Recently I cited Patrick Cockburn on the increasingly dangerous situation in the Iraqi countryside. Now we find that even the Green Zone in Baghdad is at risk:
The US embassy in Baghdad circulated a memo to all Americans working for the US government in the Green Zone. It ordered them to wear protective gear whenever they were outside in the Green Zone, including just moving from one building to another. Guerrillas have managed to lob a number of rockets into the area in recent days, and killed one US GI on Tuesday.
The Green Zone is therefore actually the Red Zone. I.e., it is no longer an area of good security contrasting to what is around it. Senator McCain was more wrong than can easily be imagined. Not only can American officials not just stroll through Baghdad districts unarmed and unprotected by armor, but they can’t even move that way from one building to the next inside the Green Zone!
To extend Cocklburn’s earlier analogy, not only have the enemy occupied Reading: the corgis are now wearing flak-jackets in Buckingham Palace Gardens.