But Sam just can't get no respect. Used to be, Israel was the foil for the US in the M.E. - now it is the other way around! Good work, knuckleheads!
US gets the blame as killings add to Iraqis' anguish By Patrick McDonnell Karbala March 4, 2004
The guard at the blue-domed mosque of the Mahdi in Karbala stood vigil yesterday where, two hours earlier, a suicide bomber had detonated his sinister payload.
"It was the Americans who did this," said the guard, Abu Yaarub Khafaji, 26. "We saw their helicopters yesterday. They were doing aerial surveillance for the bombings today." No matter who the perpetrators are, it seems the United States is blamed by Iraqis when a bomb explodes - or almost anything bad happens.
Occupation forces were faulted when a suspected bomb factory exploded last summer at a mosque in Fallujah, and when a car bomb destroyed the police station in Khalidiya in December. They were accused of providing inadequate security when a blast killed scores of people outside a Shiite shrine in Najaf in August. At the same time, they are regularly criticised for heavy-handedness at checkpoints and during raids.
It was more of the same in Karbala and Baghdad on Tuesday, the worst day of bloodshed in post-Saddam Iraq. Passersby even stoned US armoured vehicles as they arrived at the al-Kadhimain mosque in Baghdad - an image beamed around the world.
US officials have gone to great lengths to react gently. "That's absolutely understandable in a time of grief like that, that people might try to vent their sadness, vent their outrage at persons other than those who actually committed it," Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, a US military spokesman, said when asked about the stoning incident. Still, the Iraqi reaction has clearly bewildered top commanders.
The reaction reflects general disillusionment, whether the issue is continued violence, the lack of electricity, the queues for petrol or the joblessness.
"Where are all the promises that the Americans made to us?" Karbala resident Mohammed Hussein asked at a spot where five people were killed. "They are drowning in our oil, but they are not protecting us."
'They are drowning in our oil, but they are not protecting us.' - Karbala resident
- Los Angeles Times
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/03/1078295443979.html