A different street fight in Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20040527/ts_washpost/a58770_2004may26&cid=1802&ncid=1480

BAGHDAD, May 26 -- The American counterinsurgency effort in Iraq (news - web sites)'s largest urban war zone is being fought in the sewers. Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an earnest tank officer who recalled that he once dreamed of commanding "large mechanized formations across vast open deserts," is instead knee-deep in a very different fight.

The recently arrived commander of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division pulled up Wednesday to a trash-strewn lot in Al-Rashid, a treacherous southern suburb of Baghdad. A moat of sewage ringed the neighborhood, giving off an eye-watering stench in the noon sun. People assembled before easels and a podium. In front of them, huge pipes, pieces for a sewer system in a neighborhood that has never had one, waited to be set into the cracked mud.


"Your struggle is not with the occupation," Chiarelli told the several dozen community leaders and a pack of local reporters seated on plastic chairs before him. "Your struggle is right before your eyes."


A career tank officer who once taught political science at West Point, Chiarelli believes that public-works projects may be more effective than guns in deciding the future of Iraq. He said he fears that time might be running out for the U.S. occupation after a year of enduring war and sluggish reconstruction that has left many Iraqis not knowing where to turn.

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Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an earnest tank officer who recalled that he once dreamed of commanding "large mechanized formations across vast open deserts,"

This guy think he's Lawrence of Arabia??

L.O.A. rode camels.

god bless the guy and all but, he is on board with the rest of us the "no fucking clue express"

Get the fuck out, they'll take of the sewage as soon as they take care of the rats.

Golly, ya think the BOMBING has anything to do with the need for "reconstruction"?

How embarassing that this white man's burden BULLSHIT is still working its magic... one would hope it would be consigned to books on "Manifest Destiny."

That doesn't mention who caused the destruction in the first place. Talk about a mafia protection racket.

He also lives in a dream world concerning the level of support that exists for the occupation.

"He said he believes U.S. civilian officials focused too intently on satisfying the Iraqis who already support them -- a group he estimates at 55 percent of the population -- rather than reaching out to those who still might."

Five percent of the Iraqi population is about one million people. He is expecting some huge mass graves and concentration camps:

"In seeking to minimize conflict with any Iraqi, even those among the 5 percent he says "we'll probably have to hunt down and capture or kill," Chiarelli has experimented with solutions short of war."

"Your struggle is not with the occupation,"

Or will he get demoted for that. Well, I guess things can't get any worse for him.

From the cited article -

"To prepare for the rebuilding, Chiarelli sent his brigade commanders to four months of civil-affairs training, including a three-day seminar with the city planning department of Austin, Tex. From headquarters on the Baghdad International Airport grounds, the division peppers Austin planners daily with questions over a direct Internet link."

The Austin city planners who are likely to be allied with the military have been proxies for corporate land developers in land-use wars against enviromentalists for over twenty-five years.