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Fri Feb 10 2012

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War

Message from Baghdad
by Jeff Guntzel of Iraq Peace Team
March 22, 2003

Dear friends,

In Baghdad, as I write, things are relatively quiet. Today IPT delegate Wade Hudson had a chance to take a limited drive around Baghdad with a driver and a government minder. After passing by the still smoking Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, he drove to a residential neighborhood where he reports having seen a bomb crater 8 to 12 feet deep "in the middle of a wide, divided street. Traffic in one direction was blocked." He also reported passing by "many small homes in the neighborhood with all of their front windows blown out, presumably from the blast that created the crater."

A few hours ago, we spoke with Kathy Kelly at the Al Fanar hotel in downtown Baghdad. Kathy told us that they will be going around and visiting some hospitals tomorrow where there are apparently quite a lot of children. It is expected that the worst is yet to come.

This grim forecast is not mitigated by Gen. Tommy Franks' promise earlier today of "a campaign unlike any other in history, a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility, by the employment of precise munitions on a scale never before seen, and by the application of overwhelming force."

We are getting unconfirmed reports of fighting in Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Regretfully, we have no IPT presence outside of Baghdad. We are trying to reach friends in Basra and have had little success. Just two very shaky connections that were terminated after less than a minute.

This war is an explosion of uncertainties. In the recently "liberated" town of Safwan, on the Iraq-Kuwait border, a reporter for the Guardian today may have unwittingly provided a window into the next weeks, months or years in Iraq:

"Yesterday afternoon a truck drove down a side road in the Iraqi town of Safwan, laden with rugs and furniture. Booty or precious possessions? In a day of death, joy and looting, it was hard to know.

"[T]he marines' presence was light. They had not brought food, medicines, or even order. All day hundreds of armoured vehicles poured through the town. But they did not stop, and the looting continued. Every government establishment seemed to be fair game. People covered their faces in shame as they carried books out of a school. Tawfik Mohammed, the headmaster, initially denied his school had been looted, then admitted it.

'This is the result of your entering,' he said. 'Whenever any army enters an area it becomes chaos. We are cautious about the future. We are very afraid.'"

Exactly one month ago, also in Safwan, the Iraq Peace Team released an open letter to members of the United States Military. The letter, read to the press as nearly 100,000 soldiers prepared an invasion just miles away, attempted to provide some measure of clarity in a time of hysteria:

"To U.S. soldiers and sailors: our prayer for every one of you is for a quick return to families and loved ones without having to participate in the horrors of war. We recognize that you have been placed in a position full of anxiety and danger, and we share in the responsibility for you being here. We recognize you are in this position because back home we do not truly govern ourselves - but are instead ruled by a minority who decide questions of war and peace in the interests of the few instead of the many. Our inadequate democracy has led us into deadly quagmires in the past, and now to the brink of another conflict that can only be described as a tragic war of empire."

Today we are neck deep in a conflict millions of us worked tirelessly to stop. Still, the protests grow. As the war-makers threaten a "campaign unlike any other in history," let us continue to match their promise.

Sincerely,
Jeff Guntzel, for Voices in the Wilderness