Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Mission Accomplished: Year Four

Pepe Escobar reports on life outside the Green Zone in Baghdad for Asia Times Online:
The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed since April 2003, the more than 4 million exiled and internally displaced, the overlapping ethnic cleansing neighborhood by neighborhood, the abysmal impotence of the Nuri al-Maliki government to seriously work with the Sunni Arab elite, the American imposition of the Baghdad gulag: all these factors dissolve in the deadly daily embrace of the Red Zone - where a human life means absolutely nothing and to stay alive in one piece is a victory to be earned minute by minute.

The Red Zone soundtrack is the hum of the power generator, punctuated by Kalashnikov shots, explosions, bombings, the sirens of police cars and ambulances and the roar of US choppers flying almost at roof level.

The air is heavy, dusty and the sun usually does not shine through the thick haze - a Hollywood-like special effect. The Baghdad gulag has the feel of an eerie version of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles - dusty and dead instead of glitzy palm trees, living-dead characters covered by a thick layer of sand and soot. The urban tissue is of a dissected cadaver - filthy, exposed parts separated from one another, fear and loathing impressed on blood, sweat, tears and viscera.

This is the real face of Bush's surgeland.


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