Shock and Awe:The Night Baghdad Burned-Extract from Robert Fisk's New Book

[buzzsaw_23]

Shock and awe: the night Baghdad burned. Exclusive extract from Robert Fisk's new book (short version)

In an exclusive extract from his powerful new book about the Middle East, Robert Fisk watches in the Iraqi capital as the US air offensive begins in March 2003

Published: 02 October 2005

Tubes of fire tore into the sky around the Iraqi capital, dark red at the base, golden at the top. Looking out across the Tigris from the river bank, I could see pin-pricks of fire reaching high into the sky as America's bombs and missiles exploded on to Iraq's military and communication centres and, no doubt, upon the innocent as well.

<snip>

Donald Rumsfeld was to assert that the American attack on Baghdad was " as targeted an air campaign as has ever existed". But he could not have told that to five-year-old Doha Suheil. She looks at me on the first morning of the war, drip-feed attached to her nose, a deep frown over her small face as she tries vainly to move the left side of her body. The cruise missile that exploded close to her home in the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad blasted shrapnel into her legs ­ they were bound up with gauze ­ and, far more seriously, into her spine. Now she has lost all movement in her left leg. Her mother bends over the bed and straightens her right leg, which the little girl thrashes around outside the blanket. Somehow, Doha's mother thinks that if her child's two legs lie straight beside each other, her daughter will recover from her paralysis. She was the first of the patients brought to the Mustansariya College Hospital after America's blitz on the city began.

There is something sick, obscene, about these hospital visits. We bomb. They suffer. Then we reporters turn up and take pictures of their wounded children. The Iraqi Minister of Health decides to hold an insufferable press conference outside the wards to emphasise the "bestial" nature of the American attack. The Americans say that they don't intend to hurt children. And Doha Suheil looks at me and the doctors for reassurance, as if she will awake from this nightmare and move her left leg and feel no more pain.

So let's forget, for a moment, the cheap propaganda of the regime and the cocky moralising of Messrs Rumsfeld and Bush, and take a trip ­ this bright morning in March 2003 ­ around the Mustansariya College Hospital. For the reality of war is ultimately not about military victory and defeat, or the lies about "coalition forces" which our "embedded" journalists were already telling about an invasion involving only the Americans, the British and a handful of Australians. War, even when it has international legitimacy ­ which this war does not ­ is primarily about suffering and death.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article316530.ece

[sasha031]

1. the beginning of the war is when I discovered Fisk

He was right there during shock and awe, such dark times, he wrote what the US was saying to the world at the time "You obey!"

[texpatriot2004]

2. I was so sick that night. I remember it was a horrible night. I was

so disgusted at what this regime was doing. I was so sad that we had no true leader to capitalize on the world-wide unprecedented opportunity we had after 9-11. It was aweful, so sickening.

[oblivious]

3. What's the word for droppping 3000 bombs & missiles on a defenceless city?

Freedom? Love? Democracy?

No, that can't be it.

What's the current word for that? It's on the tip of my tongue.

[number6]

8. terrorism

n/t

[CoffeeCat]

4. Shock and awe made me want to vomit...

I was literally sick to my stomach.

Remember, there was a build-up to "shock and awe"? Americans sat glued to their television sets, waiting for the video game to begin.

Our military prepped everyone--informing them that the bombing campaign would be "impressive" and a very major event.

The media was positioned all over the place, and when it began--it was as if we were supposed to be proud that our government was killing innocent Iraqis.

I was not proud. I was revolted. Disgusted.

Remember, we said we invaded Iraq to remove Saddam and to find WMD. That evil bombing campaign did not make sense. You don't need 10,000 bombs to kill one leader--who was probably a mile beneath the Earth in a bunker somewhere. How would a 500-pound bomb find WMD?

Shock and Awe was sickening. It was criminal.

Every time a bomb exploded, innocent children died.

It's just unimaginable. I am so ashamed of my country.

I feel as if I have survivor's guilt. I wish there was something I could have done to stop it. I'm so sad that this great nation is headed by a bunch of two-bit, classless, cowardly thugs.

It's crushing.

[ljm2002]

10. Remember the build-up to shock and awe?

...Damn right I remember. I will never forget those leering so-called "anchors" and "reporters" as they promoted the "Shock and Awe" as though it was a fireworks event. It was sickening and of course now we see just how criminal the enterprise really was and is. And still, cowardly politicians on both sides of the aisle assure us that we must spill more blood to "honor" the blood that has already been spilled.

The Bush regimes -- both of them -- are the worst misfortune to have befallen this country since the Civil War, and they may have more far reaching effects. Why? Because they stand unabashedly for crony capitalism, war profiteering, looting the public treasury, privatizing everything, handing control to the international corporations; because they are deeply traitorous to every ideal that our nation has held dear. Because they both used our so-called "free press" like a cheap whore, keeping her in line with the drugs of money and access, and beating her when necessary (remember the anthrax mailings...).

Today, our dark side has been exposed once and for all to the entire world. It was bad enough to have attacked a country that did not do us any harm -- still one could hope that we, as a nation, would be forgiven for lashing out madly, given the trauma of 9/11. We might have enlisted UN help for a transition in Iraq, and hoped for the best, and sincerely lent them aid to rebuild their shattered country...

But then along came Katrina, and our government deserted its own people. The most powerful government on the planet could not be bothered to make use of already positioned hospital ships, could not rescue people, did not supply food and water to people in desperate straits, would only treat the disaster as a police action. We stood exposed not only to the world but to ourselves. And all of our ideals about "racial equality" and "opportunity" stood exposed as lies, the facade ripped off as the levees burst and drowned one of the fabled cities of our land.

Weep for us, we have squandered our heritage. If I were a religious person, I would point out how far the Bush regime has wandered from the teachings of Christ -- how very, very far. "For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: <...> Inasmuch as ye did not to one of the least of these, ye did not to me." -- Matthew 25

[acmavm]

5. I remember too. I couldn't believe it was happening. I always thought

(being the idiot that I am) that something would happen and we would never start dropping bombs on those people.

I remember it too. I don't see how anyone could forget.

[savemefromdumbya]

6. Fisk = truth nt

nt

[number6]

7. I was shocked and awed by planes hitting the WTC.

:nuke:

[oblivious]

9. shock and awe = suffering and death

as Fisk points out

[patdem]

11. Well, hopefully you will feel better knowing a little 5 year old is left

paralized...and so many other innocent Iraqi's are dead and maimed just to make you feel better about 9/11....

[Demeter]

12. So This IS Why We Can't Let Him In The Country?

No witnesses allowed!