US Assault on Falluja a Crime

[EMTL]

Assalamu alaikum,
here is an interesting write-up for you....

Fallujah: Murder Made Respectable
Linda S. Heard, solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk

Iraq is under martial law, complete with curfews and
press restrictions. A report in the prestigious Lancet
says 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since
the start of the invasion. Unemployment is running at
70 percent, kidnappings and beheadings are rife, while
the breakdown in security has driven every
international aid agency out of the country.

But never mind, Fallujah — a town of 300,000 souls of
which many have already met their Maker — has finally
been pacified. That'll teach them to lay off foreign
mercenaries in future. Oops! I mean contractors, of
course. Congratulations USA!

Now that all is right with the world, some 200,000
exiled civilians can return home, provided they still
have one that is. A report in the Los Angeles Times
describes the city as "a tableau of destroyed
buildings, burned-out cars, battered mosques and piles
of rubble". No building was sacrosanct including
hospitals and clinics.

The fate of those who stayed behind because they have
nowhere else to go or did not want to abandon their
belongings and valuables is uncertain. Reports of
families burying their dead in gardens, eking out an
existence on flour or dates, bleeding to death without
medical assistance or becoming ill after drinking
contaminated water paint an ugly picture.

We have yet to discover how many newly minted orphans
there are, courtesy of the Marines, such as
five-year-old Aysha Saleem who lost her parents and
grandparents in one of the US military's "precision
strikes". Indeed, we may never know as the mouths of
reporters embedded with the troops open and close
according to military diktats.

We would never know how US soldiers are breaching the
Geneva Conventions but for a renegade video aired by
Australian ABC television. In it, a Marine shouts:
"I've just injured one. He's between two buildings".
One of his colleagues walks over to a tiny alleyway
separating two houses, climbs up onto a metal drum,
and fires his weapon in cold blood. "He's done," he
announces flippantly.

We may never learn whether his victim, exterminated
like a rat, was a hardcore foreign fighter, a local
insurgent or merely a male resident of Fallujah
prevented from leaving. Men aged between 15 and 55
were either rounded up or forced to fight to stay
alive. Members of the Scottish Black Watch regiment,
whose job they say is to patrol the "rat run",
confirmed the status of fleeing Iraqis as rodents.

In a further breach of the Geneva Conventions, US
troops prevented a Red Crescent convoy of emergency
aid from reaching the main Fallujah hospital, where
wounded residents have been forbidden from entering.

Yet even though the stench of human flesh pervades
their nostrils, one Marine held to the view: "We will
win the hearts and minds of Fallujah by ridding the
city of insurgents. We are doing this by patrolling
the streets and killing the enemy." Those who have
lost mothers, daughters, sons and brothers to his
bountiful nature will, no doubt, be grateful.

Another such enlightened soldier Lt. Col. Gareth
Brandl told the BBC: "The enemy has got a face. He's
called Satan. He lives in Fallujah". Others of his ilk
were holding evangelical ceremonies or dressing up as
gladiators for chariot races, using horses confiscated
from Iraqis, in the mold of the movie Ben Hur.

A third, a music lover, was quoted as saying: "Only
two songs send a shiver up my spine. The Marine hymn,
and that song by Toby Keith after 9-11 which says
'we're gonna kick you up the ass — that's the American
way." The majority of US soldiers in Iraq still
believe the lie that Saddam Hussein had links to Osama
Bin Laden and the attacks on America.

For the 48 percent of Americans who voted against the
Bush doctrine, this is not the American way. They
include a former Marine Staff Sergeant James Massey
from Waynesville, North Caroline, who told the WSW
website: "We're committing genocide in Iraq".

He describes his disillusionment thus: "We were like a
bunch of cowboys who rode into town shooting up the
place. I saw charred bodies in vehicles that were
clearly not military vehicles. I saw people dead on
the side of the road in civilian clothes." He recalls
how his trigger-happy compatriots mowed down 30
civilians at a checkpoint on a single day.

Iraq's Girl Blogger who pens Baghdad Burning is
similarly angry over Fallujah. She writes: "Iraqis
will never forgive this. Never! It's outrageous. It's
genocide and America — with the help and suppor t of
(Iyad) Allawi — is responsible."

The land of deprivation, death and degradation, which
Iraq has become due to US intervention, is there for
all to see but where is the outrage? Why aren't decent
people of every faith up in arms?

