An Interview With James Longley
For futher information about Longley’s work, check out his website at: www.littleredbutton.com
No stranger to war zones, filmmaker James Longley left Iraq last February only to return in late April. “Following the stories of different families and individuals in different places over a period of time,” Longley has been filming in much the same style of his last movie, “The Gaza Strip,” a documentary covering the 2001 election of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and the first major armed incursion into "Area A" by the Israeli military. Longley spoke via satellite phone from a platform at the Baghdad train station, on July 8, 2003.
James Longley - It’s life under occupation still, but its more [calm?] than it was directly after the war but there’s still a great deal of a resistance, more than what you might read in the newspapers. The resistance has sort of been heating up in the last two days. It’s been becoming a little bit more surgical. A lot of people are getting targeted.People at close range are getting executed. People will come up to soldiers and shoot them in the back of the head. This is yesterday’s news.
Lorna Tychostup - Do you see this as…
JL - There was a journalist killed yesterday, a 24-year old British guy who had been living with the Voices in the Wilderness people, sort of crashing at their house…
LT - Who was it?
JL - Richard someone, I’m forgetting his last name. It’s on the Internet; you can find it in a second. But you know he was the first guy who wasn’t a soldier to be targeted and it’s still not clear whether the people who shot him thought he was somehow associated with the soldiers because he’s this tall blonde British guy with short hair. Maybe they thought he was an off-duty soldier. He had just been talking with some US troops before he was shot. He was shot at close range by a pistol outside the Museum of Natural History by Baghdad College. So it’s not clear whether they knew they were targeting a journalist, because I don’t think he had a camera at the time.
LT - He was killed?
JL – Yeah, he was killed.
LT - Do you know how long… was he there in February?
JL - No. He’d only been there for two weeks. He used to work for British television. His story’s all over the Internet…
LT - Do you see this as part of an organized effort or are these random acts of violence?
JL - Well, there are a few random acts I guess, but I think in general yeah, there’s organization, definitely, to the attacks on US soldiers. You know it’s not random. People are blowing up these humvee vehicles with these rocket propelled grenades and things. It’s hard to do that sort of thing without a group of people… and you know, the weapons… And almost everyday there are US soldiers killed.
LT - Is it every day? A friend who has family in Baghdad told me many more soldiers dying than we’ve been told. Her family had told her this…17 soldiers were supposedly wounded 2 days ago and 13 of them were killed. We have heard nothing like that here.
JL - Right, yeah, I think an underplaying has been going on. Definitely the US military chooses to underplay the attacks. I think there is a problem where the real numbers of soldiers being killed is not necessarily being reported. But it’s very very very difficult; it’s impossible to say what the real numbers are. I don’t particularly believe the military’s accounts because I talked to people who are working with Reuters…translators, people like that who say they’ll witness like 3 body bags being taken away from an incident and the army will report 1 person killed, 3 people wounded, or something like that. And Reuters will always go with what the army says; they’ll always print the official army numbers. But according to the people who work with them, some of those numbers are not correct so… It’s very hard to say. A few days ago I was up in Mosul, in the North. While we were in Mosul, I was there overnight, there was a huge fight. It sounded like 2 or 3 RPGs or something of that size, large explosions, and a big gun fight, right in front of the hotel where we were staying. We weren’t there at the time and when we came back there were these large fires that had to be put out on the road. None of that was ever reported that I saw in the media.
LT - I haven’t heard about anything happening in Mosul.
JL - Right exactly so, and I believe that things of that kind that is, really significant attack, reprisals, attacks, counter-attacks, and who knows whether there are casualties and how many? I believe that things like that are happening pretty much all over Iraq on a daily basis and they’re not getting reported.
