Iraq’s “Gated Communities” And The Sarafiya Bridge

April 20, 2007

Connect these dots:

The U.S. army is building a large wall to seperate one area in Baghdad from its neighbor areas. This to control everything going in and out from the area and against the wishes of the inhabitants. The effort started on April 10 but was only reported yesterday.
One of the main arteries between that area and its neighbor areas is a large bridge crossing the Tigris.
On April 12 said bridge got blown up by a "truck bomb."
Retired military experts immediately doubted the "truck bomb" story and suspected a professional demolition job.
When the news about the separate and control wall got out on April 19, the spokesman for the army tried to obfuscate the issue.

Who most likely did blow up the bridge?
Where does the "walling off" idea come from?
How are the chances for this to work?

Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

More after the jump.

This map is cropped from the BBC’s Mapping the violence and shows current sectarian areas. I marked the bridge location with a red circle.

Yesterday the military newspaper Stars & Stripes reported about ongoing U.S. efforts to separate Baghdad neighborhoods:

U.S. soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division in a Baghdad district are “building a three-mile protective wall on the dividing line between a Sunni enclave and the surrounding Shiite neighborhood,” according to a U.S. military press release issued Wednesday.

Troops with the 407th Brigade Support Battalion began constructing the wall on April 10 and will continue work “almost nightly until the wall is complete,” the release read.
[…]
“That community [in Adhamiyah] will be completely gated and protected,” Lt. Col. Thomas Rogers, 407th Brigade Support Battalion, was quoted as saying in the release. “It’s really for the security of all the people of Adhamiyah, not just one side or the other.”

The spokesman for the forces in Baghdad is playing dumb:

But after a regularly scheduled news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, said he was unaware of efforts to build a wall dividing Shiite and Sunni enclaves in Baghdad and said that such a tactic was not a policy of the Baghdad security plan.

“We have no intent to build gated communities in Baghdad,” Caldwell said Wednesday.

Today the LA Times confirms the Stars & Stripes story and adds some local voices:

Shiite and Sunni Arabs living in the shadow of the barrier were united in their contempt for the imposing new structure.

"Are they trying to divide us into different sectarian cantons?" said a Sunni drugstore owner in Adhamiya, who would identify himself only as Abu Ahmed, 44. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation."

After the Sarafiya bridge came down, retired Colonel Patrick Lang posted:

The story that a truck bomb knocked that great big bridge down lacks credibility for me. I know how to knock down bridges and an un-tamped surface blast is unlikely to do it on a bridge that size. The idea seems to be to separate Shia pockets in the city preventing them from building a Shia "cordon" across the town.

Former CIA spook and terrorism expert Larry C Johnson wrote:

[T]he visual evidence does not support the claim that this was a suicide bomb. A blast at one end of the bridge might cause a collapse at that point but not at the opposite end. The picture does not support the story.

A more likely explanation is that someone wired the bridge with explosives.

Even though the Army spokesman denies such, there is obviously a serious effort to create a Baghdad of "gated communities." We may never learn how the bridge was blown up and who did it. But the fact that it did is, intended or not, supporting the new U.S. tactic.

So far the U.S. media have been silent about the extend of the "walling" effort. In the British Independent Robert Fisk had a longer recommendable piece on this:

US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" – whose genesis was in the Vietnam War – will involve up to 30 of the city’s 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

A good question was raised by a local in the LA Times report linked above:

"Are we in the West Bank?" asked Abu Qusay, 48, a pharmacist who said that he wouldn’t be able to get to his favorite kebab restaurant in Adhamiya.

The geographical answer is "No," but the idea is certainly not far fetched. Indeed there is one direct connection. Fisk:

The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course – American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers – participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.

Fisk also explains why this will fail:

[I]nsurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa’ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.

Additionally the mostly sectarian primary loyality of Iraqi troops and police will sabotage the effort. Poor mens’ artillery will make it a certain failure. Walling off areas with 20 foot high concrete barriers does not prevent mortars flying over such walls and it does not prevent civil war within these areas.
It does hinder commerce and any effort of reconsiliation though.

But maybe that is the real attempt.

