*Ø* Bloodshed in Baghdad
So that's all right then
Robert Fisk, 15 July:
"Lord Butler told us yesterday that Tony Blair acted in good faith. So that's all right then. At the al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad yesterday morning, there was blood on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on the doctors, blood on the stretchers. In the dangerous oven of Baghdad, 10 more lives had just ended. So what was it Tony Blair said in the Commons yesterday afternoon? 'We are not killing civilians in Iraq; terrorists are killing civilians in Iraq.' So that's all right then. Question: Are Baghdad and London on the same planet? ...
"[But] the real reason for yesterday's little bloodbath was about the isolation of Iraq's new government. This is the fourth checkpoint bombing around the same compound and the purpose is obvious. Iraqi officials cannot leave their Crusader-style fortress with its massive ramparts and walls. Ordinary Iraqis must go to them. And queue. And wait. And walking up to those checkpoints is becoming a macabre, frightening experience.
"If the insurgents cannot get inside the walls, they can at least imprison those inside by attacking the perimeter, cut them off from the rest of Iraq, make the government's presence irrelevant to the millions of Iraqis who, so Mr Blair was assuring us yesterday, are going to enjoy 'democracy'.
"But in truth, the authorities here are already cut off from the rest of Iraq. Baquba is run by armed men. Insurgents control Samara and Fallujah and Ramadi, and Muqtada Sadr's militia control the centre of Najaf ...
"But we acted in good faith. Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. And over and over again, in London yesterday, officials and ministers referred to the Iraqi war in the past tense. About the only thing Iraqis could have agreed with was Lord Butler's remark about the search for Saddam's weapons, that 'Iraq is a very big place and there is lots of sand ...'
"The al-Yarmouk hospital, needless to say, was the one place not to quote Tony Blair's assertion that although terrorists were killing Iraqis today, 'people were being killed in Iraq, thousands of them, under Saddam'.
"Forgetting that up to 11,000 Iraqis appear to have been killed since our invasion, it seems that it's better to be killed post-Saddam than pre-Saddam. So that's all right then."
Source: Information Clearing House
So that's all right then
Robert Fisk, 15 July:
"Lord Butler told us yesterday that Tony Blair acted in good faith. So that's all right then. At the al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad yesterday morning, there was blood on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on the doctors, blood on the stretchers. In the dangerous oven of Baghdad, 10 more lives had just ended. So what was it Tony Blair said in the Commons yesterday afternoon? 'We are not killing civilians in Iraq; terrorists are killing civilians in Iraq.' So that's all right then. Question: Are Baghdad and London on the same planet? ...
"[But] the real reason for yesterday's little bloodbath was about the isolation of Iraq's new government. This is the fourth checkpoint bombing around the same compound and the purpose is obvious. Iraqi officials cannot leave their Crusader-style fortress with its massive ramparts and walls. Ordinary Iraqis must go to them. And queue. And wait. And walking up to those checkpoints is becoming a macabre, frightening experience.
"If the insurgents cannot get inside the walls, they can at least imprison those inside by attacking the perimeter, cut them off from the rest of Iraq, make the government's presence irrelevant to the millions of Iraqis who, so Mr Blair was assuring us yesterday, are going to enjoy 'democracy'.
"But in truth, the authorities here are already cut off from the rest of Iraq. Baquba is run by armed men. Insurgents control Samara and Fallujah and Ramadi, and Muqtada Sadr's militia control the centre of Najaf ...
"But we acted in good faith. Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. And over and over again, in London yesterday, officials and ministers referred to the Iraqi war in the past tense. About the only thing Iraqis could have agreed with was Lord Butler's remark about the search for Saddam's weapons, that 'Iraq is a very big place and there is lots of sand ...'
"The al-Yarmouk hospital, needless to say, was the one place not to quote Tony Blair's assertion that although terrorists were killing Iraqis today, 'people were being killed in Iraq, thousands of them, under Saddam'.
"Forgetting that up to 11,000 Iraqis appear to have been killed since our invasion, it seems that it's better to be killed post-Saddam than pre-Saddam. So that's all right then."
Source: Information Clearing House
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