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12 décembre 2004 — En un sens, The Independent pose à la fois le problème et le résout lorsqu’il écrit en titre et sous-titre : « Last week the US lost its 1,000th soldier killed in combat. Why did no one notice? Because the coalition wants to play down the carnage. Especially when it comes to civilians. » Il le pose parce que, effectivement, il existe une poussée, à la fois naturelle et provoquée, pour écarter les nouvelles d’Irak de notre première attention (titres, reportages, etc) ; et il le résout, par l’attention évidente que lui-même porte à cette question, en en faisant son titre. Effectivement, il nous semble que la puissance du réseau de communication et d’information, de la “presse officielle” à Internet, génère une dynamique qu’il est très difficile de réduire.
D’autre part, que The Independent ne s’inquiète pas trop. Nous sommes aidés, dans notre tâche de ne pas perdre le contact avec l’incommensurable monstruosité qu’est l’affaire irakienne, par un allié de taille et de poids : la non moins incommensurable stupidité de la bête, — comment désigner autrement ce système militaro-bureaucratique saupoudré d’humanitarisme de bazar de relations publiques ? — en action en Irak. Chaque nouvel événement, chaque nouvelle initiative, démontre conjointement sa barbarie et sa bêtise.
(Sur le fond, c’est-à-dire à Washington, qu’on soit bien assuré que rien n’a changé. L’utopie destructrice et infantile du premier mandat GW continue et même accélère, dans une version encore plus vulgaire où la démocratisation forcée des Irakiens devrait passer par la menace d’emploi du nucléaire. Voir l’excellent article de Scott McConnell, sur le sujet.)
L’une des dernières monstruosités pentagonesques en date est le sort réservé à Falloujah. Les références qui viennent à l’esprit devant le plan américain de “reconstruction” concernent aussi bien les villes artificielles créées autour du goulag stalinien que les ghettos juifs organisés par les nazis. Les cartes d’identification magnétiques, pour tous les habitants de Falloujah revenus à la maison, font office d’étoiles jaunes postmodernes ; les habitants de Falloujah mobilisés en travailleurs forcés, enrégimentés, sans doute mis en uniforme, représentent un phénomène qui se réfère aux deux systèmes, stalinien et nazi, avec la cerise sur le gâteau de ce constat que les habitants de Falloujah sont mobilisés pour reconstruire de force une ville détruite par l’U.S. Army et le Corps des Marines.
Dans un article de
« Ahmed Rawi, a Red Cross spokesman, said yesterday: ''No one knows how many families are inside the city.'' The Red Cross team which entered without escort and left before curfew met no residents, apart from engineers and technicians. The Red Cross reported that hundreds of dead bodies remain stacked inside a potato chip warehouse on the outskirts. Some of the bodies were too badly decomposed to be identified. Raw sewage runs through the streets.
» All this, and there are no humanitarian workers working inside the city. When the first of Fallujah's refugees are allowed to return on Christmas Eve, they will be funnelled through five checkpoints. Each will have their fingerprints taken, along with DNA samples and retina scans. Residents will be issued with badges with their home addresses on them, and it will be an offence not to wear it at all times. No civilian vehicles will be allowed in the city in an effort to thwart suicide bombers. One idea floated by the US is for all males in Fallujah be compelled to join work battalions in which they will be paid to clear rubble and rebuild houses.
» American officers say the hardline approach is legal under martial law regulations issued last month by the interim government of Iyad Allawi. But they appear a little embarrassed by the Orwellian overtones of their plan. Major Francis Piccoli, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, admitted: ''Some may see this as a 'Big Brother is watching over you' experiment. But, in reality, it's a simple security measure to keep the insurgents from coming back.'' »
On lira également avec profit “Fallujah as a ‘Model City’”, de Dahr Jamail, sur le site Antiwar.com. C’est un bon reportage d’atmosphère sur la situation à Falloujah. D’autre part, ce commentaire furieux du site kurtnimmo.com, sous le titre de « Another Day in the Empire — Fallujah: Pentagon Plans a High-tech Strategic Hamlet »
« Fast forward to the present. In the pulverized wreckage of Fallujah, Iraq, the United States will soon introduce the Strategic Hamlet program once again, albeit with significant differences. Under the new plan, according to the Boston Globe, “troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.” In Vietnam, peasants were forced to build their gulags, while in Fallujah male civilians will be organized in “military-style battalions” and, depending “on their skills” will “be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.” In other words, Fallujans will be organized into chain-gangs and forced to clean up the criminal mess the United States made of their city. For some reason the Pentagon either does not realize or could not care less about the anger and resistance such humiliation will cause.
» “You have to say, ‘Here are the rules,’ and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability,” Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, told the Globe.
» Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, ” ‘What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?’ All this Oprah [stuff],” he said. “They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, ‘I’m with you.’ We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.”
» No more Oprah “stuff.” Instead, the Pentagon believes it can pretend to be a “dominant” tribal leader—sort of an Americanized version of Saddam—and thus win the trust (or fear) of Iraqis, a monumental and culturally ignorant—if not completely bigoted—mistake, one certain to engender even more animosity on the part of Iraqis and empower the resistance further. Bellon understands most Iraqis will continue to hate the United States for illegally invading and occupying their country and butchering 100,000 or more of their fellow citizens but hopes there will be “mutual respect.” Exactly how reducing Fallujah to rubble, sniping thirsty and starving women and children, using internationally banned weapons such as napalm, cluster and phosphorous bombs, depleted uranium shells, killing doctors and hospital patients, and crushing the wounded under the treads of tanks will create “mutual respect” is not explained.
» Like an act from some macabre theater of the absurd play, the Pentagon declares that converting the bombed remnants of Fallujah, with its interred civilians, into a concentration camp—with the latest invasive technology instead of stockade walls—is an effort to create a “model city.” In other words, the Pentagon and its Iraqi stooges plan to use “coercive measures” in other Sunni cities; i.e., they will bomb, invade, kill thousands of people, and then “reconstruct” the ruins to resemble something out of a here-and-now version of the dystopian movie Minority Report, complete with retina scan terminals and an omnipresent police state dominating every aspect of life. »
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