Victims of the Peace Decide Americans are Worse Than Saddam

The tribe has appealed for help to the coalition forces, but no one has even visited them. They have eaten or sold almost all their animals, and have only a week left of food. Now they hate the Americans.

“None of the American promises has happened. It is unbelievable what has happened,” Mr Yassim said.

His son concludes: “We have discovered that Saddam is better than the Americans.”

Hadeb Hamed Hamed, the tribe’s sheikh, sat on mats on the prison officer’s porch, and said: “The Americans promised us food and medicine and freedom. But we have lost our homes, our land, our crops. Now we live in prison with nothing, and they ignore us.

“It is the allied forces that have done this to us. When we run out of food, I don’t know what we will do.”

In fact, he does know, because with starvation looming, he has been talking about it with the other elders.

“If we don’t have a solution, we will fight the Americans even if they kill us. It is better than sitting here with nothing and just dying,” he said.
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Um, Folks, This Doesn't Look Like Victory
By Molly Ivins

Much as I hate to interrupt what is apparently a deeply felt triumphalism on the American right, now that it's over, does anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?

I realize that's what we all kept trying to figure out before the invasion, but don't you think it should at least be visible in hindsight? Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire.

These are early days, certainly, to attempt a full historical evaluation. Could be a case of the forest and the trees. Perhaps we're well along the road to having everything work out magnificently, and I'm just missing it. Still, I can't see anything that's going right.
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Bush 'is on brink of catastrophe'

Red Cross denied access to PoWs
Up to 3,000 Iraqis - some of them civilians - believed to be gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at US camps close to Baghdad airport

The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt.

There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source.

The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat. All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down.

There is circumstantial evidence that prisoners are being gagged and hooded, in the manner of the Afghans and other captives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - treatment in itself questionable under international law.

Unlike the Afghans in Cuba, there is no doubt about the status of these captives, whether PoWs or civilians arrested for looting or other crimes under military occupation: all have the right, under the laws of war, to be visited and documented by the International Red Cross. 'There is no argument about the situation with regard to the Iraqi armed forces and even the Fedayeen Saddam,' said the ICRC's spokeswoman in Baghdad, Nada Doumani.
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Now we are disappearing Iraqis. It seems the differences between Saddam Hussien's Iraq and our Iraq are narrowing all the time.

U.S. Sets Deadline for Iraqis to Hand in Weapons

The U.S. military, struggling to restore law and order, on Saturday gave Iraqis three weeks to hand in automatic and heavy weapons as part of a campaign to crackdown on lawlessness after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
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I don't think there are nearly enough US soldiers to accomplish this. There just might be a teensy bit of resistance to giving up their guns.

Yo, Ayatollahs!
by Maureen Dowd

The C.I.A. is snooping around itself and other spy agencies to see if prewar reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda were exaggerated.

The suspense is killing me.

The delicious part is that the review was suggested by Donald Rumsfeld, a main culprit in twisting the intelligence to justify a strike on Baghdad. It's like O. J. vowing to find the real killer.
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