Table Of ContentBAGHDAD BUTCHER
By RALPH PETERS
April 2, 2003 -- JOHN Lee Anderson, a Peter Arnett
understudy reporting from Baghdad, gave a radio
interview recently in which he referred to allied
airstrikes as "atrocities." He spoke reproachfully of the
Iraqi civilian casualties he had seen in hospital wards,
then told of widespread destruction wrought in
Baghdad.
He described a landscape of death and wanton
devastation, all stamped "Made in America."
No matter that other journalists in the same city report
virtually no damage to civilian targets and even speak
of the population's casual confidence in the precision of
America's weaponry. What really should concern us is
Mr. Anderson's enthusiasm for embracing the official
Iraqi interpretation of this campaign (Mr. Anderson is a
writer of some talent employed by The New Yorker, a
minor magazine loosely affiliated with the Baghdad
regime).
Certainly, allied weapons may miss their targets,
despite technological advances. But when we err and
confirm it, we admit even our most painful mistakes -
as CENTCOM did immediately after Iraqi civilians in a
speeding vehicle were shot at an Army checkpoint.
Thus far, there has been no concrete evidence that any
of the civilian casualties in Baghdad were the victims of
U.S. bombs.
Mr. Anderson didn't bother to mention that, since the
start of the war, Iraqi air defense guns have fired
millions of rounds of varying caliber into the skies over
Baghdad. And what goes up does, indeed, come down.
More dangerous still, the Iraqis have launched several
hundred - perhaps thousands - of surface-to-air missiles
into those same skies. Some self-destruct in the air,
casting debris over a wide area. Others fall back to earth
and explode wherever they happen to land.
There should be no doubt in anyone's mind: Those
rounds and missiles are killing and wounding Iraqis
every day, in significant numbers.
Leave aside the Saddam regime's favorite tactic of
creating atrocities among its own people, then blaming
others. Leave aside any suspicions about those two
marketplace "bombings" that both just happened to
involve crowded spots in poor areas where regime
support is weak - not the neighborhoods where the
generals and bureaucrats live.
Just remember, as Mr. Anderson did not, that the
regime wildly firing tons of steel and explosives into
the sky above its capital city does not have an especially
good record of telling the truth.
Less than two weeks into this war, the Arab-
slaughtering regime in Baghdad has racked up a tally of
atrocities it took Hitler and Stalin - Saddam's models -
six years of warfare to accumulate. By the standards of
Dictatorship U., Saddam's at the top of his class.
Here's a partial list of what the regime's henchmen have
done since the war began:
* Used their own people as human shields in countless
instances.
* Engaged in acts of genocide against Shi'a Muslims in
the south of Iraq.
* Forced Iraqi civilians to take up arms at gunpoint.
* Executed Iraqi civilians on the spot for any suspicion
of disloyalty or even indifference.
* Cut off food and water to Shi'a Muslim urban
populations.
* Used the most sacred shrines of Iraq's Shi'as as
military strongpoints and arms caches.
* Used hospitals as military staging areas, fighting
positions and arms storage depots.
* Took Iraqi family members, including children,
hostage.
* Executed allied POWs in cold blood, while abusing
others.
* Prevented the International Red Cross or Red
Crescent from visiting allied soldiers taken as POWs.
* Fought in civilian clothes, in violation of the Geneva
Convention and the Laws of War.
* Employed false surrenders to lure allied troops into
ambushes, in violation of the same.
* Committed multiple acts of terrorism against Iraqi
civilians and coalition forces.
* Forced unwilling soldiers to attack allied forces by
executing some and driving the others forward at
machine-gun point - far from patriotic resistance, this is
the mass murder of Iraqis by Iraqis.
* Attempted to create an ecological and economic
catastrophe in Iraq's Shi'a and Kurdish regions by
rigging oil fields for demolition.
* Attempted to prevent relief supplies from reaching
Iraqi civilians.
* Welcomed and harbored terrorists from abroad.
* Took practical steps to prepare Iraqi troops for the use
of chemical weapons against allied forces.
This is only a fragmentary list. We cannot yet measure
the ongoing purges and executions within Baghdad,
where a maddened regime clings to life and sees
enemies everywhere. Nor have we seen the atrocities in
areas yet to be reached by allied troops. Many more
crimes against humanity are likely to unfold in the days
ahead.
Unwilling or unable to speak directly to his own people,
Saddam or a surviving son used a spokesman to call for
a jihad against the allied liberators. This plea comes
from a regime that has killed and tortured more Muslim
clerics than any other in our time. The Ba'athist regime
also has used its arms to impose the tyranny of a Sunni
Muslim minority over a Shi'a majority kept in bondage
and poverty.
If there is any justification for a holy war, it would be a
jihad of oppressed Shi'as against the infidel dictatorship
in Baghdad, which is cynically attempting to use Islam
as a tool after decades of violating the faith.
We may wonder, in fairness, how those heroic
Europeans who have taken to the rhetorical barricades
in defense of Saddam will respond when all the
atrocities are catalogued, when the torture chambers are
opened and the political prisons unlocked, when the
mass graves are unearthed, the weapons of mass
destruction revealed and the extent of European
complicity with a criminal regime is made public.
What will the Europeans say as the tormented people of
Iraq begin to awake and tell their tales?
The Europeans will sigh, briefly, then have a pleasant
lunch.
As for Saddam - if he is alive - he's a coward, terrified
to emerge to lead the people he has oppressed. If dead,
we may be certain he is not enjoying the lovely virgins
of paradise, but something even more stimulating.
As for his vainglorious crap about being the new
Saladin - Saladin was a Kurd. And, unlike Saddam the
Fallen, Saladin was famous for his humanity.
Ralph Peters is a retired military officer and the author
of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World