LT - In a report I read last night, a soldier said, “If it isn’t severe, if someone isn’t killed, we’re not even reporting incidents of being attacked to our commanding officers because the attacks are so frequent…
JL - I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s going unreported, let’s put it that way. It’s really difficult to say whether the casualty figures are off by a factor of 2 or 3 or whatever, or .5. But I think the casualty figures are probably wrong, particularly in terms of the number of people wounded and the number of attacks. Because there are many incidents all the time which I believe are not being reported. It’s really impossible to have an accurate figure because you’d have to have reliable journalists in every corner of the country watching everything all the time and basically have eye-witness accounts from your own sources in order to really be sure that what information you were getting is accurate. Because in Iraq there are a lot of rumors all the time, there’s a lot of exaggeration. It’s really impossible to believe things unless you see them yourself. You hear all kinds of just incredible crazy stories, like 15 people killed… One time someone told me, "There were soldiers swimming in the river and the Iraqi’s killed them in the same way that they go fishing. They have these electrical wires hooked up to bed springs, a metal box spring or something like that and they turn on the current and kill the fish. And they were killing the soldiers in the same way.” Which I don’t believe for a moment, but these are the kinds of things that people say, and they believe them when they’re saying them to you. Most of the time people hear rumors and they believe they are true, but it’s the type of thing… no one knows what to believe.
LT - My friend also said there was a tremendous battle at the Baghdad airport battle. And that 2000 troops were killed on both sides. Finally the coalition forces withdrew from the airport and 2 nuclear-type bombs were dropped killing everything on the ground. Then they went in, sealed off the airport, wouldn’t allow any reporters or anyone to go near the area, and immediately began cleaning it up and digging mass graves. It didn’t seem likely to me that something like this could happen - 2000 American troops dying - and no one would know about it.
JL - Exactly, the thing is that you can’t really kill 2000 American soldiers without someone finding out about it because after all they have families. And families are impossible to silence in that kind of number. The word would eventually get out. I’ve heard that rumor also. It’s really a pervasive rumor that they used some kind of weapon. I think there were really significant numbers of soldiers killed. I don’t think that most of them were American. But again, it’s impossible to say. How could anyone say that 2000 people were killed on both sides? There’s no way for anyone to have that information.
LT - She strongly believed this and her family was telling her this over the phone from Baghdad. And I thought, “I don’t know how much I can believe what she is telling me.”
JL - Exactly. The thing is there are rumors and what her family has heard are rumors. There is always an element of truth. Yeah, there was a big battle at the airport. Many people were killed. Probably thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed at the very least. I’m sure there were American casualties also. Nuclear devices? Well, it’s tricky to say that. Maybe they used some kind of new weapon. But a nuclear device? Most people here don’t know the difference between a thermo-nuclear warhead and depleted uranium. People don’t really know what they’re talking about most of them, when it comes to you know nuclear, not nuclear. Whether it’s a nuclear device or a fuel air bomb. Like one of these 3000, 2000 pound bombs. They blow up in a nuclear-type explosion, like mushroom cloud, you know what I mean?
LT - Like a bunker buster bomb?
JL - Yeah. Like the kind of bombs they were using in Afghanistan where it takes out a square kilometer. They’re just really large bombs that blow up above the ground, like the Daisy Cutter. But I don’t think that’s what they used in the airport. But I have no idea. Like most people I haven’t been to the airport. The only way to know anything about the casualty figures is really to talk to the people. For example, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society who is probably there removing bodies. And even then, you won’t really know what the real number is. It’s very difficult.
LT - Here they’re not concerned with counting Iraqi bodies, whether Iraqi soldiers or civilians.
JL - No, they’re not interested. This is the problem. The US military might know the real numbers but they’re not telling you. The Iraqis simply don’t know the real numbers, especially for US casualties.
LT - You are in Baghdad now?
JL - Yeah, yeah.
LT - How are you surviving? Is food coming into the country?
JL - Oh yeah. Listen, if you have a little bit of money, there’s no problem buying food and things like that.
LT - Are the stores open? Are they selling food in the market? Fresh fruit, vegetables?