Posted by b on April 20, 2007 at 13:27 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The fact that the Neocons attributed the bridge explosion to “suicide truck bombers” when it was most likely themselves, or surely their surrogates paid a la Iran-Contra, makes me wonder just how much of the “civil war” in Iraq is funded, like Elliot Abrams’ “civil wars” in Palestine and Lebanon, by the Neocon regime in Washington DC?
Makes me wonder how many American forces have been killed by the forces funded by the Neocons in Washington DC?
Makes me wonder how long he enemies of the people in Washington DC will continue to be tolerated by the people of the United States of America?

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Apr 20 2007 13:51 utc | 1

Hmmm….
Gated communities for the wealthy in the US to protect them from the angry poor, unemployed and disenfranchised, gated communities for Jews in the West Bank to protect them from the Palestinians who have lived there for centuries, why not gated communities in Iraq to insure that Iraqi society fractures along sectarian lines?
Hey, isn’t that what freedom and democracy are all about?

Posted by: Chris Marlowe | Apr 20 2007 14:04 utc | 2

Training Iraqi troops no longer driving force in U.S. policy

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.
…
evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq.
…
President Bush first announced the training strategy in the summer of 2005.
“Our strategy can be summed up this way,” Bush said. “As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.”
…
Throughout 2006, Casey and top Bush administration leaders touted the training as a success, asserting that eight of Iraq’s 10 divisions had taken the lead in confronting insurgents.
…

Posted by: b | Apr 20 2007 14:16 utc | 3

It’s not my area of expertise, but I was of the belief that bringing down a bridge with explosives does require expertise. Placing explosives in exactly the right spot. There was a report of two explosions. A truck on top of the bridge might be unlikely to bring down a bridge. Where would the energy from a truck bomb be directed? To me, it did sound a tad suspect.

Posted by: DM | Apr 20 2007 14:18 utc | 4

A small thing I know,but if we did blow the bridge it is a war crime.One of countless ones we have commited there.

Posted by: R.L. | Apr 20 2007 17:03 utc | 5

I find it very interesting how the US has a way of making things “wrong” for another country to do until they feel that is the “right” thing for to do for themselves. It was only a year or so ago that Israel began building a wall around Jewish communities in the West Bank to stop terrorists from entering those communities and Israel. The US made numberous statements putting down this process and comparing it to the Berlin Wall. It is now only a year or so later, and US troops are working in Iraq to establish peace and order in a governmental infrastructure that is still in its infant stage, and they are building a wall to keep out terrorism.
When will political leaders finally learn to shut their mouths and learn and understand the reasons behind what a country is doing before giving them “political opinion” on the issue???

Posted by: SH | Apr 20 2007 17:19 utc | 6

Historically, there are only two ways to successfully occupy foreign territory.
One, the classic Roman method — bring such benefits to the occupied population that they are basically okay with it.
Two, the classic fascist method — unrestrained ethnic cleansing and terror. Remove, relocate, arrest, kill and terrorize the occupied population to the point that they cannot resist in any meaningful way.
Neither course is possible for the American empire to successfully pursue in the land that once was Iraq — much less accomplish. At this point, a million boots on the ground could not pull off either method.
It ain’t gonna happen.
So, the Americans will inevitably lose ground and grunts, and finally be chased out one fine morning. Every death, every dismemberment, and every detonation between this morning, and that morning, will be the purest waste of human beings and human property.
The only thing that will delay that morning from coming is to widen the occupation into a regional conflict, by attacking Iran or Syria.
Which has always been the original PNAC plan.
Because it is not in the economic interests of the American nation to leave the Middle East to the control of any other hands but American, there is precisely zero chance of the twain political parties running the American government ending this occupation.
No matter who wins the American Presidency in 2008, there will be no withdrawal. We can’t.
We simply can’t.

