Quotes of the Week:
"One senior American officer said that in any urban fight, American troops could turn Falluja into ‘a killing field in a couple of days…’ One senior American officer said, ‘How Falluja is resolved has huge reverberations, not just in عراق but throughout the entire area.’ Or, as another senior officer put it, ‘We have the potential to turn this into the آلامو if we get it wrong.’” (Eric Schmitt, “U.S. General at Falluja Warns a Full Attack Could Come Soon,” نیویورک بار، 4/22/04)
"A security contractor killed in Iraq last week was once one of South Africa’s most secret covert agents, his identity guarded so closely that even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not discover the extent of his involvement in apartheid’s silent wars… In آفریقای جنوبی he joined the SA Defence Force’s secret Project Barnacle, a precursor to the notorious Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) death squad… In 1985 he was involved in planning the now notorious SADF raid on گابورون in which 14 people, including a five-year-old child, were killed.” (Julian Rademeyer, “Iraq victim was top-secret apartheid killer,” ساندی تایمز [of South Africa], 4/18/04)
"A former British soldier shot while guarding workers in عراق predicted being ‘over-run’ in an e-mail the night before his death in the town of اصابت… Mr Bloss, who is believed to have served with the parachute regiment in Northern Ireland, was working for a Virginia-based security firm, Custer Battles.” (“Iraq Briton’s final tragic e-mail,” BBC News, 4/10/04)
"In the first months of the occupation, [said Bessam Jarrah, an Iraqi surgeon,] we, the educated people, thought امریکا would show us a humanitarian way, a political way, to solve problems… But this use of force means the efforts to find a political solution for عراق has failed, and now امریکا is using Saddam’s approach to problems: brute force. امریکا won the war on April 9 last year; they lost the war on April 9 this year. That is what Iraqis feel.” (Alissa J. Rubin, “Carnage Dims Hopes for Political Way in Iraq,” لس آنجلس بار، 4/19/04)
A new word order
Imagine that: The Iraqis of Fallujah in “the Alamo” and a British “security contractor,” with previous experience in Northern Ireland, working for the oddly named Custer Battles, a Virginia “security firm,” and dying in the Iraqi town of Hit. Custer Battles, by the way, also “has the airport security contract in Baghdad. Airport security in this context does not mean bored attendees standing by an X-ray machine, but rather former Green Berets and Ghurka fighters defending the airport from mortars, rockets and snipers.”
So we now have potential Iraqi Davy Crocketts and Jim Bowies facing off against the modern equivalent of “the Seventh Cavalry,” filled with Gurkhas, Chileans of the Pinochet regime, South African former death squad members, former British special forces officers, American ex-Seals and the like amid what Alissa Rubin of the لس آنجلس تایمز calls a “culture of impunity” in Iraq. Though she’s referring to the world of Iraqi kidnappers and assassins, the word “impunity,” which means “exemption from punishment, penalty, or harm,” and has an old-fashioned imperial edge to it, also catches something of the Bush administration stance toward Iraq and the greater world.
The men of Custer Battles guard Baghdad’s airport, while the men of بلک واتر آمریکا — if still waters run deep, how do blackwaters run, and where do they get these names? — four of whom were killed and mutilated in Fallujah, provi
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