JL - Yeah, yeah, yeah… you can buy oranges and melons and onions and garlic, whatever you want. The problem is not food supply. The stores are full of food. The problem for some families is that the economy is on its last leg for many people. Some sections of the economy are doing well. The people who are buying and selling cars, importing cars no duty or whatever. The people who are selling satellite dishes, which is a booming business, or air conditioners. Certainly there’s a lot of import business and those people; those businesses are doing quite well. Normal businesses, for example, I’m filming a kid who works in car repair. This ten year-old kid who works at a repair shop installing shock absorbers and things. At his shop they’ll go all day and they won’t have any work, or for two days, three days, there will be no work. Those kind of businesses that are reliant on general health of the economy where people are driving around in their cars and having their cars fixed and stuff like that...those sorts of businesses are really suffering a lot, because there simply isn’t as much money in the economy. A lot of people are out of work right so there’s rampant unemployment. In huge sectors of the economy, the population have been fired from their jobs. Significantly the army, the Baathists, all these people. So for a lot of people life hasn’t changed that much - yet. They still have the rations that are left over from before the war, from the Oil-for-Food program. A lot of people still haven’t ran out of those supplies and have a stockpile somewhere. And they live much in the same way that they did before only there is a lot more uncertainty. Before there was uncertainty of whether the war would happen or whether it wouldn’t and if it did, what would happen. And now there’s uncertainty about what will happen with the country because no one is really certain whether things will improve, whether the Iraqis will be allowed to form their own government and things will stabilize, or whether the occupation will become more severe, more violent and there will be a resulting increase in domestic violence and there will be more and more civil unrest, more of a breakdown in law and order. People don’t know which way things are going to go. But at this stage there’s a constant kind of low-level violence, there is a drastic increase in civil unrest and low-level crime - stealing cars at gun point and people being robbed. Of course, it’s still survivable. It’s just that before the war there wasn’t a lot of crime at all. In Iraq everything was fairly quiet. You wouldn’t hear about these incidents so much because everyone was afraid to commit any crime. This is what a dictatorship is like, a police state, you know it’s very safe. Unless you, [laughter] unless you are going against the police state and then it’s deadly. But now there’s a lot more anarchy. There are very few police patrolling. The US military seems unprepared to intervene in cases of everyday crime and civil disputes. So this kind of things has increased a lot. But it’s still not worse than, for example, LA in the 1980’s when you had all the gang violence. You can still live in Baghdad, you just have to be careful.
LT - Interesting comparison…
JL - LA kind of looks like Baghdad in some places, it may be not a bad comparison. But the fact is that [Iraqi] people don’t have this experience with having crime and having to worry about having their cars stolen you know at a traffic light or something like that. They have never experienced that before and so now, now that it’s happening, it seems like the world is coming to an end whereas in some countries, if you’re in Rio de Janeiro, this is just a fact of life you have to worry about. I must say, the US forces...right now I’m standing on the platform at Baghdad train station and the trains are getting loaded and there are passengers. You can hear the train horns in the background. Right now, two US army humvees have driven toward me on the platform. They both have 50 caliber machine guns and soldiers up on top. Now they’ve just done a U-turn and they’re driving out along the platform again. The US military presence in Baghdad and in Iraq generally, on the highways, it’s very strong. And it’s very much a military presence. They may have military police now written on the sides of their vehicles but it’s still very much like the United States army…
LT - As opposed to a peace-keeping force?
JL - Right. It’s very much heavily armed. Very much a militarized manifestation. It’s not as though they’re here as police officers. They’re here as a military force. You can really feel this in just the number of helicopters that are buzzing over the city everyday - the Apaches, the Blackhawk helicopters, there are tanks and armored personnel carriers, and mostly these humvee vehicles with mounted machine guns on top… you’ll see them everywhere in Baghdad.
LT - What is the reaction of people to this very visible display of military? Are they happy the military is there?