Posted by: Antifa | Apr 20 2007 17:25 utc | 7

The first tiny islet held was the Green Zone, with soldiers outside bombing and killing forcing submission (eg Fallujah..)
At the same time, transport routes such as supply lines were defended, some tiny strips of criss cross. Lines on the map, not swatches of territory. At some point, oil installations and pipelines as well, though I have never been able to make out the details, not that I tried very hard, scarce info and my laziness.
Some territory was ‘held.’ Sure. But only always temporarily, as long as ppl stayed quiet, under the carrot and stick. The Brits, for ex., maintained a paternalistic, peace corps, development, conciliatory stance, for a long time. (Basra and elswhere.) All that experience in India!.. (Exeptions existed of course.)
So the invaders were tolerated, money comes in, some projects actually get done – a statue, a memorial to the Marsh Arabs, some medecines delivered, etc. But the new overlords do not hold territory. They are even, at a stretch, folklore big white admins. – da big new boss – parachuted in.
Ppl spurt: Hello! Got Money! Me build clinic! And: Meet my neighbor! He big Chief! – a new CEO who must be dealt with and seduced, pulled into the social scene, yet is also manipulated and mocked.
The impact on the basic fabric, the territory itself: There is no grip, no involvement, no organization, no understanding, no caring, and not enough power to dominate, or help, in any way. No…Gvmt.
Thus, to move forward, it is necessary to kill ppl, decimate villages, destroy agriculture; infrastructure; anything about, such as roads, bridges, water pipes – it is all good…
The emphasis, in fact, IS on holding territory, but slowly, bit by bit.
The models are Afghanistan (no longer considered important or successful, as failure is obvious) and most particularly, Israel.
There are now 4 million Iraqis displaced. I am sure some consider that number much too small. The Int’l community is refusing to give money or welcome refugees…

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 20 2007 17:38 utc | 8

@SH – 6 – several things wrong with your comment
1. The first part of the wall in Palestine was started in June 2002

The first phase began in June 2002 and extends the length from the village of Zububa in the Jenin district to ‘Azzun ‘Atma in the Qalqiliya district, spanning the three districts of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Qalqiliya, which combined have a population of over 500,000 people representing 22% of the West Bank.

source (pdf)
2. The wall building in Palestine came without any but tacit protest from the Bush administration. There certainly wasn’t any harsh critic.
3. “Walls around Jewish communities in the West Bank” – you mean walls connecting Israel with areas of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land practically annectating such land – for maps see here
4. I searched for an official US statement comparing the wall in Palestine to the Berlin wall – there is none I could find.
Your statement is not factbased and a quite dumb attempt to raise sympathy for illegal land robbery and ethnic clensing.

Posted by: b | Apr 20 2007 18:01 utc | 9

A drive through Ramadi, one fine morning. link via dancewater

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 20 2007 18:47 utc | 10

First off, I wish to say that Bernhard’s threads/topics and the corresponding posts by everyone lately have been excellent. It is a pleasure reading all the info provided on Moon of Alabama. Learning more from a variety of sources is truly one of the pleasures that I have in life.
With that said, the following personal rant is definitely off-topic and maybe not that educational. Bernhard, feel free to remove it if you feel it is too personal or off-topic.
Speaking of “Gated Communities” and “democracy”…
The people in my neighborhood are obligated to maintain a 7 mile “public” dirt road –all lots pay $500 per developer’s deeds (Weyerhaeuser Corp.). According to the N.C. Planned Community Act, enacted a few years back (enacted after my purchase) and retroactive by the statute, my private home now automatically becomes subject to the tyranny of “democracy” and that fascist law. According to some regarding that law, anyone paying maintenance fees of any sort (even if only to maintain a community flowerbed) is now subject to that law which basically gives the Board of Directors complete control over one’s property. Please don’t anyone talk to me how great ‘democracy’ is, and so often, I see little difference between extreme left and extreme right positions regarding personal freedom. The methods used by the ‘deciders’ in an HOA are very similar to the methods used by my other elected ‘deciders’, our Republican/Democrat leaders who are just power tripping jerks in all branches of our federal and state governments. It is all just a matter of scale. Last year the HOA Board attempted to gate the entrance road with an electronic ‘locked gate’. I tore it down by removing the cylinders that allowed it to open and close. The HOA board called the police on me; however, the police know me and agreed that the HOA Board had no right to restrict traffic to my home with a locked gate. Now the Board members are attempting to put it back up along with cameras to watch everyone’s coming and going -meaning mainly watching myself, wife, our friends, our deliveries, etc., as only three or four houses exist there where people live. There are three or four vacant houses for sale, and most of the thirty-three total lots remain vacant (no house), much of this vacancy for obvious reasons. By the way, 95% of the homes/lots for sale in this very rural county are in HOA’s, that is, small “private” democracies, and outside the bounds of the protections of our Constitution. In some areas of the country, like surrounding areas of Las Vegas, there are HOA’s with 40,000 homes. It is all quite lucrative for various vendors: lawyers, developers, management companies and so forth. CAI (Community Associations Institute) is a national lobby group for these industries, including attorneys. CAI, along with the NC State Bar Association, was instrumental in passing the NC Planned Community Act. And don’t think the rest of the world is immune from this HOA phenomenon. The concept is being exported to many different countries. Unfortunately, the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect the individual from “democratic tyranny”, but in practice, there is little left now for any protections for Americans. Without a doubt, the Corporatism that I so often describe here at Moon is the major factor in the erosion of U.S. freedoms and protections, and a major cause of so much suffering in today’s world.
Below is an email I received yesterday from one of the HOA Board members (one who is obviously not part of the ‘club’, and doesn’t live there) who sent me this on the sly:

