Posted on 03/27/2003 9:39:18 PM PST by Diddley
AZ ZUBAYR, Iraq — In the first days after coalition forces rolled through this dusty mud-walled town just south of Basra, Saddam Hussein had plenty of friends. Young men waved posters with his face for the cameras. Small boys yelled "Saddam! Saddam!" The few that criticized the regime did so in nervous whispers.
Less than a week later, after a coalition raid netted the top Baath Party official in town for questioning and tanks took out some of the young men firing rocket-propelled grenades from the roadside, Saddam's public popularity is nose-diving.
"All Iraqis want to be rid of this regime. We just can't say that," said Jasser, a stout and serious older man in a blue robe who showed up at a coalition medical center Thursday looking for antacid tablets for his wife. "Resistance is dangerous," he said. "When troops first came in they didn't demolish the party apparatus here, and that created problems. But now we feel more secure."
. . .
But military and humanitarian successes are slowly winning over southern Iraqis. Several key members of the ruling Baath Party have been found hanged in the region in recent days, Docherty said, and coalition forces hope successes in the south may fuel uprisings to the north. "If we can crack a few nuts in Basra and Al Nasiriya, I think Baghdad could fall overnight with the right moves," Docherty predicted. If Iraqis are convinced the coalition is winning, they will attack the ruling party and "do the cleanup we can't and find the people we can't find."
. . .
"We are afraid of Saddam's fighters. Things are better since you got here," Talia Sharfa, one black-robed woman in the crowd, told soldiers as she clutched her toddler daughter, Sara.
A few Iraqis, injured in the skirmishes of recent days, also limped into the base Thursday to visit an ambulance-sized coalition mobile hospital brought to the site for the day. Wounds were cleaned and antibiotics handed out; residents who arrived with chronic health problems also got treatment. "There's been years here of not having appropriate treatment," said Capt. Sue Everington of the British general support medical regiment as she cleaned the ulcerated wound of a man whose foot was mangled in a 1986 car accident.
Residents said the humanitarian assistance was much appreciated, but decisive military action_like that in Az-Zubayr_was even more urgently needed. U.S. forces "should bomb (the ruling party) wherever they are. Baghdad is the most important. When it's done everything will change," said Jasser, who agreed to an interview only out of the sight of others awaiting aid. He asked the question everyone in southern Iraq asks: "Will the Iraqi regime remain or not?"
"If this coalition does not remove the regime, half of us will die," he said. "We will be killed just for talking to you. Saddam's eyes are all over here."
. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at estripes.com ...
keep up the good work....perhaps this eventually gets reported in the mainstream press...../sarcasm
This is exactly why you have to deny Sadaam the mass media and replace it with our own special programming created by Iraqi expats. That we sit back and say Sadamms propaganda is providing us with intell is a rationalization. Its an info war. Unfortunately most of the info seems directed at the US homefront with all the talk of shock and awe.
The brutal reality here is that we must delete Ba'ath Party leaders, Saddam Fedayeen, and Republican Guard officers as soon as they are encounted.
Term limits, Romanian style. I love it.
L
A good start.
Last time I checked the Chicago Tribune wasn't a mimeographed newsletter done in some guy's basement.
1) Zubayr is in that part of Iraq where one would expect support for the Ba'athist regime to skirt rock-bottom, anyhow.
2) All the guys who would support the regime are obviously over in Basra or Al Qurnah or wherever, fighting us for it.
Face it. They hate us, and will continue to hate us. If our mission there is to make them love us, we will fail. Hell, even the Kuwaitis don't love us...
One can get myopic at times.
There are still old people in Russia and China who speak about Stalin and Mao only in whispers, fearing that somehow the wrong person might hear them and make them pay. It may not be rational but completely understandable, and I expect Iraqis will also remain traumatized for a generation or so...
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