Tomgram: David Hilfiker, "I'm not into the detainee business"

Just a day ago, the façade of the Shahin hotel in a wealthy section of Baghdad, was damaged by a suicide truck bomb. The hotel, according to historian Juan Cole, was occupied by Iraq's interim minister for labor, Sami Azara al-Majun, and his staff. Though neither he nor his colleagues were hurt, several passers-by were killed or wounded. In the same 24 hours, 6 US soldiers, 2 CNN Iraqi employees, along with 4 Iraqi policemen and a civilian were killed and more Americans and Iraqis were wounded.

American casualties are rising steadily, if in the press somewhat more quietly. For the time being, American deaths in Iraq seem headed for the inside pages of most papers. These are still, however, among the main stories coming out of Iraq -- tales of ongoing or spectacular and horrific violence. Reports about the difficulties of life in occupied Iraq are somewhat harder to come by. David Hilfiker's account, which follows, is striking just because it hardly qualifies as news at all and is generally the kind of incident that passes, for understandable reasons, under the radar screens of most journalists. And yet, to my mind, it couldn't be more illuminating on the problems faced by Iraqis and their American occupiers as well as on the nature of the occupation itself.

Hilfiker, a poverty doctor for many years and also the author of, among other works, Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen, reported for Tomdispatch from Iraq before the April invasion of that country and recently made his second postwar trip there as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation. (The Christian Peacemakers now have a permanent presence in Baghdad.) He is a sober and fair man, ready to consider all sides of any matter. Here is his report on one local incident, a single close-to-the-ground encounter between Iraqis and their occupiers. I commend it to you. Tom

Full article link: http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdi...mhtml?pid=1218

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzche