Reports from an eyewitness - what is going on in Iraq?

[C Elegans]

Khaled Bayomi, a Swedish-Iraqi PhD student in Middle East politics who was in Iraq as a human shield, returned to Sweden today and reported his experiences to Swedish media. I translate from Sweden's largest newspaper:

"I was in the area just beyond the Haifa avenue west of Tigris. It was the morning of the 8th April and the battles were fierce so. In the afternoon, it got very quiet and four American tanks were standing in the slum area. From the tanks I heard shouts in Arabic, encouring people to come closer. Earlier in the morning everybody on the streets had been shot at, but now in the quiet, people became curious after a while, so after about 45 minutes the first Bagdadites came forward. Then the US soldiers shot the two Sudanese guards who stood outside an administration building on the other side of the Haifa avenue. I was only 300 meters away when I saw the guards getting murdered. Then they shot the door to the building apart, and the Arabic interpretors in the tanks ordered people to enter the building. The word got around quickly, and the house was emptied. A little later, the tanks crushed the door to the Dept of Justice which was in the neighbouring building, and the looting continued there. I was standing in a large mass of people who witnessed this together with me. They did not participate in the looting, but dared not object against it either. Many had tears of shame in their eyes.
The next morning, the looting continued in the Museum of Modern art 500 meters further north. Like the day before it was two groups, one who looted and one who watched in horror.

Reporter: Do you say it was the US troops who initiated the looting?

"Yes, absolutely. The lack of scenes of joy made the US troops in need of images showing the Iraqies expressing some kind of dislike for Saddam's regime."

Reporter: But the Bagdadites destroyed a large statue of Saddam?

"Did they? It was a US tank that did it, next to the hotel where all the journalists are staying. Until lunchtime the 9th of April, I didn't see a single torn image of Saddam. If people had wanted to break statues, they could have broken any of the many smaller statues, without help from American tanks. If it had been a political uprising, the people would have broken the statues first and looted later. Now the US has to do it themselves because there is no political power from the inside that really wants to challenge the existing structure. The two who came in from the outside, general Nazar al-Khazraji and the shia muslim leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei where cut to pieces alive by a mob because they were seen as American puppets.
So now we have an occupying power in Iraw, who have not stated how long they are staying and have not stated any time plan for civil governing or general election. Only a big chaos is awaiting."

Comments?

[InfiniteNature]

Well I wouldn't be surprised if it was true, the news is famed for 'facts'.

But I would like a link if you could get it, like to find out about it more myself.

[Gruntboy]

"Khaled Bayomi, a Swedish-Iraqi PhD student in Middle East politics who was in Iraq as a human shield"

Oh please, are you trying to p*ss me off? Are you trying to get me to post stuff that will get me banned? You're heading in the right direction. That is the only reason I see for posting this provocative material.

Biased source.

[Lazarus]

I have to agree with Gruntboy on this one. C Elegans you have professed that you look for objective reporting (spurning Fox News, for instance - which is all to the good), and then you turn around and take the word of a single individual who went to Iraq with the sole purpose of attempting to stop the war - and, thereby, save the Hussein regime from certain destruction.

I applaud your search for the truth - but lets not look for anything which is anti-American, and assume that it must be true.

EDIT: typo.

[RandomThug]

Thats gibberish.

[C Elegans]

Quote:

Originally posted by InfiniteNature Well I wouldn't be surprised if it was true, the news is famed for 'facts'. But I would like a link if you could get it, like to find out about it more myself.

The article is in Swedish. Here is the link, if you can get anything out of it:
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.j...usRenderType=6

My translation is really word-for-word, but of course I have no idea about the reliability of this guy.

@Grunt and Lazarus: Chill down and please try not to make such overinterpretations of my intentions. Mind-reading and second-guessing of other people can often lead to unnecessary misunderstandings. As you can see in my post, I did not anywhere state I considered this guy more or less truthful than anything else. I just thought it was interesting since the interview was published in Sweden's largest morning newspaper (morning papers as opposed to tabloid press, it's a serious newspaper - however that doesn't mean this witness is more or less reliable). I asked for comments on the article, so please try to stick to that instead of posting implication that I try to provoce you or get you banned. Thank you.

[Gruntboy]

Yeah, I asked for comments on the British war memorial desecrated. Deleted.

I commented on some inanane remarks. Savaged.

Do you see what I 'm getting at? I think I made my comments clear on this article. Is that OK? Do you mind if I am offended? Intention or not. That seems good enough for everyone else.

Just go ahead and post WTF you like.

"Chill down and please try not to make such overinterpretations of my intentions. Mind-reading and second-guessing"

Could you be more condescending? Could you attempt to interpret my actions any more?

[C Elegans]

@Grunt@ Was the War memorial graffitti thread deleted? I know nothing about that, I haven't read it since I last posted in it. I don't know what comments you refer to either. So no, I don't see what you are getting at.

However, it's a pity you feel offended by the article. This guy may be lying his teeth off, he may be psychotic, he may have misunderstood something he saw or he may present an accurate description. I have no idea, I wasn't there. And yes, I am going to post whatever I want (as long as it does not violate the forum rules), and I hope everybody else is too. We should be able to discuss also things we do not like or agree with. And yes, of course your comments about this article is ok, I asked for it, it was just the interpretation of my personal intentions I objected to. You wrote that the only reason you could see why I posted this article, was to make you post things that got you banned. Lazarus wrote "lets not look for anything which is anti-American, and assume that it must be true". I say, I didn't say that so don't read that meaning into my post.

