Robert Fisk: One, two, three, what are they fighting for?
The worst problem facing US forces in Iraq may not be armed resistance but a crisis of morale. Robert Fisk reports on a near-epidemic of indiscipline, suicides and loose talk

I was in the police station in the town of Fallujah when I realised the extent of the schizophrenia. Captain Christopher Cirino of the 82nd Airborne was trying to explain to me the nature of the attacks so regularly carried out against American forces in the Sunni Muslim Iraqi town. His men were billeted in a former presidential rest home down the road - "Dreamland", the Americans call it - but this was not the extent of his soldiers' disorientation. "The men we are being attacked by," he said, "are Syrian-trained terrorists and local freedom fighters." Come again? "Freedom fighters." But that's what Captain Cirino called them - and rightly so.

Here's the reason. All American soldiers are supposed to believe - indeed have to believe, along with their President and his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld - that Osama bin Laden's "al-Qa'ida" guerrillas, pouring over Iraq's borders from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia (note how those close allies and neighbours of Iraq, Kuwait and Turkey are always left out of the equation), are assaulting United States forces as part of the "war on terror". Special forces soldiers are now being told by their officers that the "war on terror" has been transferred from America to Iraq, as if in some miraculous way, 11 September 2001 is now Iraq 2003. Note too how the Americans always leave the Iraqis out of the culpability bracket - unless they can be described as "Baath party remnants", "diehards" or "deadenders" by the US proconsul, Paul Bremer.

Captain Cirino's problem, of course, is that he knows part of the truth. Ordinary Iraqis - many of them long-term enemies of Saddam Hussein - are attacking the American occupation army 35 times a day in the Baghdad area alone. And Captain Cirino works in Fallujah's local police station, where America's newly hired Iraqi policemen are the brothers and uncles and - no doubt - fathers of some of those now waging guerrilla war against American soldiers in Fallujah. Some of them, I suspect, are indeed themselves the "terrorists". So if he calls the bad guys "terrorists", the local cops - his first line of defence - would be very angry indeed.

No wonder morale is low. No wonder the American soldiers I meet on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities don't mince their words about their own government. US troops have been given orders not to bad-mouth their President or Secretary of Defence in front of Iraqis or reporters (who have about the same status in the eyes of the occupation authorities). But when I suggested to a group of US military police near Abu Ghurayb they would be voting Republican at the next election, they fell about laughing. "We shouldn't be here and we should never have been sent here," one of them told me with astonishing candour. "And maybe you can tell me: why were we sent here?"
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'Send me back. It's worse here'
Oliver Poole spent the Iraq war with members of one of the US Army's crack tank units. Back on home soil, he finds the battles are far from over

At the barbecue, I chat to Doc as he perches on the bonnet of his Ford Mustang, his six-year-old daughter sitting on his knee. He was awarded the Silver Star for using his body to shield a wounded soldier when the company was caught in an Iraqi counter-attack. For him, there is no longer a horror of violence. Instead, he seems to be revelling in the power that he enjoyed in Iraq.

"There was one time when we were on checkpoint, and this Iraqi came up to me, and he's all 'ladiladiladi'. You know, shouting Arabic stuff," he says.

"I pushed him away, but he came back. So I touched my pistol, but he carried on talking. I pulled out the gun and held it to his nose, but still he keeps shouting. Then I pistol-whipped him, cut him across the cheek. That's what I miss."
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  thanks to Whiskey Bar

Not a pretty picture: The future of Iraq

Two developments of October 20 involving Iraq speak volumes about the shape of things to come. The first is related to the Bush administration's decision to cede part of the control of Iraq to the United Nations, and the second is the story of an al-Qaeda tape in which the grim voice of the speaker - supposedly that of Osama bin Laden - says that Iraq has become the battleground in the jihad against the United States.

Things have to be a lot worse than admitted in the official circles in Washington for the Bush administration to yield even partial control over aid to Iraq. And, indeed, they are. Even after the passage of UN Resolution 1483 on October 16, hopes of a large-scale commitment of peacekeeping troops from a number of countries to Iraq have been dashed. France, Germany and Russia - even in their decision not to oppose that resolution - explicitly ruled out the prospect of committing troops or funds to Iraq. Everyone knows that it does not matter whether those troops are there wearing the blue UN helmet or their own, the moment they enter that country, they will become targets of the Iraqi resistance and Islamist forces.
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Dying for a McDonald's in Iraq

In London on October 13, an investors' conference entitled "Doing Business in Iraq: Kickstarting the Private Sector" was agog with reports that McDonald's, among other corporations, may begin selling burgers and fries in Iraq by next year. Attracting up to 145 multinational prospectors, the London conference was held less than a month after the United States announced its economic masterplan for Iraq, a blueprint which The Economist heralded as a "capitalist dream" that fulfills the "wish list of international investors".

Whether Ronald McDonald cuts the ribbon in time and makes the dream come true, however, will depend to a large extent on the outcome of a US-convened donor's conference that was scheduled to open in Madrid on Thursday.

As the US struggles against popular resistance in Baghdad, it battles its cash-flow woes in the balmy Spanish capital. Behind closed doors at the Campo de las Naciones, representatives of creditor countries and multilateral financial institutions will meet for two days to determine how and when McDonald's and other multinational corporations will finally be able to open their doors in Iraq.

In exchange for allowing the entry of their corporations to Iraq, rich creditor nations will be pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the occupation in order to make sure that it goes on unhampered - long enough for the Golden Arches to rise by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Those who will pay the price for the burgers and fries, however, will have no seat at the table.
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