Business as Usual

I'm not sure anymore what constitutes "business as usual" in Iraq, either at GZBG's or elsewhere in-country. 24 bodies turning up in Baghdad in a single day? Another journalist going dead? A bus being hijacked and seven people onboard are executed?

Business as usual.

I first read the story of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's unannounced stop in the Green Zone on his Farewell Tour sometime this past weekend. While Blair was saying his "goodbyes" in the Green Zone, a mortar landed in the British embassy compound just before his arrival. The U.K. Independent picks it up from here:

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After a mortar dropped on the British embassy compound in Baghdad just before Tony Blair arrived yesterday, his spokesman said there was "nothing to suggest anything other than business as usual". That was accurate, but probably not in the way he intended.

In other words, Blair's spokesperson is intimating that there's a total breakdown not only in social order, but in security - somehow, even though his visit was ostensibly "secret", someone on the other side knew he was flying in and where he'd be, and approximately when. The same thing happened to Dick Cheney during a "secret" visit a few days back - and even worse, the Independent reports:

No warning sirens went off when a rocket detonated in the zone during Vice-President Dick Cheney's visit last week, presumably because his staff did not want the sound booming out of TV screens across America.

So, Cheney's entourage was willing expose everyone in the Green Zone to rocket / mortar fire, because they didn't want sirens wailing on American TV screens? And this wasn't reported in the American media because....?

Business as usual.