RoadDave

The Iraqi Information Minister has been drinking the special Kool-Aid again.  Even though Islam frowns upon liquor and drunkenness, the InfoMin has obviously been pounding it back. 

Today’s press conference said that the Iraqi Army has whacked the US Army upside the head and will turn the Saddam Airport into a graveyard for the US forces. If this strikes you as funny, as yesterday there were no US forces within 100 kms of Baghdad, now they’re at the airport, this can only be attributed to the special beverages the Iraqi InfoMin drinks.

Yes, the first victim of war is Truth, but there is that line between “positive”news, “spinned” news and out front “propaganda”.  InfoMin has crossed into the land of “fantasy” news, completely unconnected with reality, on a level with the National Enquirer and The Globe checkout line tabloids.

However, there was chilling moment of medical lucidity from InfoMin.  Paraphrasing: “We have an untraditional surprise tonight.  Not by military”.  This could mean anything. 

I am hoping it means all the ice-cream bicycle peddlers will flock to the Baghdad International Airport and offer Fudgsicles and Rainbow Popsicles to all the US troops, along with unconditional surrender.

I suspect that the massed Popsicle run will not happen.  There are a few horror scenarios that could play out. 

One, is calling for all troops and citizens to advance in line to the airport to overrun the airport with sheer mass:  Give you life for Saddam etc. 

Baghdad has a slightly bigger population than Metro Toronto.  As much as we would love to see all of Metro Toronto march into Lake Ontario line abreast and drown, it does pose some logistical and ethical problems when applied to Baghdad.  The first is how many bullets do the US actually have?  Can/would/should we fire on this type of attack?

Two, is lobbing chemical shells, en masse at the airport:  “We will make the airport your graveyard” etc.   

Three, is lob gas at the neighbourhood around the airport, killing thousands of their own civilians and then point the finger at the US troops, causing the masses to rise up and march on the airport.

Four, is radiological ordinance.  A dirty bomb.  Not a fission bomb, just a big-ass conventional bomb wrapped with nuclear waste products.  It can be done with something as simple as a five-ton truck, rented from Ryder, the Official Rental Truck of Nut Cases Worldwide. 

Take the Unlimited Insurance, fill the rental full of diesel and fertilizer then topped with any nuclear waste you’ve got hanging about, even from nuclear medicine, or research labs.  Get a dedicated loony to drive it into the airport too fast and the 3-7th Cav. will blow it up for you, scattering radioactive nuclear material all over the place. 

In each case though, the result is mass casualties and a dirty battlefield. That denies both sides the actual ground.  The US can’t stay there and the Iraqi Army can’t go there:  No one can go there, for days, weeks, or years depending on the bomb. 

There is also an ethical dilemma for the US.  Faced with a couple of million of people marching towards you, waving everything from AK-47’s to kitchen knives, do you just keep pulling the trigger until the crowd all falls down or the barrel of your gun melts? 

Can we, as a group, live with the guilt of CNN covering a mass attack, live?  I’ll vote yes, but very, very reluctantly.  It is too hideous to ponder at any length.  At least as hideous as seeing the airburst of a cloud of stuff that drops a bunch of our troops, gagging and clawing at their skin, puking in their gas masks and then lying very still.

Will any of these ghastly potentialities play out in the next 24 to 48 hours?  According to the InfoMin, yes it will.  How we react is now the question.  We know the US cannot and will not go nuclear, even if Iraq does. 

Will George W grit his teeth and invite Tommy Franks to “do what needs to be done”?  Will Tommy Franks unleash an old fashioned carpet bombing of anything that moves and fuck’em all but six for pall bearers?

Please no, but if that’s the call, then do it hard, fast and nasty.

The Grand Experiment of embedding journalists is now two weeks old.  Journalists are jammed in military units up to their eyebrows.  The journos have to supply their own vehicles and/or travel with the soldiers.  They eat MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat, also know as Shit In A Bag) or chow at the military lines.  The journos usually wear blue police-style body armour, but some are in camouflage with Kevlar helmets and Go-fast goggles.  Odds are a few are carrying a sidearm, but are being discreet about it on camera. 

Part of the deal is you grab sleep when you can, meaning when the troops laager for the night.  Another part is you can only file and transmit when the military says go ahead and you are kindly instructed to keep your big mouth shut regarding where you are or what the boys and girls are going to do tomorrow.  Some of the embedded journos are looking rough, away from the makeup, lighting and grooming so important to modern television image.  Martin Savage and Ryan Chillcote from CNN both look like they’ve come through a two-week whiskey drunk, touring biker bars.

To my mind, embedding has worked reasonably well.  The footage from Walter Rogers and John Roberts, from CNN and CBS respectively, of Mechanized units racing across the desert live and in living dark green and light green, was spectacular.  Live war is astounding television, giving us a real-ish picture of what war kinda is.  Keep in mind that there are reality filters in place, but it is awfully close to unfiltered.