———- Original Message ———————————-
From: “James D Schulteis”
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:22:17 -0400
Hello Rick ,, thought I should pass this on . You may all ready have it .
—– Original Message —–
From: JAMES R. OSTER
To: Jim Schulteis ; Paula Seabright ; Randall Knight ; Gary Snow ; Robert Hollatschek ; Lou Cannon
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 6:16 PM
Subject: Agreement
I would like the Board to endorse my meeting with the HOA lawyer (from Ward & Smith) to confirm our associations legitamicy by legal judgement. This is required to once and for all put the contention of Rick Happ that we are not a legal organization to rest. As a result of this judgement we, the association, can prosecute before a judge any of Rick’s actions as it pertains to establishing the gate and any other situation the CPHOA finds itself in with Rick in the future. We need to take this action or face Rick’s continual deranged behavior in the future as he will continue to use this excuse to thwart police/legal involvement. Based on past personal training, people like Rick need to be sent a message in order to control their irrational actions.
I would suspect that this will cost the HOA a few hundred dollars, but I think you would agree, it is money well spent. Remember, if left in doubt of the legal standing of the Creek Pointe HOA future problems will cost even more to resolve.
Jim
JAMES R. OSTER
osterj@coastalnet.com
(252) 635-9060
(252) 671-5926 (cell)

Posted by: Rick | Apr 20 2007 19:16 utc | 11

But there are no american forces in that non-extant middle eastern nation, they are the forces of the global capitalist class 😉

Posted by: jcairo | Apr 20 2007 19:44 utc | 12

excellent b, just excellent. i have borrowed heavily from it to post elsewhere.

Posted by: annie | Apr 20 2007 20:05 utc | 13

jeez rick, good luck. kick em in the balls every chance you get.

Posted by: annie | Apr 20 2007 20:12 utc | 14

damn Rick, sounds like you have a serious fight on your hands. anybody calling you deranged obviously is a mean bastard.
is there support for the HOA in your community? are the rest of the residents ok with it or would they side with you against the HOA? apparently one guy is ambivalent..
what is Oster’s angle in all this? is he living off your fees or is he representing the developer of the remaining lots?
hopefully you can keep your good relations with the police for the time being. wish I could help.

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 20 2007 20:42 utc | 15

anna missed @ 10, sure that wasn’t Grozny?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Apr 20 2007 20:57 utc | 16

anna missed @ 10,
I am disgusted… A very disturbing video… and the stupid immoral comments on the LiveLeak.com site were disturbing also… very litle outrage against the U.S. regarding all the needless death and destruction. And there was very little, if any, concern for the poor Iraqi’s now forced to live in the rubble.
I once thought that if only the mainstream media would show stuff like this on the nightly news then maybe, just maybe, some Americans may change their perspective if they saw more pictures like this. After reading the comments on LiveLeak.com about the video, I think it is almost hopeless to change the hard hearts and closed minds of so many Americans. This explains McCain singing so stupidly: “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran”.
And building “gated communities” for Iraqi security will just bring further resentment. Americans need to leave NOW… the destruction is about total. What do they need yet to destroy for heaven’s sake?