[Aegis]

Phew. Getting a bit toasty in here. Mind if both sides kind've call of their dogs?

As for this, I personally can see soldiers inciting something, but I'm not so sure about the 'murder' part. that seems a little much, but then, I wasn't there.

It's very interestnig to see something like this, though, because it happens in almost every war, if not in every war.

[fable]

CE has posted remarks drawn from an interview with a Swedish citizen who was in Iraq. The interest in his comments lies in the way he contradicts Western media reports about the behavior of American troops. As far as I can tell, this is the first time I've seen or heard these views expressed.

She asked for opinions on these remarks. There is absolutely no indication in her post that she supported these views. I don't even see a shadow of propaganda intent in her comments, just a desire to get the opinions of people outside Sweden on what this guy said.

Feel free to take on the gent's remarks, but please, show the same courtesy and respect for the poster that you would desire, yourselves, at any time. And for goodness sakes, read what she actually writes, instead of putting entirely new paragraphs down in place of what she's written.

******************************

@CE, IMO, the person who gave that interview lost a degree of credibility right away because of inherent bias. If he was a human shield in Iraq, he has some spadework to do to regain any reliability on the factual reporting of matters, there. For that matter, I would have expected the newspaper that printed his diatribe to give us considerably more background on the man. There are some extremely serious charges there, and I would have liked to know his own current and previous political and social affiliations. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. Not when you say what he did.

As for the content: I don't buy it for a minute. First, it runs counter to all the information received from a host of reporters on the spot, even those who are not friendly to US interests. This includes by representatives of Deutsche Welle, and Agence France Presse. Had the student's remarks been accurate, the news services would have had a field day. Even the US services would have certainly picked it up, given the sheer ratings value that would have overweighed everything else in their cynical little minds.

Second, it runs counter to US military policy. I am by no means a great fan of this Iraqi invasion, as you may have noticed. But the US has a good record post-Vietnam when it comes to staging false events for the media. They learned their lesson about vanished credibility.

As for American troops looting, that's ridiculous. The US military is extremely well-disciplined, and US military courts are extremely strict. Looting is a crime that would earn the looter a very nice, long sentence in a military prison. The idea of rampant US troops looting widely is utterly beyond the comprehension of a well-trained, Western military force, and I can only suspect that the student who claimed this had never observed such a force active in the field. If he had, he would have couched his misinformation more subtly.

[C Elegans]

I only read the on-line version of the newspaper (I refuse to pay for any newspapers here since none are of such quality so I'd like to support it financially) and in that version of the article nothing at all was stated about this guy's background. There was another article with and interview with another human shield, and nothing was stated about his background either, they just printed an interview, nothing more.

Your comments @Fable and Aegis are exactly of the kind I wanted people to post: what do you think of this guy's report and how is the event reported in other media? Are there other eyewitnesses to the same event, and what do they say? Deustche Welle is IMO a very reliable source of information normally, and in this case they can hardly be accused of being biased towards the US/UK side!

Regarding looting, this guy did not claim the US soldiers were looting, if it looks like that it is my bad translation. He claims that the people in the tanks encouraged the Iraqi people to loot. He claims that the US tanks shot the two guards, though.

[Aegis]

Well, regarding the looting, here's an article I found in the Toronto Star about it. Sort've interesting, and backs up the whole looting thing. It a pretty good article that depicts just what so of anarchy is happening.

[fable]

Quote:

Originally posted by C Elegans Regarding looting, this guy did not claim the US soldiers were looting, if it looks like that it is my bad translation. He claims that the people in the tanks encouraged the Iraqi people to loot. He claims that the US tanks shot the two guards, though.

If by Iraqi guards he meant regular Iraqi army, then the US/UK forces would have opened fire. As for encouraging people to loot, that's just so far outside the modus operandi of the US armed forces that I can only blink. Not only that, it would be counterproductive. With a bunch of reporters around, you wouldn't want your troops to even have the most remote possibility of being caught urging citizens to loot.

Of course, if they said something about Hussein's regime being toppled, that could possibly be seen as leading to looting and violence. It's the kind of grandiloquent statement that might be made by any conquerors. However, I would expect the US troops to quickly establish order, since they became the de facto rulers. (Note, this wouldn't be the case in the Kurdish north, where the US/UK forces are giving the Kurds a great deal of lattitude--and where looting is pretty common. I heard today that the Turks were again stating their troops are on alert to move across the border, if the Kurds establish a free state.)

My guess is that people are simply looting in Baghdad, and there simply isn't a centralized force to make sure it doesn't occur. I don't for a second believe that the US army is encouraging anybody on the streets to loot anywhere. Rule of law will have to be reestablished, and that job lies in the hands of the US. Encouraging looting only to have to stop it quickly afterwards is ridiculous; nor could the troops be encouraging the looting *only* of Hussein's palaces. You can't channel rioting and looting in this fashion.

[Aegis]

Quote:

Originally posted by fable (Note, this wouldn't be the case in the Kurdish north, where the US/UK forces are giving the Kurds a great deal of lattitude--and where looting is pretty common. I heard today that the Turks were again stating their troops are on alert to move across the border, if the Kurds establish a free state.)

On that one, check this

[fable]

Thanks, @Aegis. I am very curious to see how this pans out. It's been the contention of many people for some time (including myself) that the Kurds were going to use the opportunity of a US invasion to split off northern Iraq and form their own state. The Turks will then invade, followed by an invasion from Iran.

Unless, of course, the Iranians prefer to play things more quietly, and support the more radical groups in the Shi'a south, who are culturally related to them.