When (hopefully, only If) we see live blood and guts, then it is completely unfiltered and real.  With any luck most of the viewers will puke up their dinner, as the viewing of something like that is beyond the experience of almost all of us.  That is how we should react if we ever see something that.  Scream, puke, stare, pray.  Television with Visceral Impact.  Think along the lines of the feelings you felt when you saw the World Trade Center towers fall down.

Is the quality of the reporting suffering or being hindered by embedded journalists?  No more than it was with pool reporting, in the Gulf War Version 1.0.  In that show, the daily McNews Nugget was dutifully regurgitated back to the viewer, except for the first few nights when Shaw, Holliman and Arnett had the camera out the window of the hotel.  Today, we get the real goods.  If there is not much to see, there isn’t much to report.  If there is lots to see, there is lots to report. 

Spin doctoring, reality styling and information grooming is left to the analysts.  Please remember that “anal” is the first part of ”analysts”.  Not to suggest that they all speak out their assholes, but many do.  The retired military men who analyze this stuff are quite informed and almost all of the good ones have pointed out that any battle plan is merely a sketch of what might come down and that goes out the window as soon as the gunfire starts.  Now it is up to the feet on the street to figure out the rest. 

So far, the feet on the street are doing a good job:  Bad guys are being captured and killed.  Baghdad is taking an infrastructure ass-walloping without killing a whole lot of civilians.  Saddam Hussein is nowhere to be seen and his two sons Qusay and Bidet (or is that spelled Biday?) are staying low.  The Republican Guards are running towards the front lines to fight, probably chased by the Fedayeen Saddam who are being chased by the Special Republican Guard, who are being pursued by the Special Iraqi Secret Service.  Eventually they’ll all wind up at the front and pile into each other like the Marx Brothers chasing a car full of circus clowns, each group demanding the other fight first to demonstrate their loyalty.

Will there be another “Shock and Awe”?  Yes there will and very soon all the pieces will be in place.  Did General Tommy Franks have the exact date written down in the first draft of The Plan?  Who cares? 

Walter Cronkite had the best thought about it all:  Preserve as much information as you can for the historical record and worry about the analysis after it is all over.   

Can you win over a populace with water and lentils?  If the populace has no food or water, then you can at least win them over for the afternoon, as was amply demonstrated by some news footage of non-combatants.  The civilians were rushing across the bridge in a town in Iraq to get at the food and water that the Brits has brought up from Kuwait. 

One telling snippet was a military-age male civilian saying “US and Brits go away” as he stood in line for water and food.  At more or less the same time the crowd rushed the aid trucks and a supposed Iraqi militia opened fire over their heads, scattering everyone. 

I’m confused by this, as one would expect at least a modicum of thanks for the humanitarian aid, rather than some, as the Aussies call it, “stick’ about being in their country.  Sort of a passive-aggressive, “Thank you, now Fuck Off” Iraqi equivalent.  The gunfire from the Iraqi militia sent the punctuation to that message, of:  “We said, Fuck Off…Now!”

The Brits did the right thing, escorting the aid convoy away from the civilians.  If you told me that the civilians were told by the Iraqi militia to grab up as much stuff as you could and run it back here for the militia to use, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.  If that strikes you as truly dishonest (Feed me, water me, let me kill you later tonight while real civilians starve to death) then you haven’t got the full grasp of the situation.

There will be much gnashing of teeth and waving of righteous indignation fists from everyone from tree huggers and stream tasters to various peace groups and political agenda pushers.  These groups will read from the texts and you can essentially predict the lines.

Unfortunately, many of these groups choose to ignore, or overlook, or just can’t see the other side of the equation.  It is not the US and UK forces that are starving their citizens.  It is the Iraqi government, Saddam Hussein, who has systematically taken as much of the Oil for Food as he can get his mitts on to feed his guards and troops, while selling the rest on a self-perpetuating black market to raise money to build more palaces, bunkers and statues.  Note that very few of the senior Iraqi military people look like they have missed a meal in the last year or two.

The truly innocent civilians have been systematically starved by their own government in the past 20 years which explains their desperation for food and water.  The US and UK are trying to fix that, as best they can and there will be bumps in the road.  Soldiers throughout history have always shared their bread and water with the civilians, but never at the level that would satisfy those who observe from a comfy sofa after a full meal. 

Simply put, folks with nothing, will always help another with nothing, up to a point.  That point is when starvation sets in, the thirst becomes unbearable, or the children start to die.  Then humans give their loyalty to anyone who can end the pain in the next few minutes or hours.  You can counter this at the point of a gun, for a while, but not as long as you might think.

It is a heart-wrenching tragedy that civilians are being starved because of the war.  Just remember that for every bit of humanitarian aid we toss over the fence, most of it is going to the Iraqi people who do not need it, the military groups, while the really needy have to fight for the scraps.

There are actual Rules of War.  Over hundreds of years, humans in conflict have come to a small set of commonly used rules.

