Why should the Americans be surprised when the Iraqis take prisoners and kill their soldiers? War is like that

War is hell, remember?

I’m a bit surprised that the Americans, including President Dubya Bush (who warned the Iraqis to treat their POW’s well), are making such a fuss over the fact that US soldiers, including a Fil-American (Joseph Hudson) as well as a woman, have been taken prisoner by the Iraqis. Or the casualties and fatalities their Marines and other troops have been suffering.

Did they expect that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk? That Iraqi soldiers would be surrendering in droves, without a fight? That they could avoid inflicting civilians deaths and suffering? That they wouldn’t be sucked into house-to-house combat or urban warfare? That their over-extended forces wouldn’t be ambushed, and their tanks and other armor would be immune to missiles, enemy artillery and other forms of counter-attack? That mistakes wouldn’t occur?

Already a Royal Air Force Tornado jet, returning from a mission, has been shot down by an American "Patriot" missile. British helicopters have collided with each other. A US Marine helicopter crashed on Day One, killing eight British SAS commandos (their best of the best) and four American servicemen without even getting into the battle. The Iraqis have been showing a down Apache "Longbow" helicopter gunship, and claiming they’ve shot down another.

Why are the Americans angry that TV sequences showing the American captives, as well as the wounded and the dead, have been aired by the Iraqis on Al-Jazeera television (the now-famous Qatar-based Arab TV network, which, after all, has an exchange deal with CNN)?

Sus, only a day or two before, the Americans had been showing Iraqis surrendering, with a white flag, kneeling before a British soldier on the outskirts of the port of Umm Qasr; TV scenes of more captives with their hands tied behind with twine; one startling Associated Press photo portraying an Iraqi soldier (one of 200 who surrendered in southern Iraq) on the ground, with an American soldier pouring water from a canteen into his mouth, but with another US soldier pointing a carbine at his head.

Then there’s the other photo of Iraqi soldiers, their hands clasped behind their heads in subjection, marching in single file to surrender to British Royal Marines, also in southern Iraq.

Didn’t these sequences, to refer to US Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s complaint, also humiliate the Iraqi prisoners of war in contravention of the Geneva Conventions?

War is never a one-way affair. The Good Guys can’t be good all the time, nor can the Bad Guys lose all of the time. Often enough, even the "baddies" win. It’s not the fact that the Iraqis captured Americans and Brits or destroyed coalition armor, and downed helicopters that has killed so many of them, which resulted in Saddam’s side putting the advancing coalition forces off-balance in the "propaganda war."

It’s the look of amazement or dejection on the faces of American officials, generals and military spokesman. If it was Confucius who said that one good picture is more effective than 10,000 words, those pictures really "devastated" the American image of invincibility. They should have a sobering effect – which, if you ask me, is much needed. Putting this war in perspective, and wrenching the over-confidence of the advancing Yanks back to reality is absolutely necessary.

The Brits, who in relative terms, have suffered more loss – including loss of face – have been more sanguine about the mistakes, mishaps, and several heartbreaking fatalities (especially those from hideous accident or stupid "friendly fire"). This has been Tony Blair’s moment of agony, but he put a courageous and compassionate face on it, even though every recent word he uttered was visibly tinged with pain.

For his part, Mr. Bush has been a mite too emotional, although he has also said a number of things which were firm and much-required, as when he warned the Turks to "stay out of Northern Iraq". But how can he enforce that prohibition short of attacking the Turkish "special forces" already sneaking in?

The Turks, indeed, have let their erstwhile allies, the Americans, cruelly down – since an Islamist Party is now in power in Istanbul, and hundreds of thousands of angry Muslim demonstrators have made their hatred of America plain. Since they refused to help the US-led coalition, they should have no part in Iraq. Their entry would only arouse the Iraqi Kurds, who’re now the coalition’s staunchest allies in the Northeast. The Turks, let me be plain, have their own selfish agenda: They want to prevent an independent Kurdestan being established in Northern Iraq smack against their borders, and, what’s more, obviously want to seize the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

Poor Dubya! He courted the Turks too assiduously, even putting the arm on NATO to "defend" them despite French, German and Belgian resistance, and offering them (too loudly) a bribe in the form of $15 billion or more in terms of credits and aid.

They flatly rejected the deal, and banned 62,000 American troops belonging to the 4th "Digital" Infantry Division and their heavy Abrams tanks from landing in Turkey (through the port of Iskenderun), thus opening up a Northern Front from which to attack Tikrit and Baghdad.

"No way", said the Turkish parliament and Cabinet. This left 62,000 US soldiers, not to mention their idled heavy equipment, getting seasick aboard 40 ships just off the coast of Turkey for weeks, sapping their morale (they must have been vomiting and burfing over the side, all the way).

Now, the dejected 4th Infantry is trying to land elsewhere (but where?) so they can help the already heavily embattled 3rd Infantry Division break through hardening Iraqi positions in their slog towards Baghdad.

The bottom line is that almost all Muslims over there, even those who’re sheepishly helping the Americans, Brits, and coalition partners, hate the Americans. Saddam’s propagandist, effectively, keep on hammering away at the American-British-Zionist invaders.

