Antis Aplenty

Loyalty to the Shiite cleric burns fierce here in northeastern Baghdad, and especially in Sadr City, a vast slum of 2.2 million people, despite frequent American raids and almost nightly airstrikes. The American military has stepped up its campaign to rout the Mahdi Army, Mr. Sadr's militia, on its home turf here, to drive him to the bargaining table. But it is often impossible to distinguish between civilians and fighters.

A reporter, photographer and interpreter with The New York Times recently spent nearly 24 hours being guided through the battleground streets - and even to a guerrilla bachelor party - by one of Mr. Sadr's midlevel aides. It became apparent that the Mahdi Army here is less a discrete military organization than a populist movement that includes everyone from doctors to policemen to tribal sheiks, and whose ranks swell with impoverished men willing to die. [...]

"If the Americans didn't try entering Sadr City with their tanks, I can guarantee you not a single bullet would be fired," Muhammad said over a lunch of lamb kebab, a framed portrait of Mr. Sadr on the wall behind him. "Everyone here is part of the resistance." [...]

"We're willing to fight, and we won't let the Americans enter this city," he said, staring down the barrel of his rifle. That sentiment is widespread in Sadr City, where American patrols routinely encounter ambushes and roadside bombs.

So, we've known that the Resistance is comprised of "Anti-Iraqi forces". But if "everyone is part of the resistance", and if "it is often impossible to distinguish between civilians and fighters", maybe the Pentagon needs a more encompassing euphemism. "Anti-Iraqi Iraqis", perhaps?

By the way, another admission of War Crimes from the U.S. military (you'd think they'd at least read the Geneva Conventions, so they'd then know which actions not to acknowledge having undertaken): "A senior military official said the strikes were not aimed at civilians, but there was no guarantee that civilian casualties could be avoided."

If there's no guarantee that civilian casualties can be avoided, the action is explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Conventions (not to mention, one might have guessed, elementary human decency).

Well, the dead niggers' families can take solace in the likelihood that the mainstream media will surely hammer this point in the upcoming days, much as it always does when the military acknowledges commission of war crimes.

Posted by Eddie Tews at October 4, 2004 09:33 AM