WP: In Iraq, Shock and Deja Vu - Yr. Later, Baghdad in Flames...

[DeepModem Mom]

Images
In Iraq, Shock And Deja Vu
A Year Later, Baghdad in Flames Tells Another Story
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2004; Page C01


Baghdad's night is our midday, so when a bomb ripped through the Mount Lebanon Hotel yesterday, we saw something eerily reminiscent of last year's shock and awe. The night over Baghdad, illuminated in an orange glow of flames and destruction.

After the Xbox thrills of the initial campaign, the grunt's-eye view given to us by embedded reporters, much of the recent war has come to us as aftermath, the shells of twisted cars or the rubble of ruined buildings, caught after the fact, under the strangely reassuring glare of the morning sun. Men mill around the wreckage, casually, like boys poking a dead animal with sticks. But this war, we were reminded, began at night, like a fireworks show, and here we are again, one year later, watching a faraway world ablaze like a painting by Turner.

Just three days shy of the one-year anniversary, the enemies of occupation hit a hotel housing foreigners in the center of Baghdad. It was so close to Firdaus Square (where a statue of Saddam Hussein provided one of the war's happier, now superseded, images) that it was tempting to believe that the prosecutors of this resistance know full well the power of keeping one eye on death and the other on symbolism. The Bush administration was spending the week talking up the success of war, the distance we've come, the promise we've offered. Again we saw that statue, groaning from its plinth, offering the hope of a simple war.

Shock and awe was about the control of our magisterial military. The blast at the hotel near Firdaus Square was about that same military on the defensive, reacting to, rather than orchestrating, the special effects. Shock and awe was caught at a distance, cameras on rooftops, registering war as if it were a distant thunderstorm. The Mount Lebanon Hotel was near other hotels housing Western journalists, so it was caught in closer, finer, more horrifying detail. People (dead or alive?) were carried out of the wreckage, dressed in the sort of bedclothes none of us ever hopes to wear to an appointment with the world's media....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3034-2004Mar17.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Shock and Awe was the only strategy that Bush used to go into this war.

What nobody seems to catch, is that he expected to kill Saddaam Hussein in that first strike. And then he expected to be showered with flowers from its people ever since.

Apparently, it didn't happen the way they expected and we've been working out of plan since.

[maddezmom]

2. scenes today:More Violence in Iraq as Invasion Anniversary Nears

BAQUBAH, IRAQ, March 18--Insurgents launched more deadly attacks in Iraq Thursday in advance of the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the country.

Near Baqubah, a machine-gun toting man opened fire on a small bus carrying employees of a U.S. funded radio and TV station, killing three and injuring at least ten.

A hotel in the southern city of Basra, which is under British control, was hit by a car bomb that claimed five lives, according to early reports from wire services.

And in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades exchanged fire with U.S. troops at the municipal council building. At least two Iraqis were killed, wire services reported.

~snip~
more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3893-2004Mar18.html

[diamond14]

3. it's totally out of control....don't know how anyone can claim otherwise

bush*'s 'Happy Iraqi' stories can only placate the lumpenproletariat for a little more time....OUR troops are dying for bush* folly and OUR Veterans and Military Families are at the White House gates...



http://www.theonion.com/news/