Looting of museums, banks, shops, factories--South Central LA writ large
Baghdad will be a basket case for decades to come... The power vacuum as the old regime left, and as U.S. soldiers are staying out of any police action, has given widespread looting. Probably by a mix of the peasants grabbing everything they can, factional revenge, and even deliberate arson by "stay behind" forces. Abu Dhabi t.v. is showing hundreds of scenes of small shops being looted. Shop-owners face financial devastation, as their stock is taken...they probably either have no insurance (their fault, of course), or war exclusions or loss of records as the buildings are burning will prevent any compensation. No fire service, no water for fire-fighting. It looks from the several satellite channels I am monitoring that more infrastructure/business damage is happening as a result of the looting and arson than from the 1991 and 2003 bombing campaigns combined. And with no sign that it will stop until every business has been stripped bare and torched. CNN reports that the national museums have been looted, with the Sumerian and Babylonian artifacts carted off by thousands of looters. One analyst said a lot of ancient artifacts will be appearing over the next several years in European art auctions. (In cases where the Sacred Bowl of Hammarabi is not being used as a cooking bowl by a family in Saddam City.) The long-term implications are clear: Baghdad will not be much of a tourist attraction or regional cultural center for many years to come. This will of course worsen the basket case nature of Iraq and will probably result in the eventual (maybe sooner rather than later) return of a "strong man" regime. And Americans will be expected to "rebuild" Baghdad. Ain't gonna happen. Stealing our money to rebuild a country we bombed because we didn't like their leader is going to be further grounds for action against Washington, D.C. (Too bad we can't cause its government to evacuate so the negroes can rampage and finish _it_ off the way Baghadis are destroying their city.) --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 10:00:15AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
Baghdad will be a basket case for decades to come...
The power vacuum as the old regime left, and as U.S. soldiers are staying out of any police action, has given widespread looting.
It seems as if we're standing by and letting it happen on purpose. Part of the plan to ensure Iraq's slave status for years to come? A way to make the bulk of the population yearn for any government, even a blatant US puppet state? Eric
On Friday, April 11, 2003, at 06:53 PM, Eric Murray wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 10:00:15AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
Baghdad will be a basket case for decades to come...
The power vacuum as the old regime left, and as U.S. soldiers are staying out of any police action, has given widespread looting.
It seems as if we're standing by and letting it happen on purpose.
Part of the plan to ensure Iraq's slave status for years to come?
A way to make the bulk of the population yearn for any government, even a blatant US puppet state?
Something like this. When we smashed Germany and Japan, those nations didn't burn and loot every major building, store, factory, etc. There may have been several reasons for this. For example, we accepted the formal surrender of both nations, leaving their "management" in place for at least the transition period (more so in Japan than in Germany, for various reasons). This time around our government was so fixated on the eee-vils of Soddom (*) that we simply sought to destroy everything connected with the leadership...and they got the message and bugged-out, suddenly, perhaps well aware of the chaos it would throw the country and the capital into. (* Strangely, there is far less build-up to why we proles should be hating Soddom than there was in the past. With the Iran hostages, there was a year or more of "one minute hates" devoted to why the "Ayotollah" was Satan Incarnate. Songs like "Bomb Iran," sung to the tune of the Beach Boys/Jan and Dean song "Barbara Ann." ("Bomb, bomb, bomb..., bomb Iran!") With Iraq 1, six months to prepare for war. This time, very little. Most Americans I know don't even hate Saddam all that much. Sure, he's a dictator like dozens we have seen. So?) The vacuum in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, etc., is like the vacuum after the sacking of Rome. Or the sacking of Baghdad by the liberators from the east 800 or so years ago. In fact, this whole thing is just that, the sacking of Baghdad. --Tim May
-- Tim May wrote:
Baghdad will be a basket case for decades to come...
The power vacuum as the old regime left, and as U.S. soldiers are staying out of any police action, has given widespread looting.
On 11 Apr 2003 at 18:53, Eric Murray wrote:
It seems as if we're standing by and letting it happen on purpose.
