Iraq (1 Viewer)

BILL O'REILLY: What do you think is the biggest mistake the USA has made in Iraq?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Well, I suppose you could, one looking at it today with 20/20 hindsight, would say it's not anticipating, first of all, not finding WMD's, uh, un, until, apparently it was wrong, or else they're buried or else we'll find out something later. But at the moment it looks like they weren't there. Um, and I suppose the second thing would be uh, more current, would be the fact of, was it possible to better estimate the insurgency? Uh,

BILL O'REILLY: Did somebody say to you, look, once we depose Saddam, these guys are going to go and fight a guerrilla campaign, did any general or human being that advises you tell you that?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, my goodness, I ...
Click to expand...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140349,00.html
 
You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is

In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the dead

Naomi Klein
Saturday December 4, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1366348,00.html

David T Johnson,
Acting ambassador,
US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Falluja general hospital". 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Falluja, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning their congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US troops to withdraw.

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York Times last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around.

Eliminating doctors
The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported that "the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casual ties", noting that "this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons". The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers "stole the mobile phones" at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.

But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Falluja general hospital "had told a US general the location of the downtown makeshift medical centre" before it was hit.

Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single surgeon in Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: on entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the al-Zaharawi hospital.

Eliminating journalists
The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.

Eliminating clerics
Just as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of the clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in Falluja. On November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association for Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to Associated Press, "Al-Sumaidaei has called on the country's Sunni minority to launch a civil disobedience campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the attack on Falluja". On November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi forces stormed a prominent Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing three people and arresting 40, including the chief cleric - another opponent of the Falluja siege. On the same day, Fox News reported that "US troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border". The report described the arrests as "retaliation for opposing the Falluja offensive". Two Shia clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr have also been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, "both had spoken out against the Falluja attack".

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

· Additional research by Aaron Maté
 
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown/

Returning Fallujans get retina scans and forced labor

From Sunday's Boston Globe:
The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised. Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times.

(...) One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons. "You have to say, 'Here are the rules,' and you are firm and fair. That radiates stability," said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine regiment that took the western half of Fallujah during the US assault and expects to be based downtown for some time. Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe..."

​
 
SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- Preliminary findings of a military inquiry suggest that some of the recently published photographs of Navy special forces capturing detainees in Iraq were taken for legitimate intelligence-gathering purposes and showed commandos using approved procedures, a Navy spokesman said.

The photos, which have drawn a strong reaction in Arab media, also appear to show Navy SEALs sitting or lying on top of hooded and handcuffed detainees in the back of a pickup truck.

Citing the ongoing investigation, a spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado on Monday declined comment on the pickup truck pictures, which were among 40 images of detainees an Associated Press reporter found on a commercial photo-sharing Web site posted by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq.

Senior officers at the SEALs headquarters said other photos are "consistent with the use of tactics, techniques and procedures in the apprehension of detainees," Navy Cmdr. Jeff Bender said.

He cited as an example a photo in which a uniformed man is holding the head of a prisoner to pose him for a picture for "identification purposes." A gun with an attached flashlight is being used to illuminate the detainee's face for the photograph, Bender said.

Taking photos of prisoners for administrative or intelligence purposes is an exception to Navy regulations that generally forbid unofficial photos of prisoners of war.

In another photo, a commando standing with upraised fists next to a detainee is using hand signals to communicate with other troops who do not appear in the image, according to Bender.

The two photos are part of a larger group of mug shots of detainees, whose faces were blacked out in the pictures posted online. Some drip blood, which experts on the law of war said was not by itself a sign of abuse.

It was unclear whether the detainees resisted capture by Navy special forces.

"No one knows what's on the other side of the door," Bender said, adding that the inquiry is ongoing.

Some of the people in the photos have been identified as SEALs, Bender said.

Date stamps on some of the photos suggest they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse or questionable handling of prisoners in Iraq.

The far more brutal practices photographed inside Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later.

It is unclear who took the pictures, which the Navy began investigating after the AP furnished copies to get comment for a story first published Friday.

The photos were widely published in Arab media, including one on the front page of the daily Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram showed three hooded prisoners pressed against one another on a floor with what appear to be white sheets wrapped around their torsos.

