{"id":334853,"date":"2017-11-13T19:42:03","date_gmt":"2017-11-13T18:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/agony-and-ecstasy-in-iraq\/"},"modified":"2017-11-13T19:42:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T18:42:03","slug":"agony-and-ecstasy-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/agony-and-ecstasy-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Agony and Ecstasy in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_97470\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-97470 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/11\/23000126_10155739144666678_880508016968193271_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"680\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Iraq, a few days before Arba\u2019een. Photo Pepe Escobar<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>TIKRIT and NAJAF, Iraq\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Nothing, absolutely nothing prepares you to revive, on the spot, the memory of what will go down in history as ISIS\/Daesh\u2019s most horrid killing field in Iraq or Syria since the death cult stormed across the border in the summer of 2014; the <a href=\"https:\/\/tikrit-massacre.org\/index.php?aa=category&amp;category=Home&amp;id_category=297&amp;lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Speicher massacre<\/a> of June 12, 2014 \u2013 when almost 2,000 Iraqi army recruits were assassinated in and nearby a former Saddam Hussein palace on the banks of the Tigris near Tikrit.<\/p>\n<p>As Dylan would sing it, \u201cain\u2019t it just like the night to play tricks when you\u2019re trying to be so quiet\u201d. In 2003, a few days after Shock and Awe and the fall of Baghdad, I took the road to Tikrit for Asia Times to survey Uday Hussein\u2019s bombed palace as well as his father\u2019s birthplace, only to return 14 years later to one of those palaces turned into a house of horror.<\/p>\n<p>The Speicher killing field was gruesomely staged \u2013 and filmed \u2013 by Daesh only a few days after the fall of Mosul. Daesh\u2019s Salafi-jihadi goons were feted as \u201cliberators\u201d by many a Sunni tribe around Trikrit just as 10,000 Iraqi Army recruits from different provinces, mostly Shi\u2019ites, were being trained at an Air Force academy nearby.<\/p>\n<p>With Daesh fast advancing and the Iraqi Army at the time dissolving by the minute, the youngsters were ordered to switch into civilian clothes, leave their weapons behind, and go home. As they were literally walking back to their&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/11\/13\/tikrit-and-najaf-agony-and-ecstasy-in-iraq\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, Iraq, a few days before Arba\u2019een. Photo Pepe Escobar TIKRIT and NAJAF, Iraq\u00a0 Nothing, absolutely nothing prepares you to revive, on the spot, the memory of what will go down in history as ISIS\/Daesh\u2019s most horrid killing field in Iraq or Syria since the death cult stormed across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-334853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}