JL - In the beginning people were happy because they were afraid of...there was a great deal of looting after the war, during the war and at the end of the war. After Baghdad had fallen there was immediately all of this looting and people were really concerned about law and order. So in the beginning a lot of people were really happy to see US military vehicles on patrol because they felt like this was going to curb the incidents of looting and violence - having this kind of force around. But then they realized that actually the military doesn’t intervene in most cases of looting. All of the ministries were looted and burned. A significant portion of the hospitals, a lot of the schools were looted, all of the universities were looted and burned, people stores were looted and burned. Unless you were there defending your home, defending your store, defending your hospital, it was going to be looted. It was really a big problem and the US military didn’t do very much in terms of trying to prevent it. So people were really unhappy with the US military because they didn’t do as much as they could have done, it seemed to them, to prevent this kind of looting, this kind of violence. And now, the people are becoming more and more tired of the US military presence because they don’t feel that the US is doing anything really significantly for the country at this point. Most people they say, “Well, yeah, if the US military left tomorrow then it would be a big problem in Iraq because there’d would be this huge power vacuum and who knows that would happen." On the other hand, people are very unhappy because they feel like they’re now living under occupation and they don’t have the freedom that was promised them, they don’t have democracy, they’re not allowed to elect their own government. Things are being imposed on them. Basic services are still not what they should be in terms of the electricity, in terms of water, in terms of the police, security, all of this stuff it’s still not really there. Their electricity is on 50 percent of the time. More and more people are saying it was better under Saddam because Saddam made the trains run on time. There were police. There was electricity. There was water - maybe not clean water all the time because of the sanctions, but at least things worked as much as they could. They look at the Americans and say, "Well, you’ve been here now for months and months and you haven’t fixed the electricity, you haven’t fixed, you haven’t done…What are you doing?" Some people are very impatient with the Americans because they are the occupying power, because they are in charge and they say, "We’re in charge, you can’t do anything, you can’t make your own government, it’s not allowed." So people are saying, "Well, okay then. So what are you going to do for us?" And immediately the US is in the role of the kind of impotent kind of power structure which is very strong militarily but very impotent in terms of it’s organization, in terms of its competence to help ordinary people and they’re frustrated with the US because of this. A lot of people now say, "We should just be allowed to form our own government, bring in some United Nations peace-keepers, and the US military should leave. It’s not their country, what are they doing here?"
LT - On Meet the Press tonight, that was the questioned that was posed. Why isn’t NATO being invited in? Why is the UN being invited in? Outside troops...
JL - There are British troops of course in Basra. You’ll see some Australians here in Baghdad. But significantly, it’s the US military and their presence is really enormously huge. If you ride up and down the freeways in Iraq, south of Baghdad, north of Baghdad, you will see enormous convoys of containers coming up from the south, coming down from the north. You’ll see these sort of triple/quadruple-wide houses, like prefab offices on the backs of trucks, all kinds of tanks, all kinds of equipment, and long lines of military trucks going up and down the highways.
LT - What sort of equipment?
JL- All kinds of things, cranes…
LT - Reconstruction equipment?
JL - A lot of containers full of supplies, I’m not quite sure what. All kinds of stuff…Reconstruction? I don’t know exactly what you mean. They haven’t really been rebuilding anything that I’ve seen. The only thing they’ve rebuilt is a few bridges that they bombed during the war. They just put in temporary bridges in order for the traffic to move.
LT - Earlier in the week over a period of days, C-SPAN showed Andrew Natsios of USAID touring Baghdad and Basra, two days in each place, he was on his way to Arbil. They interviewed some of his people staying at Saddam’s palace near the El Rashid. At this time there are up to 900 Americans and Australians staying in the palace as part of the reconstruction effort…
JL - Yeah, but what does that mean exactly? That’s the big question that’s in the mind of the Iraqis. What does that mean? What does it mean for us to have 900 Americans staying in the El Rashid hotel? Where do we see the benefit from this? [laughter] They sit in the El Rashid Hotel and have meetings; it’s not going to be a significant change for people. The US is spending a lot of money on itself; it’s spending a lot of money supporting this occupation, the presence of all these troops. It is not spending a lot of money rebuilding schools and hospitals that anyone can see. I’ve been in a lot of hospitals, I’ve been in a lot of schools, there’s no reconstruction going on that I am aware of that’s being financed or paid for or helped out by the Americans. There have been a lot of hospitals destroyed completely. No one is rebuilding those hospitals right now.
