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Troops protect ministry oil { April 12 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/12/international/worldspecial/12SCEN.html"The cause is not Saddam, the cause is oil," he said. To press home his point, he contended that American troops who have taken control of much of the city have made no attempt to protect any government building from looters except the Ministry of Oil. "They won't let the looters go anywhere near it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/12/international/worldspecial/12SCEN.html
April 12, 2003
G.I. Who Pulled the Trigger Shares Anguish of 2 Deaths
By JOHN F. BURNS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 11 — When American tanks opened fire on a car driving up Highway 1 on Baghdad's southern outskirts in the dusk of Monday evening, it was only one of hundreds of such incidents in the war in Iraq that changed the life of an Iraqi family in an instant.
But that moment also changed an American life, that of Cpl. Jeff Mager, 22, of Chicago, a gunner on an Abrams tank that carries the legend "Bush and Co." on its barrel.
Guarding an expressway overpass a few miles from Baghdad's international airport, the tank crew was waiting tensely for an Iraqi counterattack by massed suicide bombers promised by Saddam Hussein's top officials after American troops seized the airport last Friday.
Corporal Mager had fired some of the cannon shells that struck the Toyota sedan and other vehicles running up a slipway toward the overpass. He had seen the two men in the front seat of the silver gray Camry die in an explosion of blood and steel. But until this morning, he could not be sure who had been killed.
Then at about 10 a.m. today, Corporal Mager learned something about what he and the other tank crews had done that many soldiers in faraway wars, shooting at uncertain targets, remain blissfully unaware of. He and the other tank gunners had killed two Iraqi civilians, he was told, brothers who ran a family tannery that sold half-finished leathers to luxury fashion houses in Italy.
He learned, too, that incidents like the one at the overpass, in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians have been killed, however inadvertently, have generated a wave of bitterness that is eroding some of the gratitude that has swept Iraq for the American forces' role in ending 24 years of grimly repressive government by Mr. Hussein. How such confrontations are resolved is critical to how the American presence in this country will be viewed.
On Wednesday, residents from the Saidiya neighborhood that straddles the expressway where the shooting occurred came with shovels and white flags to bury the two brothers hurriedly beside the wreck, along with other Iraqis who were killed in nearby vehicles that were also smashed by tank shells.
Today, as a group of men, mostly from the same neighborhood, returned to retrieve the bodies from their makeshift grave, Corporal Mager dismounted from his tank, and listened as a reporter told him what he had learned, at least as the crowd recounted it: that the victims were Wadhar Handi, 34, and Bashar Handi, 28, and that they were driving to their family home in Harithiya, an upscale neighborhood about three miles north of the overpass, when they were hit by the tanks. The corporal was also told that one surviving brother and a cousin of the two victims were among the men working with the shovels, and that they, and many other men in the crowd, were seething with anger at America.
What the Iraqis were saying was that actions like these were proof of the "lies" told by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in saying they intended the war to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. Ordinary Iraqis, the Handi family and the people in the Saidiya neighborhood among them, loathed Saddam Hussein and wanted him overthrown, they said, but not by foreign troops that shoot indiscriminately at civilians.
Ali Rashid Handi, 40, a surviving older brother standing atop the grave, 40 paces from Corporal Mager, had pointed at his dead brothers and said: "We wanted freedom, we wanted democracy, and this is what we got. Is this what you Americans call freedom?"
Corporal Mager had pulled his helmet up to listen, and his face tightened. He appeared to accept the recounting that the two men killed were innocent. No Iraqi made any move to approach him, and nobody shouted any abuse. The men at the grave went on digging, their white flags blowing in the morning breeze.
Corporal Mager watched, and appeared lost in thought. Then he looked up, with a sadness that was beyond affectation, and asked that a message be passed to the Iraqis, a message for himself, and for America. "Tell them the fact that I pulled the trigger that killed some of these people makes me very unhappy," he said. "Tell them that America did not want things to happen this way. Tell them that I wish that Iraqis will live a better life."
Then he clambered back on the tank, and it drove away.
All across Baghdad, and all the way down the routes that American troops took on their 350-mile drive north from Kuwait, there are scenes similar to the one at the Saidiya overpass. On bridges, at highway junctions, and other places where Americans braced for Iraqi counterattacks, there are wrecks of civilian vehicles. In many of these wrecks, the burned and bloodied corpses remain for days, even a week or more.
