By Robert Fisk
The Independent - UK

So, it's a "truly remarkable achievement'', is it? General Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going "according to plan'', according to the British. So it's an achievement that the British still have not "liberated" Basra. It is "according to plan" that the Iraqis should be able to launch a scud missile from the Faw peninsula ö supposedly under "British control" for more than a week. It is an achievement, truly remarkable of course, that the Americans lose an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant, spend four days trying to cross the river bridges at Nasiriyah and are then confronted by their first suicide bomber at Najaf.

One half of the entire Anglo-American force ö still called 'the coalition' by journalists who like to pr few months and wheel our young soldiers west to surround Damascus? Where, for heaven's sake, is all this going? We were going to "liberate" Iraq. But the war could be "long and difficult'', Bush now tells us ö he didn't tell us that before, did he? ö and, according to Tony Blair, this is "only the beginning.'' Really?

Strange, isn't it, how all that fuss about chemical and biological warfare has been forgotten. The "secret" weapons, the gas masks, the anti-anthrax injections, the pills and chemical suits have been erased from the story ö because bullets and rocket-propelled grenades are now the real danger to British and American forces in Iraq. Even the "siege of Baghdad" ö a city that is 30 miles wide and might need a quarter of a million men to surround it ö is fading from the diary.

Sitting in Baghdad, listening to the God-awful propaganda rhetoric of the Iraqis but watching the often promiscuous American and British air attacks, I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing to dofriend) and, finally, the most heroic project of all ö the "liberation" of the people of Iraq.

Oil was not mentioned, although it is the dominating factor in this illegitimate conflict ö no wonder General Franks admitted that his first concern, prior to the war, was the "protection'' of the southern Iraqi oil fields. So it was to be "liberation" and "democracy". How boldly we crossed the border. With what lordly aims we invaded Iraq.

Few Iraqis doubt ö even the ministers in Baghdad speak about this ö that the Americans could, ultimately, occupy the country. They have the force and they have the weapons to smash their way into every city and rule the land by martial law. But can they make Iraqis submit to that rule? Unless the masses rise up as Bush and Blair hope, this is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial power. Without Iraqi support, how can General Franks run a military dictatorship or find Iraqis willing to serve him or run the oilfields? The Americans can win

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Terbitan : 5 April 2003

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