Posted by: Rick | Apr 20 2007 22:18 utc | 17

The fact that the Neocons attributed the bridge explosion to “suicide truck bombers” when it was most likely themselves, or surely their surrogates paid a la Iran-Contra,
most likely. simple common sense, we know how these mafiosi work. and yet people keep telling me it is “nuts” to think the same criminal gang might have had a finger, somehow, in the hijackings and explosions of 11/09/01…
sigh.

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 20 2007 22:19 utc | 18

Dan of steele #15,
Power/control is a real trip for Oster and some other Board members. I think that is the basics of it in my case. The real reasons never matter. Again, not much different than other political/government leaders… just on a smaller scale. However, when a homeowner becomes nothing more than a provider to a Corporation’s interests (that is, one’s HOA), it is even worse than the typical, “pay your taxes, and leave us alone” attitude found with typical public government or state actors. And when one is controlled by a Corporation and not a government, a corporation that has more “rights” than the homeowner, one quickly learns that any protections by the Constituion are thrown out the window. It is simply nothing more than a ONE-WAY (adhesion) Corporate Contract. Thousands of HOA homeowners loose their homes every year due to arbitrary fines and foreclosures by the Board or a management company. The Board is like all three branches of government rolled into one. Judge, Jury and Executioner. Usually, someone like the brother or some other related party of the management company or Board member buys the foreclosed homes! CAI attorney’s have a goldmine also.

Posted by: Rick | Apr 20 2007 22:42 utc | 19

Clashes Erupt Around Baghdad Mosque

U.S. ground forces and helicopters fought with gunmen around a Shiite mosque in western Baghdad before Friday prayers, killing two suspected insurgents, the American military said.
The military first denied reports by witnesses and Iraqi TV that American helicopters had fired near the blue-domed mosque in Baiyaa, a religiously mixed neighborhood in western Baghdad. Several hours later, however, the military said a review of the firefight indicated that its helicopters had fired about 100 rounds of 30mm ammunition.
Soldiers searching nearby buildings found chemicals believed to be bomb-making materials and detained an Iraqi civilian, the military said. Iraqi soldiers searched the Ali al-Baiyaa mosque, but found no weapons or suspects.

Posted by: b | Apr 20 2007 23:00 utc | 20

anna missed
when you witness that little drive through ramadi – after witnessing that level of destruction – you know – that like the waffen ss in eastern europe – that u s forces have lost & they have lost on the catastrophic level that the nazis did
rick, you take care of yourself

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 20 2007 23:01 utc | 21

the HOA thing I think speaks very directly to something axiomatic: the greater the commitment to a “circling the wagons, putting up the fences” policy of paranoia, exclusion, and border control, the more autonomy is diminished and petty (and grand) authoritarianism intrudes for those inside the fence. the politics of fear is a politics of unfreedom; it is not just the feared and hated Other from outside the enclave who is to be controlled, it is ourselves…
Wall-building (self-ghettoisation) and the paranoid exclusivism that inspires it are like other purity manias (anorexia for example), they tend to escalate… into tighter and tighter loyalty tests, obedience tests, purity tests, internal policing and suspicion (are you really worthy to be One of Us? might you not be a secret agent for Them Out There?). to the authoritarian mindset, control of microdetail is an indicator or omen for control of the big things — if you let your neighbour’s yard grow weeds, what next? if Standards are allowed to Slip, the barbarians will be over the gates before you know it.
there’s a kind of magical thinking at work here, a hermeneutic belief that putting a gate across a road can bar all evil influences, that preventing people from using the “wrong” colour paint on their house or hanging laundry out to dry can preserve safety and security. or that inspecting the shoes of airline passengers will somehow prevent terrorist acts … microcontrol as a ritual behaviour designed to propitiate obscure and nameless gods of order, safety, and predictability… and of course, to gratify the egos of the microcontrollers and accustom their target audience to compliance in the small things, so that they will comply later in the big things. obedience is a trained behaviour.