Author and philosopher George Orwell may have the
answer. "The nationalist not only does not disapprove
of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a
remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable" goes another of
Orwell's remarkable insights.

But the politicians aren't the only ones to blame for
the horror masquerading as the spread of democracy.
Extremist religious leaders are just as culpable as is
a supine media, which despite its various mea culpas
over its failure to say it like it is, has once again
stifled truth.

Think about it. How can individuals, fighting for
their own freedom against a foreign power in the towns
and cities of their birth and protecting their wives
and children, possibly be "terrorists"?

And by the same token why should those rampaging
foreign armies whose members believe freedom extends
to being able to play video games be labeled
honorable? Such is the big lie, and one that is the
duty of all those who are able to cut through the
propaganda, to quash.

There is but one truth for the vast majority of
Iraqis. They want no more pretty promises, corrupt
plutocrats, superpower pawns or deviant torturers.
Amid a growing insurgency, most of all, they want the
invaders and their military hardware gone. Who of
sound mind and compassionate heart can possibly blame
them?

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East
affairs. She welcomes comments

[Dave_McEwan_Hill]

The American assault on Falluja is one of the most evil acts perpetrated in recent history. By all reasonable judgement it is a huge war crime. The American troops are behaving like homocidal savages.
I'm sure the people of Iraq will have their revenge and drive the Americans out of Iraq.
George Bush and Tony Blair should be indicted as war criminals.

[EMTL]

Assalamu alaikum,
The US Marines are vandalising mosque and killing even the wounded and defenceless civilans.

WASHINGTON, 17 November 2004 — The US Defense Department is investigating the shooting of an apparently wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner by a Marine in a mosque in Fallujah, Iraq.

[EMTL]

US, Iraqi Forces Raid Mosque in Baghdad
Naseer Al-Nahr • Arab News
 
BAGHDAD, 20 November 2004 — Iraqi forces, backed by US soldiers, stormed one of the main Sunni mosques in Baghdad after Friday prayers, opening fire and killing at least three people, witnesses said.

In the battle for control of Mosul, Iraqi forces raided several areas overnight, killing 15 insurgents, Iraqi and US military officials said.

At least 13 other insurgents were captured in Mosul, authorities said.

About 40 people were arrested at the Abu Hanifa Mosque in the capital's northwestern Azamiyah neighborhood, said the witnesses, who were members of the congregation. Another five people were wounded.

It appeared the raid at Abu Hanifa Mosque was part of the crackdown on Sunni clerics launched in parallel with military operations against the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

US troops were seen securing the mosque's outer perimeter and sealing it off. Some American soldiers also were seen inside the compound.

Witnesses heard explosions coming from inside the mosque, apparently from stun grenades. Inside the office of the imam, books, including a Qur'an, and a computer were found scattered on the floor, and the furniture was turned upside down.

At least 10 US armored vehicles were parked at the mosque, along with two vehicles carrying about 40 Iraqi National Guards, witnesses said.

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[lionger]

Every time I look at Iraq my heart grieves..what waste of life!

[EMTL]

Assalamu alaikum,

Source: http://www.arabnews.com/page=7&section=0&article=54943&d=23&m=11&y=2004

When Seeing Is Not Believing
Linda Heard, solitairemedia@yahoo.co.uk

 
CAIRO, 23 November 2004 — Unless you've spent the past week meditating on a mountaintop, you've watched the video everyone is talking about. It's the one where a US Marine walks into one of Fallujah's mosques and cold-bloodedly shoots a wounded, unarmed combatant in the head.

If the victim had been a dog or a horse, American indignation would have been palpable. But because the dead man is prejudged and demonized, he is automatically the bad guy, the wretched face of evil incarnate, while the US corporate media churns out a litany of psychobabble excuses for his trigger-happy killer.

Texas Democrat Sylvester Reyes blames the embedding of reporters for the public display of America's dirty laundry. "We should not be providing Al-Jazeera with the kind of propaganda they've had the last couple of days," he told the House Armed Services Committee.  "We don't want to know everything that is happening on the field," he said in true "hear no evil, see no evil" style.

The bullyboy of Fox News Bill O'Reilly, far from holding the Marine accountable for his breach of the Geneva Conventions, targets the Qatar-based Arabic network.

