The U.S. didn’t win any friends in Baghdad Wednesday. Two blasts, which Iraq said were from U.S. missiles, devastated a busy Baghdad street, killing up to 15 people.
Crowds of enraged Iraqis carried bloody bodies away, yelling slogans in support of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and denouncing President Bush.
“We will sacrifice our blood and souls for you, Saddam,” they chanted. “Down with Bush!”
Bodies were littered on the ground and in the smouldering wreckage of mangled cars. A pregnant woman was among the dead.
Haneed Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi defense unit for the district, said there were no military facilities in the area. But some locals said there was a military compound nearby.
The U.S. said Thursday that after analyzing the damage it not believe it was caused by U.S. bombs. The only U.S. air attack at around the time the market street was hit was aimed at a military target in another area of the city. The bombs used in that attack were 2,000-pounders. If they had hit the street there would have been no buildings left standing near the impact area.
The Pentagon suggested that the damage more likely was caused either by an Iraqi weapon -- perhaps a surface-to-air missile -- that fell back into the city and exploded or, perhaps, Iraqi sabotage aimed at its own people but blamed on the U.S.
Who we’re fighting
The Republican Guard and the Fedayeen Saddam have been getting a lot of ink and air time, so let’s take a step back and consider who these guys are.
First, the Fedayeen, who we’ve heard little about. Thankfully. They are the worst of the worst, and if we’re looking for suspects in the apparent executions of seven American soldiers who were trying to surrender, I’d start here.
This group of government enforcers is run, no surprise, by Saddam’s older son, Uday. He’s the one Sports Illustrated fingered this week for torturing and murdering Iraqi athletes who failed to perform to his expectations. A special unit of the Fedayeen, called the Fidayi, has a particularly grotesque specialty: they behead prostitutes in front of their husbands and children.
It’s unclear how many Fedayeen there are; estimates run from 18,000 to 40,000. Given their role as extra-legal enforcers of Saddam's edicts it’s a safe bet that many of them are in the towns along the U.S. route of march, making sure residents stay “loyal.” They also are likely some of the ununiformed “irregulars” that have been making life difficult for coalition troops in Basra and Nasiriyah.
The Republican Guards, on the other hand, are the cream of the Iraqi army. They emerged as elite units after the bloody Iraq-Iran war in the early 1980s. They, too, have done much of the regime’s dirty work, such as brutally suppressing insurrections.
How do we end this war?
One easy way for this war to end would be for Saddam to suddenly topple. That appears increasingly unlikely, however, raising the question of alternative endings.
Fred Kaplan at Slate asks what our Plan B is.
Mark Erikson at Asia Times Online ponders the Gotterdammerung scenario.
Another solution would be peace
A quicker, less bloody ending would be a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Saudi Arabia says it has sent a peace proposal to the U.S. and Iraq, though no details are available yet.
The British newspaper The Guardian has compiled a very useful list of anti-war sites in the U.K., North America and elsewhere.
A real win-win situation for some Arabs
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned into an odd sort of win-win situation for Arabs in other countries. Most of them hate Saddam. At the same time, they’re gleeful that he’s making life difficult for the U.S.
BBC = Baghdad Broadcasting Corp.?
The BBC has been taking a lot of heat over an anticoalition slant in its reporting. Some have taken to calling it the Baghdad Broadcasting Corp. Is it that bad? Well, I don't read it every day, but here's a story that recounts a memo from one of the BBC’s own correspondents to the brass in London.
And here a bunch of bloggers berate the Beeb. These particular bloggers are, as you might expect, generally pro-war.
A bunch of Labor members of Parliament are also griping, but I’ll spare you those.
However, the BBC does have a good war blog site.
If you really want to know what people elsewhere are thinking …
This site displays 221 newspaper front pages from 27 countries every day. Included are my parent paper, The Seattle Times, and that other one. But you can see those anytime. How about Le Monde in Paris, An-Nahar in Beirut, the Jerusalem Post, the Times of India or Asahi Shimbun in Japanese or English.
Note the mouse-over feature that gives you a small view of the page. Also note that if you want to view a page at a readable size you have to download a pdf file, which can be time-consuming (especially on a dial-up connection).
Peter Arnett, back in Baghdad
I don’t normally link to PR handouts, but I’m making an exception for Peter Arnett.
Arnett is a journalistic legend. He’s covered 19 wars during his 40 years in the business and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his Vietnam coverage. He stuck it out in Baghdad during the 1991 one Gulf War and is back in Baghdad now for National Geographic Explorer and MSNBC. This Q&A shares some insights about the Iraqi capital and its people from someone who’s been there for both wars.
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