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01/15/2005:

"Fear and Voting in Baghdad"

by Robert Fisk
Journalism yields a world of clichés but here, for once, the first cliché that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful journalists.

Jan. 30, that day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday. The latest Zarqawi video shows the execution of six Iraqi policemen. Each shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead. Then a gunman walks confidently up behind him and blows his head apart with bullets.

These images haunt everyone. At the al-Hurriya intersection Tuesday morning, four truckloads of Iraqi national guardsmen -- the future saviors of Iraq, according to President Bush -- are passing my car. Their rifles are porcupine quills, pointing at every motorist, every Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army pointing their weapons at their own people. And they are all wearing masks -- black hoods or ski masks or kuffiyas that leave only slits for frightened eyes.

Just before it collapsed finally into the hands of the insurgents last summer, I saw exactly the same scene in the streets of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Now I am watching them in the capital.

...The American generals -- with a unique mixture of mendacity and hope amid the insurgency -- are now saying that only four of Iraq's 18 provinces may not be able to "fully" participate in the elections. Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and realize -- as the generals, of course, all know -- that those four provinces contain more than half the population of Iraq.
Full Article: commondreams.org