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 20 2007 23:12 utc | 22

There is no doubt that at the White House there is no thought of leaving Iraq. This freezes all discourse and reality based planning, diplomatic settlements, and quarantine. Instead, desperate measures compound on each other, proliferating Warsaw Ghettos.
There are alternatives, weaning off Middle East oil with James Woosley’s 85 blend plug in Hybrids or electrifying railroads. But, this requires Good Governance, a concept alien to radicals intent on throwing out Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal.

Posted by: Jim S | Apr 21 2007 0:00 utc | 23

financial times reported front page yesterday that another 100bn barrels of oil is thought to exist in iraq. we’ll maintain chaos as long as we need to keep others out and beat the country that was iraq into submission. we will never leave. all you need to do is look at the map of permanent bases superimposed over the oil fields. welshman likens Iraq to:

…a disorganised cockfight. A sport that is cruel and ugly, A sport that exists for the benefit of those who bet high stakes on its outcome, for whom the blood is cynically observed as a by-product of the real game of placing big bets and winning heavily against the odds.

rick – i’m proud to know you.

Posted by: conchita | Apr 21 2007 1:41 utc | 24

terrible news – aljazeera – saying there has been immunity given to all the assassin/soldiers involved in the massacre of haditha
violence is as american as apple pie

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 21 2007 3:08 utc | 25

I think it is immunity for just one of the guys charged. In return, he is supposed to testify against the others.
I think.

Posted by: Susan | Apr 21 2007 4:27 utc | 26

susan, i have read the same about sgt. sanick dela cruz.

Posted by: conchita | Apr 21 2007 5:25 utc | 27

heh indeed. b @ 9, you’re a mensch and I love the way you casually eviscerate a clueless troll.

Posted by: ran | Apr 21 2007 5:33 utc | 28

dela cruz

Posted by: annie | Apr 21 2007 8:00 utc | 29

hermeneutic
it is good to see you around here again De, are you still in the US?

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 21 2007 8:33 utc | 30

Sunnis Complain about “Iraq’s Gated Communities”

BAGHDAD – A wall U.S. troops are building around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad came under increasing criticism on Saturday, with residents calling it “collective punishment” and a local leader saying construction began without the neighborhood council’s approval.
The U.S. military says the wall in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which “has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.” The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said earlier this week.
[snip]
”This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. “They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there.”
“We are in our fourth year of occupation and we are seeing the number of blast walls increasing day after day, suffocating the people more and more,” al-Dulaimi said in an interview.
[snip]

Posted by: Rick | Apr 21 2007 12:29 utc | 31

Rick- sorry for your troubles, but your report made me laugh. after meeting you, I find it hard to put you in the “deranged” category.
Reeeeaaallly pissed off about the gate category, for sure.
What is the HOA? I still don’t quite “get” why this company wants to put a gate on a dirt road. condolences. have you called your local newspaper about this issue? I’m sure you’d get lots of community support for your position.

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 21 2007 16:13 utc | 32

Eh Rick keep up the good work.

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 21 2007 19:33 utc | 33

Territories in modern Nation States, ie. in the Developed West, used to be communally organised, by the Gvmt. and also following a sometimes written, sometimes implicit principle, that anyone can travel anywhere, anyone can live anywhere. The US was a pioneer of ‘freedom’ in that way, based on the myth of social ascension and personal liberty. Switzerland was as well, for different reasons; transport routes are very tight, and taxing them or regulating them would have led to a breakdown of free trade (example.)
Today, there is not enough to go round.
Not enough lakefront, gentle rolling hills and pristine forest, not enough ocean views; not enough bucolic spots close to communication hubs such as airports; insufficient quiet and peace, not enough chummy neighborhood meets, as the encroachment of ‘slaves’ (servants, menial workers, etc. etc.) becomes too obvious.
As these menials nevertheless have to live somewhat close by – they cannot afford travel as they are paid too little – the only solution is to ‘parcel’ the territory into ‘handkerchief bits’ with tiny areas that are totally different one from the other. A gated community can have slums around it – ostensibly to create a civilized area in the ‘badlands’ – but in fact just to carve out a defended patch from which the ‘overlord’ can then hire cheap labor close by.
Until about 1985 many Western Gvmts. resisted this ‘parcellisation’ of territory, as it made class differences, and the attendant danger of revolt or attack, too obvious, it was potentially dangerous. That has gone by the wayside, over much of the West.