Proud that his "Factor" was the only show, which purposefully refrained from showing photographs and videos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he blames Al-Jazeera for re-running the incriminating tape, claiming it foments hatred and endangers US troops.

O'Reilly, like America's newly anointed Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, appears to consider those clauses of the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners as "quaint". Translated, this applies only to non-Americans detained by the US and not the other way around.

If we cast our minds back to the invasion when five captured US soldiers were shown sipping tea on the now defunct Iraqi television, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bitterly complained the relaying of pictures showing prisoners of war violated the Geneva Conventions.

His views were echoed at the time by that dour Lebanese-American fellow Gen. John Abizaid, who went for Al-Jazeera's jugular at a press conference for re-broadcasting, and more recently singled out the network as portraying the US "as purposely targeting civilians".

While few would thus accuse the US, some believe the Pentagon has shown a callous indifference toward what it terms "collateral damage" leaving it to others to tally up its deadly handiwork.

While civilian deaths and US military abuses are conveniently brushed aside by the Bush administration, and its mouthpiece Fox News, O'Reilly complains the tape showing the murder of Margaret Hassan was deliberately buried by Al-Jazeera. The network itself insists it was "too graphic to broadcast".

So here we have it. According to O'Reilly, videos of the US military threatening naked detainees with attack dogs should not be seen by the sensitive viewing public, but the graphic murder of a female charity worker is par for the course.

Naturally, religious right-wingers like O'Reilly would love that tape to be broadcast over and over again because it reinforces the perception of the bestial insurgent while bolstering the invaders' moral high ground. In this way, he hopes, sickened and disgusted, we would all leap on to the crusading Bush bandwagon to fight the good fight.

This is pure speculation on my part but Al— Jazeera's reluctance may stem from the brewing debate over "who killed Margaret Hassan?"

British journalist Robert Fisk cleverly highlights the strange circumstances surrounding Margaret's kidnapping in a recent article. He writes: "So, if anyone doubted the murderous nature of the insurgents, what better way to prove their viciousness than to produce evidence of Margaret Hassan's murder?" He concludes with the thought-provoking question: "Who gains from Margaret Hassan's death?

Certainly not the insurgency. Mrs. Hassan was married to an Iraqi, had dual British-Iraqi nationality, spoke fluent Arabic and was a convert to Islam. She had spent some 30 years caring for the Iraqi people and had been a vehement opponent of the US-led sanctions and invasion. So why was she taken in the first place? Even Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's ruthless band of thugs urged her immediate release."

Every crime has a motive. In the case of Mrs. Hassan it is difficult to see what this could be from the point of view of the resistance.

When compared to previous militant tapes, the videos of Mrs. Hassan pleading for her life were unique. There were no banners, no armed, masked men in the background, no claims of responsibility, and, in a departure from the usual decapitation, Margaret was hooded and shot.

Muslims rarely kidnap and kill women. In the 1980s, there was a spate of hostage taking in Lebanon but women were generally off limits.

When the fanatical Taleban captured the British journalist Yvonne Ridley during the invasion of Afghanistan she was well treated until she was set free at the Pakistani border.

In Iraq, two female Italian aid workers were taken and subsequently released, as were female members of Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's family and a woman with duel Polish-Iraqi citizenship. We may never know who killed Margaret Hassan but we do know who shot an injured man taking refuge in a place of worship. Both killings are reprehensible. Both killings are an affront to humanity. And both must be investigated and universally condemned.

A third contentious video showed Al-Zarqawi's Fallujah headquarters to which embedded journalists were taken on a guided tour.

So nice of the terrorist to put up an Al-Qaeda sign on the wall just in case his visitors were confused about where they were, and it was even nicer of him to leave behind computers bursting with intelligence goodies so that all his friends and associates can be traced. Shades of the Jessica Lynch show, courtesy of Pentagon Productions, or evidence that America's enemy No. 2 is deficient in gray matter? You decide.

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback.

[al_hamza]

PROUD TO LET YOU KNOW THAT, THAT JOURNALIST YVONNE CAPTURED BY TALIBAN HAS CONVERTED TO ISLAM, SIMPLY IMPRESSED BY "HANDSOME YOUNG MEN, INTERROGATING ME WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING AT ME, ASKING ME ALL THE WHILE WETHER I WAS FINE AND NEEDED ANYTHING". THEIR FAITH!

  SABILUNA? SABILUNA?


AL-JIHAD! AL-JIHAD!