IRAQ

WorkingforChange: We said it would be a nightmare, And yes, that's exactly what it is

Baghdad's hospitals admit a hundred casualties an hour and have run out
of
anesthetics. Surgeons try to numb up mangled children with short-term
pain-killers, but even these are in dwindling supply. Iraqi families
who
fled into the desert face 100-degree temperatures and no water. U.S.
tanks
inflict mayhem and slaughter in Baghdad's streets. From Umm Qasr and
the
Faw peninsula, through Basra to Baghdad, it's a scene of devastation,
with
every bridge and guard post adorned with civilian cars riddled with
bullets
by jumpy U.S. soldiers. There's no "fog of war" where the disaster of
daily
life in Iraq (what's now swaddled in that virtuous bureaucratic phrase
"humanitarian crisis") is concerned. Reports confirm what all sane
forecasts predicted of a U.S. attack: It is a catastrophe for the Iraqi
people, particularly the poor.

A few days ago, the BBC featured a vivid interview with Patrick
Nicholson
of the British charity Catholic Agency For Overseas Development
(CAFOD).
He's just returned from Umm Qasr, where he found the humanitarian
effort in
the British-occupied area to be a "shambles." "From the TV pictures of
Umm
Qasr, I had been led to believe it was a town under control, where the
needs of the people were being met. The town is not under control. It's
like the Wild West. And even the most major humanitarian concern,
water, is
not being adequately administered.