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 21 2007 20:12 utc | 34

WaPo

A handout obtained by The Associated Press from a local official in Azamiyah who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns but said he was given the handout by the U.S. military said the wall will be 12 feet high, about 2 feet thick and topped with coils of barbed wire. The military earlier said it would run three miles.

Warsaw Ghetto

The ghetto wall was 3.5 m hig, topped by glass and barbed wire.
The Nazis did not use the term ghetto, but referred to the area as Jüdischer Wohnbezirk (Jewish Quarter).

12 feet is 3.6 m – godamit, the U.S. is beating us Germans again …

Posted by: b | Apr 21 2007 20:30 utc | 35

heh b,
don’t look on it as being beat, we just took a good idea and made some improvements. you are aware that they are called “Bitburg barriers”, no?

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 21 2007 20:51 utc | 36

His assassination came a month after he agreed to take the dangerous job — the only person willing to do so — with promises to improve services and work with the Americans to ease traffic-clogging checkpoints in the city with a population of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000.
Fallujah Maytr

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Apr 21 2007 21:33 utc | 37

I misread this one totally. My bad.
I saw description (and picture) of how the span had been dropped into the water, and knew the “not a truck bomb, it’s a demolition” people were right.
But then it was explained how the downed bridge would impede US Army movements.
Maybe it will, but one has to learn how to be suspicious. The media are dumb, but they are PAID for being dumb. Blaming it on a truck bomb was really, really dumb.
So why? Well, a demolition could be anybody. The public has now been trained in the idea that a truck-bomb means insurgents. So without actually claiming anything, blame was laid.
The idea of laying blame is to blame somebody else.
Looks like this one joins the Golden Dome of Samarra, as one by our side.
It’s going to be fun when the US Army decides they NEED to get around Baghdad! –STIKE THAT–
No: They have already given up on ground transport. It’s evacuation by helicopters. No need for the bridge at all.
Heh.

Posted by: Gaianne | Apr 21 2007 22:34 utc | 38

Well, SH #6–
The US is now taking Israeli advice on how to deal with Arabs. This is not a secret: It was announced more than a year ago.
So: the US is fucked.
I don’t have to tell you that Israel is fucked.

Posted by: Gaianne | Apr 21 2007 22:39 utc | 39

Walls are the new hot trend apparently:

“Security forces started today constructing a concrete wall in central Muqdadiyah under new security measures taken to protect residents in the district,” the source, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
He added “the wall will enable total control of Muqdadiyah to curb the armed attacks that targeted civilians and security forces in the city.”
Muqdadiyah is 45 km east of Baaquba, capital city of Diala province.

Posted by: Alamet | Apr 21 2007 23:30 utc | 40

IRAQ: Thousands without food and supplies due to failing distribution system
Thousands?.. I doubt mere thousands would attract concern in Iraq today. Hundred thousands is probably more like it.
And see this, too: Invisible lives: Iraqis in Lebanon Was it really less than a year ago that a million Lebanese were on the run from Israeli bombs? And now they have upto a hundred thousand Iraqi refugees?
I think that is two options the world is offering the ME. Either Iran et. al. will be attacked and the region will explode. Or ‘the planners’ will take their time, the humanitarian crisis will be allowed to deepen, and the region will implode.

Posted by: Alamet | Apr 21 2007 23:47 utc | 41

Rick,
I am saddened but not surprised to hear about the problems with the gated communities. In a sense they are very small private republics, with their own laws. It was not uncommon in medieval republics to get your opponents exiled in order to seize their property. It reminds me a lot of feudalism.
Any chance of starting a revolt?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Apr 22 2007 0:25 utc | 42

I don’t think that the Israeli wall really does this justice: I agree with b (above) that the Warsaw Ghetto is a better paradigm. It has long been reported that Sunni residents in Baghdad receive more limited government services. Now their deprivation can be shut off in walled communities “guarded” by the government’s soldiers, soldiers in a military that has long been known to be infiltrated by Shi’ite militias. The long term goal of this kind of control is elimination (which, I would argue, differs from the Israeli goal, which is more akin to that of the former RSA’s homelands.) This need not be deathcamps: induced migration, as in so many other Baghdad neighborhoods, is more likely.
Of course, this will be the doing of the Iraqi government and its Shi’ite allies. What the US army did to facilitate it was for a completely different purpose. Everyone will doubtless be so shocked to learn that our allies would pervert our assistance in such a way.