When "Israel" is mentioned, Arabs get either hysterical or catatonic. That’s the long and short of it.

* * *

Mr. Bush has been constrained to repeat his warnings that it would "take a while" for the US to achieve victory. Victory, indeed, seemed farther away yesterday than it had appeared in the first two heady days of the campaign, with all those Abrams MIA1, MIA2 tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Humvees and other armor pushing relentlessly into the desert, or jauntily towards the ports of Umm Qasr and Basra as if they were on a Boy Scout Jamboree.

It shouldn’t be a source of surprise that fighting is still going on, or has erupted anew, in areas announced as "secure" or "taken" a day earlier like Umm Qasr.

Have they forgotten the lessons of the Vietnam War? Have they not read, in childhood, about the 40 thieves of Ali Baba’s "Open Sesame" Gang smuggling themselves into the city concealed in 40 jars of oil? Or the wiles of Sinbad the Sailor, or the Thief of Baghdad? Or the 1001 tales of the Arabian Nights, or the Genie of Aladdin and his magic lamp? Where did those tales of deception, treachery, magic and amazing occurrences emanate from, except from ancient Baghdad and its environs? Even today, in Baghdad, there is a Fountain named in honor of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

You can even see them on television, in uniform, conferring with their very-much-alive Chieftain, Saddam Hussein, and his favorite son, Qusay.

What more unpleasant surprises will the Wizard Saddam and his Sorcerer’s apprentices pull out of their malevolent pool of magic? As for the fabled "weapons of mass destruction", as I’ve inquired in a previous column, they have still to be revealed by being inflicted on the coalition’s forces. (They may be concealed in civilian neighborhoods, since the Americans and Brits – it’s painfully plain – hesitate to bomb or cruise-missile civilians. The Iraqi chiefs and their Republican Guards don’t need "human shields" from foreign (and "unfriendly") countries. They’ve got millions of their own 23 million people to utilize for that purpose.

There’s no such thing, the Americans and Brits ought to know from their own past experience, as a "sanitary" war. Civilians, including the most vulnerable, women and children, will inevitably die by the score in every incident and encounter. No "smart" bomb or projectile – or for that matter ordinary bullet – can ever distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

In Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Pakistan, and in Jordan’s "Black September" war of 1970, we who were on the ground were always scared, not of the bullet with our names engraved on it, but those labeled: To Whom It May Concern.

* * *

I hate to have to say it, being a member of media, but the worst decision the Americans and Brits made was to make the current war media-friendly. The unprecedented process of "embedding" (what a strange new term) over 500 reporters and their TV crews – equipped with night-vision cameras, capabilities and global satellite links – with the "allied" forces, is a dangerous one from the viewpoint of propaganda and news management.

War is, unfortunately, an ugly business, and cannot be conducted under the remorseless eye of a camera, much less one linked to global satellite, capable of whisking its grim reality over thousands of miles of ozone and ocean into the living rooms and bedrooms of a watching world.

This is what we did when covering the awful Vietnam War. Our DOD ("Department of Defense") I.D.s and passes entitled us, war correspondents, to jump aboard every chopper or aircraft, ride every APC or armored vehicle, straight into the K.Z. (killing zones), or the very heart of combat in jungle, swamp, beach or mountain trail, recording everything.

Even cases in which enlisted men "fragged" their own officers – i.e. killed them with fragmentation grenades, just as a crazed soldier (never mind his so-called Muslim name) "fragged" officers and fellow soldiers from the famed 101st Airborne Division right in their tents as they slept in Kuwait a couple of nights ago preparatory to their going into battle.

What motivated this soldier to do this? It’s the same old story.

In Vietnam, so many US soldiers were zonked out on drugs, or durog as we call it in our language, that, perhaps, that’s really why the boys had to be brought home in 1973, undone before their war was finished.

In Iraq, the same type of coverage of uncomfortable events is unfolding today: Bizarre in its immediacy, from those correspondents "embedded" with the troops in Iraq. I repeat: Washington, DC and London may yet rue the day they decided to let the cameramen in to film the show – for war is not a computer game or a "reality TV" affair. Its gut-wrenching images stun and disgust.

Even the great Winston Churchill was compelled to admit in World War II that Truth in war is so important, it must be attended "by a bodyguard of lies."

Oh, well. It’s too late to reverse the process. TV cameramen and journalists, for that matter, have already been killed by "friendly fire". (Whoever coined that terrible term must have been a sadist). Hell in all its fury will, once again, be bought "live" to television.

And the cost of this coverage is fantastic.

Cable News Network (CNN) alone has announced that its budget is $25 million. The networks’ daily costs, the Financial Times reported yesterday, has been calculated by analysts to cost $1 million or more per day. The total bill for covering the war may run as high as $100 million. War is "hell" for the networks’ accountants and financiers, too.

Will the "coalition" win? Of course. But it’s a very tough battle still ahead. And Saddam Insane’s legions still haven’t begun to fight.

That’s the reality, whether on TV or not.