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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (92416)	4/11/2003 2:55:40 PM
From: michael97123	Respond to of 281500

Kyrosi, Iraqi looters just blowing off 25 years worth of steam. You dont really want to be shooting such folks. Actually during the US riots back in the sixties, one could make the same case regarding repressed blacks in the US. I was a kid in the sixties but i understood it, although in a democracy its totally unacceptable. In a few day it will all stop, i suspect and the iraqis will have to muster their individual strength for the reconstruction. Beats becoming martyrs. Mike

To: KyrosL who wrote (92416)	4/11/2003 2:59:31 PM
From: JustTradeEm	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I luv Donald ... reminds me of Howard Cosell !!! Just tell it like it is !! The fact is, here is how the media would have played this ... If we were heavy handed, shot looters, arrested looters ... it would have been "you're no different than Saddam's regime" If we let this run its' course and burn out as all wildfires do .... it's "oh my god, you're worse than Saddam's regime" So ..... Donald is right .... the media gets flipped the bird as they well should !!! The fact is the media is not responsible for people's lives .... it soooo easy to sit back with no responsibility and always "know" what is right. They've mostly all been wrong from the get go; I believe they're wrong once again. It's their "bitch du jour" .... who knows what tomorrow will bring ! JB

To: KyrosL who wrote (92416)	4/11/2003 3:00:29 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Here is Robert Fisk describing the looting: argument.independent.co.uk It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later. ... As the occupying power, America is responsible for protecting embassies and UN offices in their area of control but, yesterday, its troops were driving past the German embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate. ... Outside the UN offices, a car slowed down beside me and one of the unshaven, sweating men inside told me in Arabic that it wasn't worth visiting because "we've already taken everything". Understandably, the poor and the oppressed took their revenge on the homes of the men of Saddam's regime who have impoverished and destroyed their lives, sometimes quite literally, for more than two decades. I watched whole families search through the Tigris-bank home of Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam's half-brother and a former minister of interior, of a former defence minister, of Saadun Shakr, one of Saddam's closest security advisers, of Ali Hussein Majid – "Chemical" Ali who gassed the Kurds and was killed last week in Basra – and of Abed Moud, Saddam's private secretary. They came with lorries, container trucks, buses and carts pulled by ill-fed donkeys to make off with the contents of these massive villas. It also provided a glimpse of the shocking taste in furnishings that senior Baath party members obviously aspired to; cheap pink sofas and richly embroidered chairs, plastic drinks trolleys and priceless Iranian carpets so heavy it took three muscular thieves to carry them. Outside the gutted home of one former minister of interior, a fat man was parading in a stolen top hat, a Dickensian figure who tried to direct the traffic jam of looters outside. On the Saddam bridge over the Tigris, a thief had driven his lorry of stolen goods at such speed he had crashed into the central concrete reservation and still lay dead at the wheel. But there seemed to be a kind of looter's law. Once a thief had placed his hand on a chair or a chandelier or a door-frame, it belonged to him. I saw no arguments, no fist-fights. The dozens of thieves in the German embassy worked in silence, assisted by an army of small children. Wives pointed out the furnishings they wanted, husbands carried them down the stairs while children were used to unscrew door hinges and – in the UN offices – to remove light fittings. One even stood on the ambassador's desk to take a light bulb from its socket in the ceiling. On the other side of the Saddam bridge, an even more surreal sight could be observed. A truck loaded down with chairs also had the two white hunting dogs that belonged to Saddam's son Qusay tethered by two white ropes, galloping along beside the vehicle. Across the city, I caught a glimpse of four of Saddam's horses – including the white stallion he had used in some presidential portraits – being loaded on to a trailer. Tariq Aziz's villa was also looted, right down to the books in his library.