Posted by: bcg | Apr 22 2007 1:53 utc | 43

Hang in there Rick. I’m proud of you too.

Posted by: beq | Apr 22 2007 3:40 utc | 44

alamet
‘the planners’ will take their time, the humanitarian crisis will be allowed to deepen, and the region will implode.
i am in sort of a state of emotional shock. i know it is coming. there is this strange sense we are at the beginning .. not the end.

Posted by: annie | Apr 22 2007 4:51 utc | 45

Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell says:

“Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get ‘the job done’ no matter what it takes.“

Report On Haditha Condemns Marines

Posted by: b | Apr 22 2007 10:14 utc | 46

Annie,
a state of emotional shock … Same here. It takes an effort just to be able to think.
More on walls from Aswat:

The main headline of al-Bayyina al-Jadida read, ‘Baghdad’s Berlin Wall surrounds the capital’s districts and turns them into isolated cantons.’ “Concrete barriers will surround all of Baghdad’s cities, including Sadr City, to cripple terrorists. Multi-national forces have already started to erect the barriers in al-Suleikh, near Ras al-Hawash district in Adhamiya,” the newspaper quoted Brigadier Qasim Ata, a spokesman for the enforcement of law plan, as saying.

And,

Meanwhile, Lt. General Abboud Konbor, the commander in charge of the Baghdad security plan, told the official al-Iraqiya TV on Sunday that barricades will be laid in all areas under the control of the Iraqi army.
He blamed media hype for exaggerating the plan, noting that barricades have been placed in the areas of al-Shoala, al-Ghazaliya, al-Adl and al-Khadraa.

Posted by: Alamet | Apr 22 2007 17:00 utc | 47

actually I meant more like this, ‘hermeneutics and hermetics’ with the old “as above so below” belief. the roots of sympathetic magic are similar in most cultures.
yes I am still in the US. not by choice, but by force of circumstance. hoping for parole soon…

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 22 2007 17:33 utc | 48

Iraq PM orders halt to Baghdad wall

Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, has ordered a halt to the construction of a barrier that would separate a Sunni enclave from Shia areas in Baghdad as Sunni-led Arab governments told him to step up reconciliation efforts with Sunni fighters if he wanted Arab support.
Al-Maliki said on Sunday: “I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop. There are other methods to protect neighbourhoods.”

Bravo Nuri al Maliki!
Now, how about :
“I oppose the occupation of my country by a foreign power and declare that occupation to be at an end as of now. All foreign troops will have left Iraq by the end of May at the latest. I call on the United Nations to see that this timetable is strictly adhered to as it is the will of the Iraqi people. There are other, real ways to rebuild our nation than to allow its occupation and the expropriation of our patrimony by the occupiers.”

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Apr 23 2007 3:27 utc | 49

Alamet , i am not able to access those links. both say..Problem in Database Connection
Please refrain from sending messages about this site or its content
to the PostNuke team, the end will result in an ignored e-mail.
humph

Posted by: annie | Apr 23 2007 9:33 utc | 50

I think they got it fixed annie @ 50, try again

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 23 2007 9:41 utc | 51

Work on Baghdad wall continues despite premier’s opposition

Baghdad- The construction of a three-mile wall around a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad continued Monday, the military spokesman for the Iraqi government said, despite Premier Nuri al-Maliki’s opposition to the plan.
Qassem Atta confirmed the US military’s plan to form a 3.5-metre-high concrete wall to enclose Adhamiya district, where tit-for-tat sectarian violence is threatening to spiral out of control.
He also insisted that Iraqi citizens had requested that walls be erected between neighbourhoods for security considerations, and so the work on the Adhamiya wall will continue, he told Iraqiya state television.
[snip]

Posted by: Rick | Apr 23 2007 16:27 utc | 52

Iraqi citizens had requested that walls be erected
Well, if the people have spoken, I guess that makes it alright then.
Ug

Posted by: citizen | Apr 24 2007 17:01 utc | 53

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