horrible, horrible freedom

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL18Ak04.html

Entry to and exit from the city will be restricted. According to Sattler, only five roads into the city will remain open. The rest will be blocked by "sand berms" - read mountains of earth that will make them impassible. Checkpoints will be established at each of the five entry points, manned by US troops, and everyone entering will be "photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards". Though Sattler reassured American reporters that the process would only take 10 minutes, the implication is that entry to and exit from the city will depend solely on valid identification cards properly proffered, a system akin to the pass-card system used during the apartheid era in South Africa.

Fallujans are to wear their universal identity cards in plain sight at all times. The ID cards will, according to Dahr Jamail's information, be made into badges that contain the individual's home address. This sort of system has no purpose except to allow for the monitoring of everyone in the city, so that ongoing US patrols can quickly determine whether someone is not a registered citizen or is suspiciously far from their home neighborhood.

No private automobiles will be allowed inside the city. This is a "precaution against car bombs", which Sattler called "the deadliest weapons in the insurgent arsenal". As a district is opened to repopulation, the returning residents will be forced to park their cars outside the city and will be bused to their homes. How they will get around afterward has not been announced. How they will transport reconstruction materials to rebuild their devastated property is also a mystery.

Only those Fallujans cleared through US intelligence vettings will be allowed to work on the reconstruction of the city. Since Fallujah is currently devastated and almost all employment will, at least temporarily, derive from whatever reconstruction aid the US provides, this means that the Americans plan to retain a life-and-death grip on the city. Only those deemed by them to be non-insurgents (based on notoriously faulty US intelligence) will be able to support themselves or their families.

Those engaged in reconstruction work - that is, those who are working at all - in the city may be organized into "work brigades". The best information indicates that these will be military-style battalions commanded by the US or Iraqi armed forces. Here, as in other parts of the plan, the motive is clearly to maintain strict surveillance over males of military age, all of whom will be considered potential insurgents.