Posted on 04/22/2003 11:12:34 AM PDT by Incorrigible
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
BY CHARLES J. HANLEY
Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Glimmers of a new Iraq were evident yesterday, as the American charged with rebuilding a ravaged country came to Baghdad, and Muslim multitudes converged on holy cities for a ritual long suppressed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
But the work of rooting out the old Iraq went on. Military officials announced the arrest of a key figure in the bloody suppression of the Shi'a Muslim uprising of 1991 -- Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, the "Shiite Thug" they promised to try on charges of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Efforts to bring electricity to Baghdad progressed. Iraqi engineers started a turbine at the city's biggest power plant, and a few lights flickered in the capital for the first time since April 3. It was expected that Baghdad would have 90 percent of its prewar power in a day or two.
This, said retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, was his top priority as Iraq's postwar administrator -- to restore power and water "as soon as we can."
Garner's arrival in Baghdad was itself a historic moment. For now, a retired American general has taken charge of an Arab country, as Douglas MacArthur took over in Japan after World War II and MacArthur's father did in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.
Garner, though, said he has no intention of leading Iraq. "The new ruler of Iraq is going to be an Iraqi. I don't rule anything," he said.
He was careful to frame his mission in humanitarian terms: "What better day in your life can you have," he said, "than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people, and that is what we intend to do."
After his arrival, he visited Baghdad's 1,000-bed Yarmuk hospital, which was overwhelmed with Iraqi casualties in the final days of the war and then stripped by looters.
"We will help you, but it is going to take time," he told doctors.
His Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid is to coordinate emergency aid to the 24 million Iraqis and oversee the rebuilding of the nation's infrastructure and establishment of an interim Iraqi government.
That last, crucial goal was challenged yesterday by Iran, which said it would not recognize any government installed by America.
"There are Iraqi opposition groups who will not agree to an authority led by America and they want to install a temporary Iraqi government. They are capable of doing so under United Nations auspices," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite channel.
Garner brought about 20 aides from a staff that is expected to grow to more than 450 in the next week. He emphasized that his aim is to turn over Iraq to the Iraqis, though he refused to say when. "We will leave fairly rapidly," he said.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld emphatically denied a New York Times report that the United States was planning a long-term military relationship with Iraq that would grant American access to air bases in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country.
"It's flat false," he said, adding that the subject had not even been raised with him.
"The likelihood of it seems to me to be so low that it does not surprise me that it's never been discussed in my presence, to my knowledge," he told a Pentagon news conference. "...We've got all kinds of options and opportunities in that part of the world to locate forces. It's not like we need a new place. We have plenty of friends" in that area.
Clearly, the American presence in Iraq raises risks of turbulence.
Yesterday, thousands of Shi'a Muslims marched in the heart of the city in angry protest of the reported arrest of a senior cleric by the U.S. military.
They massed outside the Palestine Hotel, which has housed some U.S. military offices, to demand the release of Sheik Mohammed al-Fartusi, along with other Shi'a clerics. The U.S. Central Command had no comment on the reported arrest.
Thousands of other Shi'as marched, but in piety, not protest. Their destinations were Najaf -- burial shrine of Imam Ali, son-in-law of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and regarded by Shiites as his successor -- and Karbala, where Hussein, Muhammad's grandson, was martyred in the 7th century.
Up to 2 million Shi'as were expected to take part in the pilgrimage. Through the years of Saddam's rule, they were forbidden to march.
Yesterday in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, Arab families said they had been ordered out of their homes as armed Kurds laid claim to property and sought revenge for atrocities under Saddam.
Meanwhile, U.S.-led forces still faced sporadic fighting; one Marine was reported injured in fighting in the north. And the Americans pressed forward with their efforts to capture the remnants of Saddam's regime.
Authorities provided no details about the arrest of al-Zubaydi, a former member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and central Euphrates regional commander, who was No. 18 on a list of the 55 most-wanted figures from Saddam's regime.
But officials of the opposition Iraqi National Congress said their forces had captured al-Zubaydi -- queen of spades in the deck of playing cards distributed to U.S. forces -- about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Infamous for bloody attacks on his own Shi'a people, al-Zubaydi was one of nine members of Saddam's regime whom the Bush administration has said it wants to try for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The fate of Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, remained a mystery, 12 days after U.S.-led forces pushed into the center of Baghdad.
Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the congress, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that his group believes the three are alive and still in Iraq, and the group is tracking their movements.
A battalion from the Army's 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, reached the Hadithah Dam northwest of Baghdad to provide security along the Syrian border -- to interdict Iraqis trying to escape and Arab militants trying to slip in.
Reuters and KRT News Service contributed to this report.
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Bulldoze the Secret Police HQ and put up a Wal-Mart.
Bulldoze the Republican Guard HQ and put up a 20-plex cinema.
Bulldoze one of Uday's palaces and put up a Fry's.
Nah - we'd just have to invade Iraq again next year to get rid of the Customer Service Department.
Where the elite meet to eat a tasty treat, don'tcha know.
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