The wrath of the conquered
America's GIs feel like living targets on Baghdad's streets, while the subjects of the accursed dictator Saddam Hussein complain more and more vocally about the arrogance and incompetence of their conquerors. The star of Gulf war champion George W. Bush is also beginning to fall at home.

56-year-old Chamis Sami al-Abid, a tomato, squash and cucumber farmer, construction machinery and beverage importer, owner of a shipping company, and the richest man in the small city of Faludja on the Euphrates River, has many good reasons to look forward to the arrival of American soldiers.

The small commercial empire he and his two brothers once took over from their father - about 100 employees, many millions of dollars in annual sales, two subsidiaries, one in Amman and the other in Dubai - suffered for years under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. "Baghdad caused us nothing but trouble," says Abid. "We were just waiting for the end of Saddam."

Now Faludja has been liberated for the past three months, 13,000 US soldiers are camped on the grounds of a former Iraqi army base a few kilometers north of the city, the cadres of the formerly ruling Baath party have been driven away, corrupt officials have been sent home, and all trade restrictions have been lifted. Nevertheless, Abid sits in his city villa and waits bitterly for the first of the nightly US patrols.

"Just as the heat begins to let up, the first tank comes roaring along the street. The entire house vibrates. And this continues hourly until five in the morning." He says that Ahmed Husseini, the son of a neighbor, protested at the garden gate in early June. "The Americans simply shot him. These people don't know what they're doing."
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  thanks to Spitting Image

Troops accused of torture

Sleep deprivation, loud music, bright lights, hooding and prolonged restraint in painful positions are being used by coalition forces in Iraq to torture detainees, Amnesty International said yesterday.

Presenting a memorandum detailing allegations of ill treatment, Mahmoud Ben Romdhane, head of the organisation's delegation in Baghdad, warned that the promise of human rights for Iraqis had yet to be fulfilled.
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