Mortars and Gun Battles are a Hell of a Wakeup Call

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches catches us up on the day-to-day realities in "liberated" Iraq:

The cost of fuel now in the black market is 10 times what it normally is, and people either pay it or wait for 8 hours in a gas line, with no guarantee that the station of their choice won’t run dry before they get a chance to fill their tank.

Traffic jams form often when military patrols rumble down the street…cars stacked up behind them, nobody daring to venture too close to the heavy machine guns wielded by soldiers with their faces covered by goggles and masks. Already today 2 soldiers were killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in the northwest section of the capital. Also, up near Kut in eastern Iraq, another soldier was killed and two wounded in a “vehicle accident.”

The fuel crisis is driving the cost of everything up-vegetables, fruit, meat, you name it.

“We are living a disaster,” says Abu Abdulla, an unemployed engineer at a kebob stand today near the so-called green zone, “The price for benzene is 10 times now what it was on the black market, but there are 10 times less jobs and who is making 10 times as much money?”...

While Iraq appears to be conveniently slipping off the radar of the mainstream media, the failed occupation continues to grind on towards an end which nobody here can see.

Everywhere I go the signs of a society in decline abound. Even at a clinic where I had to go in order to obtain an HIV test to extend my visa, there is a telling event.

A doctor walks in and asks the nurse who is taking my blood what she does with the used needles. “We sterilize them after use then they are incinerated,” she replies. He waves his hand back and forth while telling her, “No more. We are now instructed by the Ministry of Environment there are no facilities for this, so we are to sterilize them and reuse them.”...

Apache helicopters rumble low over the city, their “whumping” blades leaving wakes of car alarms through the streets.

Back at my hotel I indulge my daily ritual of asking the owner if I have hot water yet. The cold showers are getting old now that the temperature has dropped and it remains chilly.

This morning I was awakened by the usual 7am gun battles nearby. They usually coincide with the morning mortar ritual of blasts hitting the so-called green zone.

Now as I type this evening, a huge explosion rattles my walls. A gun battle with heavy automatic weapons kicks off down the street, and the usual wailing sirens of ambulances and Iraqi Police begin blaring across the city-streaming in this direction.

And, courtesy of As'ad Abu Khalil, here are some images of the "liberation." Hope they don't disturb your holiday season...