Green Zone Accomplished

May 1st passed and with it another anniversary of President Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' proclamation.

The further we move from May 1, 2003, the uglier the Iraq elective invasion looks.

All but stone etched Bush supporters with the unique gift of covering reality and history with loyalty, recognize that the official story about why the US invaded Iraq glaringly differs from the facts and the obvious. Its hard to find a word that adequately encapsulates the degree of difference.

Ray McGovern's recent statement regarding Bush and Cheney mandating another surge to make sure that the official withdrawal doesn't land on their terms in office, seems viable.

I'm reading 'Imperial Life in the Emerald City' by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Emerald City being the second nickname for the Green Zone. The first chapter alone obliquely reveals a part of why the whole mission was faulty from the start. With Baghdad being the focus of the surge, the Green Zone sits squarely in the heart of that storm.

As we know, the Green Zone is a 3 to 4 square mile area, partly resting against the Tigris and completely surrounded by a high masonry medieval wall now extensively refortified. Built by Saddam Hussein as a palatial residence and power center, it contains beautiful tree lined streets built to house servants along with an exacting list of comfortable and luxurious amenities. Iraqis were afraid to drive slowly by the Green Zone, they could be arrested and accused of spying or snooping. They had to ignore its overwhelming opulence and its imposition. It was an officially designated blind spot.

The US invades Iraq and shortly thereafter sets up its leadership residence in the Green Zone. Initially the Green Zone could have been 'liberated' perhaps opened as a museum, perhaps turned over to the Iraqis, maybe even raised to the ground, anything to ameliorate the fear that it held before the people and in so doing create an emphathetic foothold. Instead it became the privileged home of the US in Baghdad.

Who can explain this decision? Maybe nobody knew or bothered to find out. Is it because we have a President whose life is also so privileged and isolated from ordinary people that the thought didn't even occur and so a parallel situation is automatically established? Wasn't the rap on Bush I that he was out of touch with ordinary people and that's partly why he lost to the home grown Bill Clinton.

Regardless the Green Zone is both a psychological and military fortress distanced from the general Baghdad population, as foreboding for the past 4 years as it was under Saddam, excepting a recent infiltrating tragic attack and a continuous stream of mortar and rocket fire.

The obvious result or implication is that the Iraqis resent this. This does not help to make people at ease. This is not liberation, this is wound salting. This is a substitute authority zone to be feared not welcomed. The US planners and leaders made the choice to do that, to reestablish a center to be feared in Baghdad, cognizant of it or not.

Skip ahead to torture in Abu Ghraib and the new people in the Green Zone are a lot like the old people in the Green Zone.

I opposed the war from the start, most reading this did. Reviewing the war, it is dispiriting to see this level of short sighted planning in the mix. Regretably this is only one of many such examples in this war turned occupation where reality and rhetoric do not match.