The Pro-War Movement Grows! Yeah, all you anti-war folks with your Hollywood suporters, watch out. Corey Haim is on the side of Bush!

Cheers on the Tigris for one that got away

One of the first who said he saw Baghdad anti-aircraft gunners hit the British aircraft on Sunday was 50-something Mohammed Abdul Salkah. Pointing to the west, he said: “I saw the attack – the plane went that way and the pilot jumped into the river. I saw the soldiers find his parachute and helmet.”

At first the searchers tried to smoke the pilot out – dousing the rushes in litres of petrol, which they ignited. When that did not work they called in the Iraqi equivalent of navy SEALs – three overweight men in a dinghy, who wore swimmers and were obliged to share the one half-length wetsuit.

When they failed, troops with sickles stomped through the rushes and whenever they suspected they had the pilot cornered, more than 100 men with Kalashnikovs and pistols opened fire, pouring thousands of rounds into the undergrowth.

Every now and again a shout would go up and the crowd would surge along the river bank, tumbling into the rushes before it was pushed back. “Jibo, jibo”, they yelled, or “Bring him, bring him.”

The exercise had a vital commercial element – Saddam Hussein pays any Iraqi gunner who downs an enemy aircraft the equivalent of $US50,000 ($85,000). Those who bring him a live pilot get $US50,000 and, if the pilot is dead, the reward slips to $US25,000.

At times the crowd broke into pro-Saddam chants, but one bearded Iraqi held back, saying: “This is bad. I’m a pilot and I hate to see another pilot treated this way.”

Soon after that exchange I was joined by an Iraqi mute who explained his view in sign language. At first he said that he wanted to go into the rushes, pull the pilot out, shake him by the shoulders and punch him in the nose.

But then the mute thought about it and, in elaborate gestures, showed that he was capable of a more personal, more humane reaction.

Pointing at his brain to suggest intelligence, he said that the pilot would be hiding underwater; that he might be able to swim to the middle of the river and drift downstream to safety. This would be good, he said with a thumbs-up gesture.

As sunset approached, he circled his watch with a finger to indicate the onset of darkness in an hour; he pinched his nose and used arm movements to demonstrate underwater swimming, away from the rushes; and he smiled a smile of great satisfaction.

Just before dark there was wild cheering as the crowd saw a reed, standing vertically as it floated downstream. Two soldiers stripped off and swam towards it; but as they neared it the Kalashnikovs opened up again.

They scarpered … and the reed got away.