NYT Sees Gloom in Baghdad
The New York Times surveys the scene in Baghdad and finds Iraqis who are afraid now that allied troops are just 50 miles away from finishing off Saddam Hussein.
Even before the war, Iraqis had begun to borrow from an imagined future, speaking out, here and there, as though new freedoms had already arrived. After the conflict started, this continued for a few days, encouraged by the fact that Mr. Hussein had disappeared from view after the American attempt to kill him with the cruise missile attack that began the war before dawn on Thursday. But then, on Monday, he reappeared with a lengthy television speech calling for Iraqi militiamen to "cut the throats" of the Americans, and the old anxieties were back in full measure, all over town. This, amid the gloom of the sandstorm and the clouds of thick black smoke, was another reason Baghdad's spirits were at a low ebb today.
One striking aspect of the city was how little government Iraq has left, at least in terms of ministries that can deliver the services people need. Mr. Hussein's Iraq has been the nearest thing in the Middle East to a totalitarian state, controlling every aspect of its citizens' lives through a network of overlapping security agencies for which Mr. Hussein found his template in Stalin's Russia. Near the end, however, if this is indeed the end, the government seems to be disappearing, leaving citizens, at their hour of crisis, to fend for themselves.
Incredible. The NYT admits that the people of Iraq are yearning to be free of the totalitarian state, then laments that the government "seems to be disappearing" leaving Iraqis to "fend for themselves."
Memo to the NYT. We've been working hard to topple the totalitarian regime. That's what the decapitation strike was all about. Heck, that's what the war is about. The disappearing of Saddam's police state from ordinary Iraqis' lives is a good thing, not a reason for gloom.
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