Posted on 04/17/2003 6:16:19 PM PDT by woofie
BAGHDAD - On the first night of bombing in Baghdad, I recall having written about a much-loved young peace activist named Uzma Bashir who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield, and whose many friends had gathered in an Amman hotel to hear the latest news from Iraq. They were all very frightened for her safety, I wrote.
They needn't have bothered. As it turned out, the bombing campaign didn't hurt Uzma one bit. It did, however, really really piss her off.
When the first American tank column arrived in Paradise Park, on the east bank of the Tigris River (the park that later produced the now-famous images of Saddam Hussein's statue being pulled down by an American tank) on the morning of Wednesday, April 9, they met a young woman who was still pulling on her shoes while running out into the roadway holding up a huge hand-lettered sign that read: "How many children did you kill today?"
Naturally, one of the tank operators lowered his gun barrel so that it pointed directly at Uzma's face. "Bring it on!" she screamed. "You bastards! Murderers! Go ahead and kill me, you pricks!"
Some liberation. And some Uzma, too.
In the time since, as US forces have methodically consolidated their hold on the city, the legend of Uzma has grown in the telling, until she has become something of a force of nature in her own right. Nothing seems to stop her, and nothing shuts her up.
The US Marines who patrol the east bank of the Tigris River still talk about the candlelight vigil that Uzma organized around a tank. The tank had parked itself outside the Palestine Hotel, and Uzma persuaded about 30 fellow activists to surround it in the dark while holding candles and singing Kumbaya-type campfire songs.
"And now we'll observe five minutes of silence for all the civilian casualties," Uzma announced to the crowd, and when the soldier in the tank spoke out of turn, she followed it up with: "And now we'll observe another five minutes of silence for all the civilian casualties of this war." And this time the soldier kept quiet.
Seemingly every soldier has heard of her. On hearing her name mentioned in passing, one US Marine told me: "Yeah, we drove over to the the hospital in Saddam City to provide security the other day, and she was standing out front yelling, 'What, did you come to finish them off'!?"
As this Marine - who was just a young kid himself, no more than 19 - was telling me this story, he didn't seem to know whether to grin, curse or cry. So he just ended up shaking his head in bewildered wonderment.
A fellow peace activist, LaRita Smith, from Mississippi, recalled, "There was one little captain who came out and told us, 'We've come to liberate you', and he didn't know what hit him, you know? Uzma just lit into him, calling him everything in the book. And he just stood there and took it for a while - he was really taking it on the chin - but finally you could see it was getting to him. So finally another soldier came over and very gently removed him from her vicinity. Just guided him gently away. He wasn't the only one, either. When she gets started, some of them start getting mad, you know?"
They're not the only ones. "Yeah, my parents saw me on the BBC, and they called to tell me that they weren't impressed," Uzma said.
So the legend lives on, and grows in the telling, until it's not likely that many soldiers in this town who happened to cross her path will ever forget the name Uzma. Some of them even have listened to a word or two she has to say. "I managed to bring one soldier to tears," she crowed.
WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTO AS SOON AS THE PAGE COMES UP!
Gee. I guess she's right. Let's pull out and let Saddam get back in power. That should make her happy.
I'm so sure this happened! A guy who has gone through basic training and fought in a war, scared of a screeching harridan who can't get off the rag. Yeah, I'm so sure this happened.
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