by Robert Fisk
The UN inspectors, only hours from packing, even turned up to observe this very last bit of the disarmament which the Americans had so fervently demanded and in which they have now totally lost interest. With the inspectors gone, there is nothing to stop the Anglo-American air forces commencing their bombardment of the cities of Iraq.
So is Baghdad to be Stalingrad, as Saddam tells us? It doesn't feel like it. The roads are open, checkpoints often unmanned, the city's soldiery dragging on cigarettes outside the United Nations headquarters. From the banks of the Tigris river – a muddy, warm sewage-swamped version of Stalingrad's Volga – I watched yesterday evening the fishermen casting their lines for the fish that Baghdadis eat after sunset. The Security Council resolution withdrawn? Tony Blair calls an emergency meeting of the Cabinet? George Bush to address the American people? Baghdad, it seems, is sleep-walking its way into history.
How come I found a queue of Iraqis waiting outside the Sindbad cinema in Saadun Street last night, queuing for that ancient Egyptian clunker Private Lives, its posters displaying the ample size of its heroine? Talk to any Iraqi and they will tell you they adore – more than adore – Saddam. But they would, wouldn't they? And we've heard that for well over two decades. True, the local Baathist papers regale us with peace marches and peace protests around the world – as if Mr Bush is going to call back his quarter of a million men because Jordanians burnt American flags on Sunday.
The detachment is quite extraordinary, as if we are breathing here in Baghdad a different kind of air, as if we exist on a planet quite removed from the B-52s and Stealth bombers and cruise missiles and Mother of All Bombs, which will soon make the earth tremble beneath our feet. The very history and culture of the Arab world is about to be visited by a Western-made earthquake, the likes of which has never been seen.
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