The photo caption read: "Signs of a new scandal."
Click to expand...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/06/navy.prisoner.photos.ap/index.html
 
Latex lizzie said:
dissention in the ranks? soldiers openly challenge Rumsfeld on equipment issues.


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/779C0E14-4121-40EF-BCCF-0B0CCAA28DFC.htm

could this be the beginning of something significant?. It's seems to be happening on the back of those other troops who refused to go on a convoy being charged...
Click to expand...
turns out the question about the trucks and the scavenging was "planted" by a reporter.

Pitts said he was told only soldiers could ask questions, so he and two GIs "worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have."

To make sure the soldiers were picked, Pitts said he "found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd."
Click to expand...
In his e-mail, Pitts said he had been "trying to get this story out" since he learned several weeks ago that he would be assigned to an unarmored truck, and the Times Free Press published two stories on the issue.
"But it felt good to hand it off to the national press," Pitts wrote. "I believe lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border riding with scrap metal as protection. It may be too late for the unit I am with, but hopefully not for those who come after."

Pitts wrote that Wilson told him he "felt good b/c he took his complaints to the top. When he got back to his unit most of the guys patted him on the back but a few of the officers were upset b/c they thought it would make them look bad."
Click to expand...
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/09/rumsfeld.reporter/index.html
 
..yeah kinda dissapointing but reading that article you can see the mood of the troops was with him! cheers when he asked and whatnot. I think that the culture of fear of reprisals in the U.S. military for soldiers who speak out is so strong that when stuff like this happens they are only too glad no?
 
[font=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]
[font=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]A former US marine has said his unit killed more than 30 innocent Iraqi civilians in just two days.[/font]



In graphic testimony presented to a Canadian asylum tribunal on Monday, Sergeant Jimmy Massey's evidence appeared to bolster war crime claims made by fugitive US paratrooper Jeremy Hinzman.

The 26-yea-old Hinzman said he would face persecution if sent home to the US, in a politically charged case which could set a precedent for at least two other American deserters seeking asylum in Canada.

Massey told Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) that men under his command in the 3rd battalion, Seventh Marines, killed 30-plus civilians within 48 hours while on checkpoint duty in Baghdad.
Click to expand...

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/73A4FF53-81F7-4FA0-B02B-3681C801F778.htm[/font]
 
I think we are going to start hearing the horror stories on the ground comming out soon..the blockade of fallujah seems to be comming to an end even though they are still being bombed..and both sides will doubtless have tales of US brutality to tell..

In the meantime Sadam and his cronies are on hunger strike according to his lawyers.(the US has denied it though)

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1163763,00.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DAAC4FC1-635E-46A3-9D7C-798AC5D168BC.htm

and in other news

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FFA039A0-52F2-4445-87A4-6B5531A4E7AF.htm
7 more marines dead..total now over 1010 dead.
the total body count since the war was launched in Iraq is now a maximun of 16853 according to these guys..

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Also from this site is an independant archive of the assault on fallujah with the emphasis on the humanitarian aspect of things.

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/resources/falluja/
 
Iraq uncensored
[font=Courier New, Courier]For months on end, these seven independent photographers and filmmakers have worked exclusively in Iraq documenting US troops and Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters and child laborers, imprisoned women and incarcerated youths. Using varied media and narrative styles ranging from photojournalism to first person narratives, cinema verite and found photography, Iraq Uncensored photographers present insights and subtleties beyond what daily news reporting can provide.

Together they will present rare windows on Iraq, the land that cradled what we now call civilization.


http://www.mothers-milk.org/IraqUncensored/exhibitintro.html


k02.JPG



[/font]
 
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EABC42D9-9728-476A-988E-29C37FDFD98F.htm

attacks on US troops becoming more sophisticated?

The "insurgency is a very, very sophisticated enemy", Army Major General Stephen Speakes said. "A year ago, the amount of explosive that was being used in an IED was much less than it is now."

er...maybe that would be something to do with this...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/iraq.explosives/

well? asshole commanders what did you expect! I hope your troops get sense into their heads and quit the fight, because of your bungling they are having larger IED's blowing them up.
 
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