LT - Just in Baghdad or all over Iraq?
JL - I can only speak for Baghdad. I was up, as I say, in Mosul. In Mosul, the entire university was looted. It has 22 different colleges and more than 25,000 students. It’s a big university. And the entire university was looted in April in a matter of hours...4-5 hours the entire university was ransacked, everything was taken and they have nothing left. I was talking with the Dean of the College of Arts, English translation and this kind of thing. All of their language labs were taken. The looters took things that there was no way other people could use, like little tape recorder things and language labs. And they sold them on the street for pennies. Everything was destroyed during the war. And now, if you go into the college, you’ll just see whatever furniture and desks they have left...these empty rooms...there’s nothing left. They have this huge problem now of how to rebuild, how to get things up and running by September. And the most aid that anyone has seems to have offered them is something like $5000 to buy some air coolers because the students are taking their exams in the summertime, late, and it’s very hot. So this is the extent of outside aid that has come into this particular institution.
LT - The report talked about they would be getting textbooks to the schools and my thought was, “Well, who is ordering these textbooks, where are they coming from and whose history will be taught?”
JL - This is the thing. All of the reconstruction effort is being contracted out to foreign firms. The cell phone network in Baghdad is going to be made by MCI WorldCom, the scandalous MCI WorldCom. Bechtel is doing all of the heavy reconstruction work supposedly. The thing is it takes them months and months just to write the report about how they’re going to do it. They aren’t doing it very fast. The significant amount of money is going to go straight out of Iraq and into the hands of these corporations. Those who are going to be doing subcontracting are going to be taking a large chunk for themselves. The fact is that Iraq is going to be making a lot less money now in this year and probably next year also, than it was under sanctions, under the Oil-for-Food program. They had a gross domestic product of 30 billion dollars in 2001 or something like that, this year…[static on the line].
I suspect the Oil-for-Food program is over and nothing has been built to replace it. Furthermore, I suspect that all the information about the people who were using the OFF program - who they are and where they live, all those things have been lost because all the ministries were burned. I don’t know that the occupation forces have even the basic information that they need to provide that service.
LT – In your opinion, the level of looting that went on…You had said, “Why would anyone bother with stealing these recorders in the university.” Does it seem to you, do you feel that some of this was an organized effort to totally dismantle, totally erase whatever had been before? Or to leave nothing for the enemy?
JL - It is impossible to say. I think a lot of it...if you talk with the Iraqis, they will insist that the Kuwaitis came and did all the looting, or someone else. All they talk about is people they had never seen before. Not from their area doing the looting. Because people don’t want to allow the suggestion that ordinary Iraqis looted. It is impossible to say at this point. The idea that people came across the border to steal language labs is kind of preposterous. I do think there were a lot of people who were just really desperate and disenfranchised under the Baathist regime and they decided they were going to take whatever they could when it fell. In the ministries, I think that a lot was destroyed by people who worked in those ministries because they were trying to hide what was on the computer or what ever. There are a lot of different factors playing into it. But certainly, the looting was an organized effort by somebody, whoever it was you can’t just go in and strip a university in four hours.
LT - That’s what I mean. It was very interesting that as bombs were falling people were out there erasing life as it had occurred before. How could it not be organized?
JL - Well, organized, yes. But it could be just organized looting.
LT - Organized criminals?
