In a shattered city, confusion reigns

By ORLY HALPERN,
From Monday's Globe and Mail
May. 3, 2004

Many of Fallujah's buildings are pocked with shell damage and bullet holes, some are missing front walls and a few are completely levelled. Beyond the checkpoint lay a shelled house with a burned vehicle that appeared to be an ambulance.

Nearly every business in the city remained closed yesterday, with the exception of the city's main bakery, which was preparing to start making bread again.

Bakery manager Mahmoud Atallah, 60, was cleaning the shop and firing the ovens for the first time in nearly a month. He had spent nearly the entire siege in the bakery, his sole companion a security guard guarding a nearby restaurant. across the street.

"It's better for us that the Americans leave our city. Why did they put a siege on us?" he asked. He said the Americans had broken ceasefire agreements, and said the shooting had died down since Iraqis had taken over security.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040503.wiraq-fallujah0503/BNStory/International/
____________________________________

From December 21, 2003:

The Two Troublemakers-Kathy Kelly
Voices in The Wilderness

excerpt:
Last evening, in Amman, we met with Fadi Elayyan and Jihad Tahboub, two Palestinian young men who were imprisoned for two months, without charge, by US Occupying forces who seized them, in Baghdad, on April 10, 2003

They are trying to help four of their companions who are still held by the US military, presumably in a prison compound at Umm Qasr, in southern Iraq.

"On April 10, the US Marines kidnapped us," Jihad began in a matter of fact tone. "We were students, and we stayed in Baghdad during the war because we did not want to give up our studies or leave our friends. The Marines wanted to occupy our building because it is high and gives a good view of the area. "

Some of the students had Palestinian passports. When they asked what they were guilty of, the soldiers said, "You are guilty of being Palestinian." The soldiers told them, "You are not studying education in Baghdad. You are studying terrorism."
more- http://vitw.us/weblog/archives/000463.html

__________________________________

America is swaggering like an oppressive bully

To believe, as President Bush does, that the Iraqi's hold no resentment of the U.S. and its agents, is self-delusion of the highest order.


"How say you, war or not?"
"Not war, if possible, O king," I said,"lest from the abuse of war,
The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,
The smoldering homestead, and the household flower
Torn from the lintel-all the common wrong-
And smoke go up thro' which I loom to her
Three times a monster: now she lightens scorn
At him that mars her plan, but then would hate
(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it,
And every face she look'd on justify it)
The general foe. More soluable is this knot,
By gentleness than war. I want her love.
What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd
Your cities into shards and catapults,
She would not love;- or brought her chain'd, a slave,
The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord,
Not ever would she love; but brooding turn
The book of scorn, till all my fitting chance
Were caught within the record of her wrongs,
And crush'd to death: and rather, Sire, than this
I would the old God of war himself were dead,
Forgotten, rustling on his iron hills,
Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck,
Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice, Not to be molten out."

Excerpt from, "The Princess: A Medley" by, Alfred Tennyson


Me Book