Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Beware the security forces

Andrew Sullivan pointed to River's entry from yesterday to show the state-of-affairs in Iraq:
“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

That’s how messed up the country is at this point.

We switched to another channel, the “Baghdad” channel (allied with Muhsin Abdul Hameed and his group) and they had the same news item, but instead of the general “coalition forces” they had “American coalition forces”. We checked two other channels. Iraqiya (pro-Da’awa) didn’t mention it and Forat (pro-SCIRI) also didn’t have it on their news ticker.
Zeyad had a similar anecdote in late February:
A few months ago, when Baghdad was ripe with news of Interior ministry's death squads raiding Sunni neighbourhoods at night, the local National Guard commander in our area started touring mosques to warn them from uniformed security forces operating at night. The commander's own words were "Never, never open your doors to security forces after dark. If they attempt to force their way in, be prepared to defend yourselves." That was the time when people started forming neighbourhood watch teams again.

8 Comments:

Blogger zen said...

The situation is quite unbelievably out of control. Entirely out of the control of any authority. It has resulted to "defend yourself" against the daily violence.

All this while the spin machine here refuses to face this reality.

5:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmm sounds like New Orleans post Katrina to me. They need a Government.

6:41 PM  
Blogger zen said...

This disaster was manmade.

Heck of a job Bushie.

10:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

like building a city below sea level.

11:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bush glosses over this point as well: That the likely combatents in a full-scale Iraqi civil war will the security forces. Makes him look all the more foolish whenever he opens his pie-hole on the subject.

2:07 AM  
Blogger zen said...

I suppose the citizens should have just evacuated the entire country huh?

Face it the analogy to NOLA doesn't work.

7:15 AM  
Blogger Bravo 2-1 said...

Zen, just ignore these anonymous posters. I think they have a good deal too much free time and a fondness for the absurd. Your point is valid, the spin machine is off the rails now.

Kvatch, good point. Those military forces will need paymasters and planners. Ready made for integration into militia formations.

12:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, what you are saying is, that all anonymous posters "have a fondness for the absurd."

That's absurd in itself.

5:45 PM  

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