I remember reading Harry Browne's
How Do I Liberate Thee? Let Me Count the Ways and thinking, the way many of us did even back then, that the Iraq war was going to continue to go very, very badly, and "liberating" the Iraqis was actually making things worse for them.
Well, I just read an article in the Boston Globe that was rather chilling.
Citizens returning to Fallujah will be sent through "citizen processing centers" first, where their retinas will be scanned and their DNA cataloged into databases.
Oh, how this would have made Saddam's dictatorship so much easier, had he utilized these options.
The article is below the fold.
Returning Fallujans will face clampdown
The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised.
Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.
Marine commanders working in unheated, war-damaged downtown buildings are hammering out the details of their paradoxical task: Bring back the 300,000 residents in time for January elections without letting in insurgents, even though many Fallujans were among the fighters who ruled the city until the US assault drove them out in November, and many others cooperated with fighters out of conviction or fear.
[snip]
Most Fallujans have not heard about the US plans. But for some people in a city that has long opposed the occupation, any presence of the Americans, and the restrictions they bring, feels threatening.
"When the insurgents were here, we felt safe," said Ammar Ahmed, 19, a biology student at Anbar University. "At least I could move freely in the city; now I cannot."
"Citizen processing centers" - I can't get over that. It sounds so, well, World War II, or "1984".
More:
US commanders and Iraqi leaders have declared their intention to make Fallujah a "model city," where they can maintain the security that has eluded them elsewhere. They also want to avoid a repeat -- on a smaller scale -- of what happened after the invasion of Iraq, when a quick US victory gave way to a disorganized reconstruction program thwarted by insurgent violence and intimidation.
To accomplish those goals, they think they will have to use coercive measures allowed under martial law imposed last month by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
"It's the Iraqi interim government that's coming up with all these ideas," Major General Richard Natonski, who commanded the Fallujah assault and oversees its reconstruction, said of the plans for identity badges and work brigades.
"Coercive measures" - just great.
There's more to the article, and this diary is getting long, so click the link to see the rest.
And please, if you wouldn't mind, recommend this, because just when you think things have gotten as bad as they could get, it looks like they're going to get worse.
Some freedom we've given them.