In many cases, there may never be any certainty about the identity or intentions of those who have been killed. On the Jumhuriya bridge across the Tigris River in central Baghdad three vehicles in a tangled wreckage were white Nissan pickup trucks of the type used by the paramilitary forces that inflicted most of the damage on American troops as they fought their way to Baghdad. In addition, militiamen from the governing Baath Party, as well as tribal gunmen and other irregulars, have mostly worn civilian clothes.
But they were deadly, suddenly brandishing Kalashnikov rifles and shoulder-launched rockets and other weapons. And if the threat they posed had not been enough to make American troops suspicious of any civilian vehicle approaching them, suicide bombers were.
In an incident on the first weekend of the war, two weeks ago, a suicide bomber who arrived in a taxi killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint outside the holy city of Najaf. Similar incidents followed, including one in central Baghdad on Thursday evening. Most Iraqis understood, by word of mouth or listening to Mr. Hussein's defense chiefs saying that they had 6,000 more suicide bombers ready to attack, that no civilian approaching an American checkpoint could be entirely safe.
On the expressway at Saidiya, several of the vehicles that were hit by the American tanks were white pickup trucks. While it may never be known whether the two Handi brothers had failed to heed a signal from American forces to turn back or stop, it was certain that the car they drove was a sports model.
Beside their temporary grave today, Ali Rashid Handi, 40, described the family's farm in the Doura district south of Baghdad, their comfortable home in the city, and their frequent trips to Europe and the United States, privileges denied to any Iraqi suspected of harboring disloyal thoughts about Mr. Hussein.
As the men with the shovels uncovered the body of Bashar Handi, a huge barrel of man, his surviving brother described Mr. Handi's trip only days before the war began to strike new deals in Milan, the Italian fashion city where the family business did its most profitable trade. Something in the moment — the memory of those fine journeys, and the reality at hand, of the huge body appearing shovel by shovel — was suddenly overwhelming.
Ali Rashid Handi turned away, sobbing into the white cloth that he, like others at the grave, held over their faces to ward off the stench and the flies.
The older of the two victims, Wadhar Handi, left a widow, a woman he married only 45 days ago, Ali Rashid Handi said, and she was already pregnant. But he said she would not learn of her husband's death for days, possibly weeks, since she had left Baghdad when the war started for the safety of a family home in western Iraq.
The bombing, the surviving brother said, could also explain why the dead men drove up Highway 1, 60 hours after it became a shooting gallery on Saturday morning, when American troops at the airport first ventured toward the city and littered the highway with the wrecks of Iraqi vehicles. "No information," he replied. "No telephones."
He might have added that Iraqi radio and television broadcasts were telling people in Baghdad that the Americans had not reached the inner city, that they had been driven from the airport, and that they were in isolated pockets and being "slaughtered" by Iraqi troops.
But none of these considerations appeared to count for much with the men around the temporary grave.
Abdul Malik, a 36-year-old antiques merchant who is cousin of the dead brothers, drew murmurs of assent from the crowd when he said that America had come to Iraq not to liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, but for oil.
"The cause is not Saddam, the cause is oil," he said. To press home his point, he contended that American troops who have taken control of much of the city have made no attempt to protect any government building from looters except the Ministry of Oil. "They won't let the looters go anywhere near it."
Only a few miles away, looters clambering over the rubble of the Sajida Palace, named for Saddam Hussein's wife, met every Western reporter who passed them with handshakes, claps on the back, and shouts of `America good!" "Bush good!" and "Down Saddam."
Anecdotally, at least, this has seemed to be the opinion of the overwhelming majority of people in Baghdad since Mr. Hussein's power collapsed. But along Highway 1, in the presence of innocent deaths, not a voice in dozens spoke up for America, at least on the issue of the war.
But if they did not believe that America had come to Iraq to free Iraqis, the men were asked, did they at least accept the objective of overthrowing Mr. Hussein? For moments, there was silence. Then one man at the back raised his hand.
"Yes," he said, "I am in favor of overthrowing Saddam." A moment later, another man raised his hand, and then another, and another, until eventually all the men's hands were raised. Their confidence rising, the men then started to shout the chorus heard in so many other places in the city. "Down Saddam!" they cried. "Down Saddam!"
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