Group
shows Iraqis welcoming U.S.
By Arnaud de
Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
AMMAN, Jordan — A group of American anti-war
demonstrators, part of a Japanese human-shield delegation, returned from Iraq
yesterday with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government
minders present, with Iraqis eager to tell of their welcome for American
troops.
The Rev. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor
of the Assyrian Church of the East, said the trip to Iraq "had
shocked me back to reality."
Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera, he
said, "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start.
They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from
Saddam [Hussein]'s bloody tyranny."
Mr. Joseph said the Iraqis convinced him that
Saddam is "a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since
Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists.
"Their tales of slow torture and killing
made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet
first so the [torture masters] could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up
from foot to head."
The pastor and others making it across the border
into Jordan
tell harrowing stories about their journey. The only gasoline station between Baghdad and the border, a
distance of 400 miles, was blown up by U.S. fighter-bombers. The station,
in the one-camel village of Ramadi, had the only telephone booth on the road
across the desert and a Jordanian, who had stopped to call his parents in Amman
to let them know he was on his way home, was killed in the explosion.
The few taxi drivers in Baghdad willing to drive to the Jordanian
border are charging $1,500 per passenger. Very few Iraqis can afford the fare,
and only about 300 "third-country nationals," mostly Sudanese and
Egyptians, have reached the border post since the "shock and awe"
campaign began. Travelers have to struggle with their luggage across the last
two miles on foot to Al Karama, the first Jordanian outpost. From there, they
are taken by bus to a tent city at the Ruwaished refugee camp, 36 miles inside Jordan.
The Baghdad-Jordan highway was busy with
commercial traffic before the beginning of the war, with some 700 tanker-trucks
shuttling daily with part of the 12,000 tons of oil consumed by Jordan every
day. All of it comes from Iraq
at discounted prices under the U.N. oil-for-food program. Some 2,600 Jordanian
and 1,500 Iraqi tankers have been involved in the overland oil traffic.
Movement was down to 140 tankers the day before the bombing started. It stopped
abruptly two days ago.
Jordan
had made plans for a quick switch to tankers anchored off Aqaba. Qatar had
pledged to replace whatever shortfall Jordan experienced.
Jordanians see one favorable omen. Every day,
almost a thousand white storks arrive at a supermarket parking lot on one of Amman's seven hills, a
pit stop on their way from Africa to their
East European breeding grounds. About 100,000 storks are expected to stop here
over the next month, numbers not seen in 10 years. Jordanians take this as a
sign of ample rain and a good harvest ahead.
The difference between official and private views
of some ranking Jordanian officials may be an omen, too. Officially, they
condemn the war and say they are "deeply troubled" by the prospect of
repercussions of the war on the region, and describe the situation as
"critical."
Privately, they say, the war is developing a new
opportunity for peace in the Middle East. Says
one former prime minister: "If the U.S. can get a new Iraq to
recognize Israel
as a quid pro quo for a final Palestinian settlement, others will fall into
place — Syria,
Saudi Arabia,
and the other Gulf states.
Iran
would then have to pull back its military support for Hezbollah."
•Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of
The Washington
Times and of United Press International. This dispatch was distributed by UPI.