FW: [snow-news] 'Fear has taken hold of Baghdad'

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Not new information, but from a paper we don't see a lot from.

David

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 1:37 AM
To: snow-news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [snow-news] 'Fear has taken hold of Baghdad'


HUNT FOR SADDAM TURNS INTO A NIGHTMARE
By Justin Huggler

The Sunday Independent (South Africa)
August 24, 2003

Full:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=123&art_id=iol1061713494621B225&set_
id=1

Baghdad - Bulldozers are still carefully sifting through the rubble of the
Canal Hotel, the United Nations headquarters in Iraq, in case there are more
bodies to find from this week's bombing. Those UN staff brave enough to stay
on are working in tents outside the wreckage, under the searing sun.

But more than just the Canal Hotel is in ruins. Among the rubble lay the
last
illusions that the American occupation of Iraq might be working.

After a week in which Iraq's main oil pipeline to the north was set on fire,
the water supply to Baghdad was sabotaged and the UN's chief envoy, Sergio
Vieira de Mello, murdered with at least 23 other people, in what many are
calling the worst attack on the UN in its history. No one doubts any more
that
the occupation here is in trouble.

It was made clear in the most savage way this week that the Americans and
their allies are facing ruthless and organised resistance to their
occupation.
Yet it was also one of the Americans' most successful weeks in terms of
their
hunt for the former members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Both Hussein's
former
vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and, more importantly, Al Hassan
al-Majid, the man known as Chemical Ali, were captured.

That the news of their capture was overshadowed by the week's other events
shows how successfully those responsible for the bombing of the UN
headquarters have been able to change the agenda in Iraq. The story is no
longer about the hunt for Hussein and his henchmen - it is about an
occupation
in danger of turning into a nightmare.