between Afghans and Iraqis. The Iraqis I've met and trusted wanted to leave; the Afghans simply state that this is their country and why would they leave?

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:54:07 -0800

That was the Shia. It was both, but especially the Kurds. Moreover, during a major Kurdish uprising in Iraq, the much-needed air support that President Bush Sr. promised never came, resulting in a horrifying massacre of countless people. Now, one of the alleged hallmarks of our invasion is to save the Kurds. As shown above, the US has never really cared about the indigenous people of the Middle East, and just looks out for its own interests.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:02:38 -0800

Actually, it was the Shia first, and then the Kurds a few years later.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:13:25 -0800

what the fucking government of this country (and every one of its fucking enablers, domestic and foreign) has done to Iraq well, to be fair, it wasn't exactly the land of milk and honey to begin with.

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:22:22 -0800

Here's a link on the 1991 uprisings said to be inspired by Bush Sr. and CIA broadcasts, which failed due to the lack of direct support. Although we enforced a no-fly zone at the time, we allowed tanks and artillery to massacre the uprisings we looked forward to. The mass graves the neo-cons raved about as a pretext for a second invasion were mainly from these uprisings. In hindsight, we should have partitioned the country that we handed back to Saddam and forced his Sunni supporters to revolt instead in order to retain their control of the oil. There was always a hidden US agenda it seems.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:25:46 -0800

A string of bad events had given Othman the sense that time was running out for him in Iraq. In November, members of the Mahdi Army—the Shia militia commanded by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr—rounded up Othman’s older brother and several other Sunnis who worked in a shop in a mixed neighborhood. The Sunnis were taken to a local Shia mosque and shot. Othman’s brother was only grazed in the head, but a Shiite soldier noticed that he was still alive and shot him in the eye. Somehow, he survived this, too. Othman found his brother and took him to a hospital for surgery. The hospital—like the entire Iraqi health system—was under the Mahdi Army’s control, and Othman decided that his brother would be safer at their parents’ house.

Wow. well, to be fair, it wasn't exactly the land of milk and honey to begin with. It may not have been paradise, but it wasn't a country where corpses were dumped in garbage cans on a daily basis. To equate Iraq today to Iraq before the war to Iraq today is utterly disingenuous.

By: dwivian

dwivian — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:32:45 -0800

Oh, heavens no. They used mass graves.....

By: Wonderwoman

Wonderwoman — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:37:18 -0800

Can't leave a decent comment. It's all just too fucked up. I am in a constant state of overwhelmed. Fucked up fucked up fucked up. All of it, from tip to toenails, fucked up.

By: stammer

stammer — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:38:14 -0800

By: tehloki

tehloki — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:46:57 -0800

I'm just waiting for the thread, full of "."s... "Iraq passed away today, violently, eyes wide open."

By: dobbs

dobbs — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:49:09 -0800

This was covered on 60 Minutes a short while ago -- video on C&L.

By: maryh

maryh — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:56:07 -0800

By: taosbat

taosbat — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:10:33 -0800

NeoColony...suxxorz

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:15:45 -0800

we allowed tanks and artillery to massacre the uprisings we looked forward to. Not just tanks and artillery; allowing Saddam to use helicopters is what really wiped out the Shiite rebels we encouraged in the south in 1991. The lack of promised air support for the Kurds in 1995 was another example of the kind of diplomacy the U.S. was known for in the region. And now this.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:16:22 -0800

Such a sad story. I'm glad Meridian isn't in this thread.

By: smeger

smeger — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:25:12 -0800

Holy. Fucking. Shit. That was one hell of an article.

