In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today.
What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?
"Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"
Around him, the crowd roared its approval. Yet when the first round of welcomes to American soldiers and journalists were exuberantly, even affectionately completed, the people in the crowd had a more urgent request than liquor. They wanted water.
There has been none in this town for four days. Again and again, people pointed to the sky, tilted their heads back and pointed to their open mouths. A boy, age about 6 or 7, approached an American reporter and said the two words that were uttered over and over: "America. Good." Then he kissed the reporter on the cheek, shook his hand and pointed to the sky, pleading for water.
Neither soldiers nor reporters had water for the town. The infrastructure has been brought down by nearly a week of battles in and around the town. For now, there is no short-term prospect for any relief, although military officials note that the town's landing strip could easily accommodate C-130 cargo planes.
This is the first town of any major size that the Americans have fought for and taken control of, but Najaf itself is of little importance to the military mission here. The troops need it to secure supply lines for the invasion of Baghdad. The paramilitary fighters of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party have been driven out, and arms caches have been destroyed.
The Shiite Muslim population of the town, long oppressed by the Baath, poured out of their homes on Tuesday with tips about weapons hiding places and training grounds. The Shiites seemed mildly to wildly grateful for the presence of the Americans, but were curious about what it will amount to. So, too, was one American military official, who said he wondered how he would know when he was done in Najaf.
Kase, an Iraqi civil engineer who would not give his last name, was part of a crowd that gathered outside a former ammunition center for the Baath Party. "Will you stay?" he asked.
[...]The military has sought meetings with a major Shiite leader here, Ayatollah Ali Alsestani, who has so far declined to speak with American officials. The cleric is said to have been kept under house arrest for a decade or more, but was freed within the last day after his guards fled as the American cordon around the city drew tighter.
[...]In the view of Kadhim al-Waeli, an expatriate who returned to the city today with the American troops, the ayatollah's unwillingness to publicly embrace the invading force reflects a broader uncertainty about American steadfastness.
[...]
Mr. Waeli returned today as a member of the Free Iraqi Forces, a group of Iraqi natives attached to a civil affairs unit of the Army. He said the local Shiites were concerned that the Americans would not secure the peace and wanted to know, "Are you going to be here or are you going to leave us?"
These poor people.
Clearly they can't stop reliving the nightmare of 1991, when they rose up as President Bush 41 asked them to and then were brutally put down by Saddam.
What resulted from their quest for freedom then ended in what can be described by no other word than genocide or as their religious and political repression by torture and murder.
I hope we're working on getting them some fresh water in a few hours.
We'll work on getting them the whiskey and the "sexy" later.
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