It is really hard to police when you do not speak the language. Furthermore, soldiers are terrible as police. They tend to solve all problems by killing the criminals and everyone in the vicinity. The looting will solve itself soon. All regime targets have been looted, which means that everyone now has guns. Naturally the looters start hitting non regime targets. Those targeted proceed to execute looters. Looting rapidly declines. Unfortunately this means that large public hospitals will cease to exist, but small private practices should be resuming soon, a quite satisfactory outcome unless you happen to be seriously injured during the fall of the regime. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ex1HQoJ2kYJwSMyp5TBLhzTH+6qqwg6ezxbM7VYg 4q2ySdMlUgiPS7jiXdtDmfaD/3tRNLRf0h+f2/RaA
On Saturday 12 April 2003 02:53, Eric Murray wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 10:00:15AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
Baghdad will be a basket case for decades to come...
The power vacuum as the old regime left, and as U.S. soldiers are staying out of any police action, has given widespread looting.
It seems as if we're standing by and letting it happen on purpose.
Part of the plan to ensure Iraq's slave status for years to come?
A way to make the bulk of the population yearn for any government, even a blatant US puppet state?
Eric
Nah!!!! Just pure old fashioned incompetence... Running all the way for "Bagdad" Rumsfeld on sleep inibition drugs takes it's toll... Take for example this small news: A group of looters tried to loot a small shop. The shopkeeper's son armed with a kalachnikov made them run away. What they did next? Well, went to a platoon of marines and told they knew where was a a Fedahin Militia with a Kalachnikov... The kid was shot with automatic weapon fire at sight without even been questioned or the information confirmed. The marines are so tired that they don't even think right... http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993604 (Just being cynical, people..) Now that they are at target, they just want a good night's sleep... No time for civilian patrol... But you could be right. But it also seems to me that this is the perfect oportunity to ramsack the ministries of all information, dossiers and contacts related to terrorism and arab nations and still leave the doubt to those people that all your references in the iraqui system were lost and out of american hands, during the ministry and public fires... Creating doubt to the ennemy in an inteligence operation sometimes gives you the edge you need to achieve your goals... Cheers, Andri Esteves
Tim May wrote:
When we smashed Germany and Japan, those nations didn't burn and loot every major building, store, factory, etc. There may have been several reasons for this. For example, we accepted the formal surrender of both nations, leaving their "management" in place for at least the transition period (more so in Japan than in Germany, for various reasons).
A quick google search seems to show that there *was* looting in both Germany and Japan as those countries collapsed much as you would expect in a power vacuum. In the German case much of the looting and rape in Berlin (of around 100,000 German women) was committed by invading Soviet troops in early May 1945. There was German civilian looting in Frankfurt, at least, and probably everywhere. "Battered in Allied advance on Berlin, Frankfurt, the third largest city in Germany, becomes a city in ruins - German civilians go on an orgy of looting, pillaging freight cards and coal yards" <http://www.footagefinders.com/wwii(2).htm#Mass%20Arny%20maneuvers> As for Japan:- The diversion of military funds and supplies into private hands actually began the day before the emperors broadcast [of surrender] and unfolded in several distinct phases. It was later estimated that approximately 70% of all army and navy stocks in Japan were disbursed in this first frenzy of lootingand this for a force of some 5 million men at home, over 3 million overseas. further He clears up the mystery, once and for all, about what happened to the untold billions of dollars worth of war materiel, supplies, and goods that vanished immediately after the surrender; it was stolen by Japanese men of position and privilege, as Dower calls them, with the help of Japanese authorities. http://www.jetro.org/inside/io9910.html -- Steve
At 2:52 AM -0700 4/12/03, James A. Donald wrote:
The looting will solve itself soon. All regime targets have been looted, which means that everyone now has guns. Naturally the looters start hitting non regime targets. Those targeted proceed to execute looters. Looting rapidly declines.
That's exactly what's happening in Sadd-, er, Liberty City. Mob rule works, when the mob is armed... The imams have asked for all their stuff to come back to the mosques, and, oddly enough, the stuff's coming back. Expect the same thing for the hospitals, at least in the Shiite areas... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
participants (6)
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André Esteves -
Eric Murray -
James A. Donald -
R. A. Hettinga -
Steve Mynott -
Tim May