Retired US general Jay Garner, who arrived in Baghdad earlier today to take the reins of post-war Iraq, has been given his first glimpse of the devastation and destruction in a brief visit to one of the city's hospitals. Mr Garner toured the wreckage of Yarmuk hospital in the south of the battered capital, walking through dark corridors littered with broken glass and wards stripped of everything except for beds by looters. It is his first visit to Baghdad as he begins the uphill task of rebuilding the nation after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
| At least we're started now... |
Hospital chief Zayed Abdul Karim told Mr Garner the hospital's biggest problem was lack of electricity and said the 1,000-bed facility had been the main dialysis centre and the only cardiology unit in the area. The doctor said looters had ransacked the coronary and respiratory units, and that there were problems getting new equipment because the old system in place under Saddam's centrally planned economy had fallen apart.
Mr Garner addressed staff and student doctors but, as elsewhere in Iraqi society, there was wariness over US intentions as the military man takes charge of the civilian administration that will rule the country in the coming months. "Of course they will help us, but nothing is free," said one doctor. "I want to cry, because these are only words," said another. "If they give us anything it is not from their own pockets. It is from our oil. Saddam Hussein was an unjust ruler, but maybe one day we could have got rid of him, and not had these foreigners come in to our country."
I have to remind myself to be patient with these people. Perhaps there was something to the condecension with which the old-time colonialists treated them.
They had Sammy for thirty-odd years, and now they're complaining because the Promised Land hasn't been delivered in less than a month, most of it spent in getting him out.
For those thirty years they believed in Sammy and his promises — "Saddam, we will defend you with our blood!" — but they can't bring themselves to believe G.W. Bush, who's kept his word to this point.
They've gone through 30 years of people disappearing, being being tortured, raped, murdered, an iron-fisted police state, and now they're worried about a few infidels.
They had Sammy and his goons for 30 years, and before him they had another dictator, and before that one they had a Baathist dictatorship, and before that another dictator, and before that a king whom they either killed or chased out — I forget which and it's not worth looking up. Aned now they demand to be allowed to govern themselves.
Nobody needs sympathy like Garner needs sympathy. |
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