JL - There is this element in Iraq. It is not like everyone is pure of heart. It’s impossible to say. And it was kind of a big free-for-all. It is impossible to say outside elements came in with the intention of destroying everything for no reason other than to erase Iraq as it was. But what one can say with absolute certainty, is that the US military did not have any plan or the wherewithal to protect anything. That is, they came in and they must have known, if they were at all sensible, that there was the possibility of looting in the event that the government fell. Which was their intention, right? They were coming to over throw the government. So they must have known that there would be massive civil unrest and looting and disorder. But they didn’t have any kind of plan put in place to protect anything, except the Ministry of Oil and the Ministry of Trade. I’m not sure about the Ministry of Trade but definitely the Ministry of Oil. I’ve seen it. It’s in perfect condition because the US protected it. But they weren’t protecting hospitals. They weren’t protecting the museums. They weren’t protecting the universities. They were not protecting the schools and all of those things have been looted. You could definitely say for 100 percent sure, that when the US military came in, for days and days and weeks and weeks, they were not doing very much to protect the civilian infrastructure. That much is 100 percent true.
LT - Are there groups coming together now - Sunnis, Shiites, even maybe Baathists, to repel the occupation forces? My friend said that along with the rations, Saddam was also handing out guns, munitions, arms to people in the event that there was a seemingly easy battle or easy victory [by US forces], there would be this kind of fighting eventually happening as it is happening now.
JL – Well, I don’t know that. It is possible but on the other hand, especially after the war, there were open gun markets in every single city and town where you could just go and buy Kalasnikovs or a large machine gun. They were just being sold openly on the street until fairly relatively recently, when the US started to crack down on the actual selling of weapons. So, even if it’s not the case that these guns are being distributed, certainly you could come by them. And many people had guns already – Kalasnikovs and pistols. Most people, who have a business or a nice car, will have some kind of weapon to protect it. Whether it is an automatic weapon or…I know many people who have weapons to defend their homes against looting. People are buying up weapons because they feel, “if there is no police force and the US military can’t do anything to help us, then we have to have weapons to defend our property.” It’s very much the American pro-gun philosophy of, “I have to protect my home. I have to protect my family. I need a weapon.” It’s the same thing here. For most people, if they buy a gun, this is the reason they are doing it. It is nothing strange.
In terms of armed resistance, it is not just Sunni necessarily. Significantly Sunni, but I don’t think things really break down in this way. I don’t think it’s really as simple as it’s being portrayed on the US military media where it is just, “Oh well, these Sunni Baathists…” I think that if you ask most people in Iraq, most of them have certainly some opposition to occupation. Many of the Shiite leaders, they’re groups are saying, “Well, we’ll see what the Americans do. We’ll give them a time limit, like two years. And then we’ll decide whether they can stay or go. Other people have already issued an edict or what have you, that the US military…it is time for them to leave, they should get out. There are particular places like Falluja, where there is a clan, you know, families. In a place like Falluja, it is a closed city. No strangers go and live in Falluja. Everybody knows everybody and it’s very much run by the town elders and the clans. So for the US military to come in and say, “We’re in charge now,” this really rubs people the wrong way because even Saddam had to negotiate with the city fathers of Falluja to do anything there. Whereas the US military, they feel they don’t have to negotiate with anyone. And they don’t have to sit down and talk. They simply issue an order and it must be so. They can ride around and act however they want in their Humvees and their tanks, anywhere they please. Whereas there is a lot of national pride and there is a lot of feeling that you can’t just sort of come in. In the same way, in this place, you can’t go into someone’s home without permission. If you tried to go into someone’s home without permission, they basically have the right to shoot you or kill you because your home is your castle, your fortress, which you can’t violate...