By: geos

geos — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:25:25 -0800

George Packer from 2003: It's possible that Makiya's ideas are too lofty to stand a chance of being realized soon. David L. Phillips may be right to say that 'Iraqis aren't quite ready for the new politics. The tribal structures, the ethnic groupings -- they matter to Iraqis. They're important. This isn't a university laboratory.' It's also possible that Makiya was foolish ever to imagine American cooperation with his exile dreams, and that he is out of his element in the dangerous labyrinth of Iraqi power politics. Meanwhile, ahead of the war, an Arabic translation of the report is being smuggled from Iraqi Kurdistan into Baghdad in miniature editions disguised as cigarette cartons. 'The document is just paper at the end of the day,' Makiya told me one snowy evening at his Cambridge apartment. 'One of the less grandiose impulses behind it was this: there's a world of people out there deeply, deeply skeptical about whether or not this country can make it to democracy. And I know deep down that they have good reason to be skeptical. I'm not really as rosy, I'm not as naive as sometimes I appear on this question. But it seems to me, for history's sake, important to have a group of Iraqis turn out a decent document that can be taken seriously, that will be picked up and remembered and churned over and used as some kind of a test, some kind of a yardstick against which to measure the progress of things afterward. And it was, after all, produced by Iraqis -- so that Iraqis can lift their heads up a bit and go out there in the world and say: 'We meant it. It wasn't all a word game. Some of us tried to give it a shot.'' George Packer is the author, most recently of 'Blood of the Liberals". Blood of the liberals indeed. I sentence George Packer to 10 minutes of freedom, alone on the streets of Baghdad.

By: Dagobert

Dagobert — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:31:33 -0800

Being alone on the streets of Baghdad is OK. It's when there are others around you that the shit starts to go down.

By: telstar

telstar — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 23:09:49 -0800

well, to be fair, it wasn't exactly the land of milk and honey to begin with. Actually, where the Tigris and Euphrates meet is most likely the original "land of milk and honey".

By: Dagobert

Dagobert — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 23:35:45 -0800

Exodus Chapter 3, Verse 8 ...and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. The Bible disagrees with you.

By: telstar

telstar — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:23:08 -0800

From the article: The more chaotic Iraq became, the more the Americans resorted to bureaucratic gestures of control. The fact that it took five signatures to get Adobe Acrobat installed on a computer was strangely comforting. Ooba Dooba.

By: telstar

telstar — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:33:17 -0800

The Bible disagrees with you. And I disagree right back.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:12:00 -0800

a fine article indeed.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:22:38 -0800

The word “security” was ubiquitous—a “magical word,” one Iraqi said, that could justify anything.

By: Mr Bismarck

Mr Bismarck — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:28:19 -0800

A great article, thanks for posting. I hope lots of people read all 16 pages.

By: b_thinky

b_thinky — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:28:09 -0800

"And just 38% said the situation in the country was better than before the 2003 war, while 50% said it was worse." What does it mean if half the population of Iraq would rather have Saddam Hussein than American-backed democracy? posted by stammer at 8:38 PM on March 24 [+] [!] I wonder if that polling includes Kurdish Iraqis. Did anyone catch 60 Minutes a couple weeks ago when they profiled Kurdistan, the northern region of Iraq? Iraq is about 30% Kurdish and their territories are stable and peaceful, despite being 40 miles from Baghdad. The Kurds have their own army and handle their own security because (unlike Sunni or Shia security forces in Iraq) the Kurdish security forces are reliable and can be trusted. I do recall reading a civilian contractor's blog that the best way to ensure personal safety in Baghdad is to hire Kurds as your personal security, becuase they won't be bribed by fellow tribe members. I suppose I don't really have a point here, other than to wonder if the Kurds are included in this data because they are apparently pretty happy with their results after the invasion. Also, I wonder what lessons from Kurdistan can be applied to the rest of Iraq.

By: RandlePatrickMcMurphy

RandlePatrickMcMurphy — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:45:54 -0800

How much more evidence do we need of the abject lack of morality in the Bush administration? They lie, they steal, they use the tactics of tinpot dictators to corrupt the justice system and steal elections. They let the people who tried to help us in Iraq twist in the wind without protection or support. And then they wonder why there's an insurgency. Also timely for me. (Self-link to the Ask.)

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:51:43 -0800

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

By: OldReliable

OldReliable — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:17:34 -0800

Who is running this war? I can't imagine why our trigger happy army wouldn't make it a point to protect these guys, even if it was JUST these guys. The message should be: "These people are on the inside. They are untouchable." I mean if you're going to level neighborhoods and wreak havoc, at least do it to make a point.