By Cathy Breen
Voices in the Wilderness
Baghdad
October 12, 2003

Dear Friends,

Last night was a restless time. Besides getting up every couple of hours to check to see if water was coming into the house from the street so that we could pump some into the house tank, there was a great deal of shooting going on. At one point Cynthia and I retreated hastily inside as about 5 male figures appeared on the roof that looks down on ours from across the street. A full moon made us feel like sitting ducks! After a while our imaginations and suspicions calmed down and we decided to return to our mats on the roof.

There has been a marked increase in the number of attacks these last days. The Iraqi police and civilians are being targeted now, and a Spanish correspondent was killed this past week. A trusted friend of ours dropped by in the afternoon. He said that “the American troops have no idea of the Iraqi reality or society . . . the governing council is no longer effective, and they have a bias toward the Americans . . . People are losing patience and are just waiting. It is worse now. The next 2 months, he feels, will be decisive. . .

14 October 2003

A Statement of Voices in the Wilderness, Pax Christi USA Teachers of Peace, Muslim Peace Fellowship and Fellowship of Reconciliation

Ramadan this year runs from approximately October 26, 2003 to November 23, 2003.

Ed Kinane
Voices in The Wilderness
Oct 10-11, 2003
Baghdad

PRE-OCCUPIED

In an article I wrote a few weeks ago, I asked which was the wilderness: Iraq or the US? Of course, in their own way both are wildernesses.

The CPA has 10,000 detainees. By contrast, the US, a country only ten times as populous as Iraq, has a million detainees.

Iraq is occupied by foreign military. The US is occupied by a domestic military and police machine. This machine abuses human rights and chills democratic initiative both internationally and domestically.

Elements within Iraq resist an Occupation still struggling for control. In the US the Occupation is vastly far more successful and systematic. It is vastly more subliminal and entrenched. Read, for example, Herbert Marcuse’s classic, One Dimensional Man.