LT – Unless you’re an American military…
JL - But the rules are the same. This lack of knowledge or disrespect for the local cultures where you have to respect someone’s home, you have to respect their family, if you harm someone in their family you have to pay some kind of price. Even well-educated, mild-mannered people from a particular town. For example, in Rawah, I know a guy who is El Rawee, which means he and his family come from the town of Rawah. Mind you, he is a fixer for the press, a translator, an educated guy. He said to me, “If the US military goes in and kills someone in Rawah, then I will have to do something to the US because they will have harmed my family – the people who are related to me. This kind of culture is there and it has to be reckoned with. Everything has a price. If you kill a civilian, people will seek retribution. If you kill a thousand civilians, well, they are all related to somebody and all of those somebody’s may have revenge in their hearts. So it is not so difficult to imagine organizing people to resist American occupation.
LT – And what about you? What are you doing in Iraq?
JL – I am making my film. I’m doing it about different stories. I’m basically following different families, different individuals, different places over long periods of time for as long as I am here. And I may be here for the better part of a year
LT - You left Iraq in February. When did you go back in?
JL - I came back near the end of April. Right after the war, maybe ten days…
LT - And how are you surviving?
JL - I’m okay, you know… I have enough… I’m living in an apartment that has a kitchen, a shower that works, and occasionally air conditioning. It’s alright, I have no problems. So far everything has been pretty easy.
LT – You’re having no problem traveling around? No problem with the Iraqi people?
JL - So far, no. So far, no. Like I said, there haven’t really been attacks against journalists until yesterday.
LT - Do you feel safe?
JL - Yeah, I feel as safe as I feel in New York City pretty much. No, I don’t feel unsafe, but then I never do. I don’t think it’s as dangerous as people sometimes say. I think the level of danger is occasionally exaggerated. On the other hand, knock on wood, anything can happen. There are random acts of violence certainly. One can imagine these things starting to happen against foreigners. There have been people attacked. There have been people having their equipment taken away from them at gunpoint. These things have happened, but then its not different from what’s happened to ordinary Iraqis.
LT - The point of your movie…is it developing, have you changed your original idea?
JL - My idea is always just to record the human side of events and I’m making, admittedly, subjective stories. That is, I’m trying as much as possible to film from the point of view of the subjects and see the world as they perceive it, and paint the picture of the individual’s world. And it looks like I’ll be here for a long time, doing this, working on different stories, in and outside Baghdad.
LT - And you’re paying rent?
JL - Yes.
LT - Is it very expensive to live there now than it was in February?
JL - It’s more expensive for things now, but not drastically more expensive. The press always has to pay a lot of money to do things, but it’s not insurmountable.
LT - You having no problem getting around the country? You drove up to Mosul?
JL - Yeah, I drove. I was with a friend and we had a car. It’s no trouble to travel around except to areas that have been restricted by the US military. Like the airport or different places like that. Around in Babylon they have a restricted area of where their base is.
LT - And what about in Baghdad? I heard there were Red Districts?
JL - I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. Maybe I just go to the wrong parts of town to know about those things first hand. I haven’t had any trouble. The biggest problem in Baghdad is the traffic jam that is usually caused by US military blocking the roads.
LT - Where are you staying in Baghdad? Are you staying near the Palestine or in that vicinity?
JL - No, I’m staying near the Al Hambra hotel.
LT - Are there any Voices in the Wilderness people there?
JL - Ramzi Kysia. VITW are paying for a house, a three-story building. And they have an independent newspaper that they are running. It’s not VITW, but Ramzi was one of the driving forces to get it off the ground. It’s all being run by Iraqis now. All the writers are Iraqi, the editor… They are trying to set up a Baghdad Independent Media Center where they would like to have a radio station; they would like to do video. And they have the space for it. They are just trying to get the finances.
LT – John had said that you expected things to blow up in a few weeks. Do you still fell that way?
JL – Three weeks? I don’t know. I don’t think I said that. People expect something, but no one knows what. There is a feeling of trepidation. People don’t know what to expect. People have no idea which way things are going to go. As long as these attacks continue, and I expect that to happen, and people become more and more aware of the absence of support for the US occupation on the ground in Iraq they will be more and more skeptical about why the US has to stay there as an occupying power. Because most people don’t own stock in the oil companies.
