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post-liberation
kuwait diary

March 1, 1991
The stories of the torture inflicted by Iraqi soldiers against Kuwaitis are emerging now.

I just despise our media. The news, with heart-wrenching scenes of devastation, is sliced up by stupid commercials about denture cleanser and people hanging from the ceiling to clean the toilet under the ring.

The news is showing the dead Kuwaiti torture victims, eyeless, limbs burned off with acid, noses broken and limp, skills split open...
And then there's "Finger Man" who, accompanied by kazoo music, demonstrates ziplock bags.

Baghdad is in ruins and the people seem dazed. The waste is so clear. The road from Kuwait 4th Ring Road is clogged with miles of abandoned, burned out cars; the drivers all dead. My car may be among them or in Baghdad. They estimate 150,000 dead Iraqi soldiers. How many civilians? How many houses destroyed? Is Ashwak's house standing and is that family intact?
But here in the U.S. we can get 5 minute hair color.

Another news program, more pictures of dead. Dead everywhere. New graveyards in Kuwait, and piles of Iraqis all over the battlefield. The battlefield still filled with mines.
Folger's instant coffee is better than fresh brewed-almost too good for you.


"kicking
Vietnam
Syndrome
once and
for all"

 

Well, they're talking about the U.S. military presence in the Gulf and about selling arms there and training "Special Forces" (which are our guerilla specialists) and Bush is crowing like mad, saying that the U.S. has "kicked Vietnam Syndrome once and for all" and that we won't need to be "policeman of the world" because the world has seen what we can wreak.


600
wellfires

 

How can the world have produced a leader like Saddam Hussein? How can people be capable of what has happened? The torture, the cruelty. And the rape of the ecology. That is what brought me down: 600 well fires are burning, blackening Kuwait's skies and turning the rain black, even far north in Baghdad. What are those fires doing to the ozone layer? It will cause acid rain, possible climate change, possible effects on crop production in India and beyond. And 300 million barrels of oil on the Gulf, killing all life on the shores it hits: the life in the mud flats, the rubiyan (prawns), the delicious hamoor and zubeidi and all the other life on shore and in the water.


residual
iraqness

 

CBS news has been coming through best (in the constant ratings race). Today I've gotten a sense of what it's like there. They showed drivers on 4th Ring Road weaving among bombed vehicles and scattered bodies of Iraqi soldiers, caught fleeing Kuwait, lying in mangled, dead positions in the filth. And views of the Sheraton, all burned out, the Meridian, with some scars, and dhow harbor by gutted Seif Palace, filled with mangled metal and dhows mixed with burned out military equipment mired in the mud. Miraculously, the Kuwait Towers remain standing, as a wonderful backdrop to the frenzied dancing along Gulf Road, especially in front of the U.S. and U.K. embassies. But many, many buildings, perhaps most, bear marks. And there were monuments, huge ones of course, erected to Saddam in Kuwait. The Kuwaitis set them on fire, shot them up, spat on and burned the Iraqi money they were forced to use, burned the flags, and had to be restrained from attacking the soldiers rounded up who had unwisely remained behind in the city.


the victorious
and the
defeated

 

The images on the news tonight were very, very upsetting to me, almost drowning my happiness over Kuwait's liberation. The scenes of mutilated bodies being pulled out of drawers in the morgue of Sabah Hospital, out by my old workplace (by the way, I saw pictures of KISR, which has been gutted, all equipment taken to Iraq) and of the cars weaving among bodies on 4th Ring Road, and of small groups of Iraqi soldiers, the very lucky ones, walking in small groups, straggling tiredly and defeatedly, one among them carrying a white flag of some sort, north home, having been forced to leave their booty behind. The contrast between the victorious and the defeated, Kuwait and Iraq, is that of dancing in the streets vs. sitting dejectedly among the rubble, yet they are all shifting among rubble, debris, bombed destroyed surroundings. How sad. What utter waste. The Kuwaitis are chanting "Bush, Bush, Bush" and "U.S.A." and are angry with Saddam. In Iraq, people seem bewildered. They are angry with America, but even lately, not expressing that so much as though it may be sinking in, they may be beginning to think, that SADDAM brought it all on them and on the world.


nazi
methods

 

Saddam Hussein was well schooled in the methods of oppression. He obviously trained his army how to torture. His tactics for taking over Kuwait and indoctrinating the people there were impressive-he forced their allegiance by means of terror. Owning pictures of the Kuwait sheikhs was punishable and the display of Saddam's portraits enforced [In Iraq also. I had first hand observation of this when I visited Baghdad in '88.] Torture was used to crush resistence. The money changed and gasoline given only to those with Iraqi license plates.

He knew Nazi methods. I heard on the radio about the indoctrination of the children-those cute kid squads in neat blue camoflage who Iraq TV always showed marching in parades. They trained those kids to listen to parents and report back any anti-Saddam talk. They turned child against parent. Insidious. Terrifying.

now
what?

 

As usual, I watched all three network news shows, one after the other. Yesterday I was euphoric. This evening I was absolutely downcast: relieved and gratified that Kuwait is free again, but now having to face the realities, the ugliness, the filth of the changed, damaged world. I talked to Fadel, a Kuwaiti who lives here [in Ashland, Oregon], and said to him "Alef Mabrook" and talked for almost an hour, which made me feel better, and he said that this first world is a testing ground, which I guess it is. The Hindus say it's a Middle Ground. They believe, according to Huston Smith, that this "Middle Ground" can be neither changed nor destroyed but is just a transition to another world. Whatever it is, it's a trial and there are lots of criminals out there.


Šjanice adams
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