Only people in uniform are fair game.  Civilians are just trying to get the hell out of the way.  Soldiers have informed acceptance of the risks and signify this by wearing uniforms and working in organized military units.

A white flag is a universal sign of either discussion or surrender on the battlefield.  If the folks waving the white flag are wearing helmets, webbing and carrying guns it means ‘Truce for a bit. We need to talk”  Folks waving a white flag without helmets, guns or armour are surrendering.  In the slang, you don’t surrender under steel.  Hats off, guns down and hands up means ‘I give up’.

Surrendering, properly, means you will probably get moved about by boot, fist and rifle butt for a bit.  This is normal, as the prisoner was trying to kill you up until a moment ago.  A bit of rough justice is to be expected.  This doesn’t mean your captors can hook a truck battery up to your nipples, or slice off your ear.  Torture is frowned upon, but expect a black eye and a boot in the ass.  As a prisoner of war, you get food, water, shelter and medical attention.  Don’t expect a suite at the Baghdad Hilton.

Red Cross and Red Crescent marks means “No guns or military stuff.  Just doctors, nurses and medics.  Don’t shoot.”

Unfortunately, in Korea and Viet Nam, the opposition tossed those rules into the toilet.  However, the US still plays by the Rules, as they are essentially nice people who respect fair play and expect fair play.  They go out of their way to respect the rules, even when their enemy doesn’t, which is noble and good and a great way to lose a war.

Now that the Iraqi Army is getting out of uniform and shooting from amongst civilians, using Red Cross and Red Crescent vehicles to move troops around and putting their artillery on top of schools and apartment buildings, the Rules are at risk.

I suspect that as the US troops get closer to Baghdad, Saddam will go for the endgame in about three days.  He’ll use chemical weapons, maybe nerve or mustard gas.  A few hundred US troops will die in a hideous, unimaginable way.

That point will also galvanize world opinion.  The US should fly one more leaflet run, advising all civilians to get away from anything military.  Give them 24 hours.

The next phase is unpleasant.  If it has a gun in Iraq, kill it.  If there is an artillery piece on top of an apartment, drop big bombs on it.  Lots of innocents will die, but the essential rule as a civilian, is to stay as far away from guns and army people, as possible. 

If the person is carrying a gun, even if they’re dressed like a June bride, shoot them. 

If there are machine guns in amongst a civilian group, start shooting.  Try not to hit the innocent, but if the soldiers are in civilian clothes and shooting at you, you are perfectly entitled to shoot back, even if they are driving around in a church school bus. 

Honourable soldiers do not mix with civilians and an honourable military allows their civilians to run to safety, away from battle.  Gunshots coming from a Red Cross truck?  Advise the Red Cross to get back behind the line, cover their ears and get their head down – shit is on the way.

Don’t accept the surrender of someone waving a white flag, unless they have dropped weapons, helmets off, body armour off, walking backwards, hands on the head.  Walk them backwards out of sight and don’t be standing up to ‘accept’ their surrender.  Odds are one of their buddies are using them as an aiming point and will just as happily kill you.  If they have to march backwards for two kilometers, that is not your problem.

The Iraqi Army is forcing the civilians to stay in an area with guns?  Too bad about that.  Perhaps the Iraqi people will see what we’re talking about and rise up.  We can’t help them if their army is going to offer them up as an involuntary human shield. 

The Iraqi Army is not playing by the rules of war.  Therefore, we can’t trust anyone in civilian clothes with a gun. 

Bombing schools, apartment buildings, power plants and bridges is now fair game, as the Iraqi Army has put guns on those things, trying to hide where they figure the US wouldn’t bomb them.  Oh, how wrong.

If it has a weapon, kill it.  If it hasn’t surrendered, kill it.  If it’s still driving around, or still working, destroy it.  If you don’t do that, the enemy will kill you with it.  A very black and white situation and very bad place to be, but the Rules of War are now over.  Ending the war quickly, with the least loss of life is the objective.

Its time for a gut check.  A gut check doesn’t mean peering up your orifice to see if you have intestines; it is more metaphysical in meaning as I use it here.  We’re seeing people killed from the US and Britain in number now.  We’re also seeing prisoners being taken on both sides and visuals of dead people and downed helicopters.

This is the reality of war and why warriors never want to go to war.  Human beings will be killed, maimed and captured.  Usually the injuries are of such a frightful nature that the most hideous car crash you have ever seen will, by comparison, look like a scraped knee.  That is the way that injuries occur in wars.

The gut check comes in for all of us.  We are going to see the cost of war, like the waging of war, up close in our living rooms.  It is an appalling, but necessary, price to realize our goal.  So, confirm your resolve, recognize the price and step up. 

If you can’t stomach it, you are not alone.  Except we are here now and we have to deal with it.  Troops on the ground deal with it every second of every day, while we can reach for the remote and turn it off.  They can’t.  Which is why they need our support.