Subject:
5 December 2004
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
We are sending you yet another bulletin from the killing fields of Iraq:
Item A., from Dahr Jamail, are additional eye-witness accounts of the
murderous activities of U.S. soldiers in Falllujah.
In item B. we have an account of the bureaucratic
collaborators who, though they have no blood on their hands, are equally responsible
for the mass murders in
The feelings of shame and outrage are being transformed into political action
every day, and in every part of the world.
George W. Bush may turn out to be the "Pedagogical President", after all: a champion of education, despite his
federal budget cuts for public schools. . . .
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
Professor of American Studies
Director of Research
Universié Grenoble 3
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
____________________________
A.
from Dahr Jamail :
The NewStandard
Copyright December 3, 2004
Fallujah
Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone
by Dahr Jamail
[Journalists and residents
who have fled Fallujah share accounts of US troops
killing unarmed and wounded people; Dahr Jamail continues interviewing survivors as images of a city
under US assault further emerge.]
In an interview with The NewStandard, Burhan Fasa’a, an Iraqi
journalist who works for the popular Lebanese satellite TV station, LBC, said
he witnessed US crimes up close. Burhan Fasa’a, who was in Fallujah
for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans
grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English.
"Americans did not have interpreters with them," Fasa’a
said, "so they entered houses and killed people because they didn’t
speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and [they]
shot people because [the people] didn’t obey [the soldiers’]
orders, even just because the people couldn’t understand a word of
English."
A man named Khalil, who asked The NewStandard
not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the
shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape
the city.
Fasa’a further speculated, "Soldiers
thought the people were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the
people just couldn’t understand them."
Fasa’a says American troops detained him. They
interrogated him specifically about working for the Arab media, he said, and
held him for three days. Fasa’a and other
prisoners slept on the ground with no blankets. He said prisoners were made to
go to the bathroom in handcuffs, using one toilet in the middle of the camp.
"During the nine days I was in Fallujah, all of
the wounded women, kids and old people, none of them were evacuated," Fasa’a said. "They either suffered to death, or
somehow survived."
Many refugees tell stories of having witnessed US troops killing already
injured people, including former fighters and noncombatants alike.
"I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,"
said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a resident of Fallujah. "This happened so many times."
Other refugees recount similar stories. "I saw so many civilians killed
there, and I
saw several tanks roll over the wounded in the streets," said Aziz Abdulla, 27 years old, who
fled the fighting last month. Another resident, Abu Aziz,
said he also witnessed American armored vehicles crushing people he believes
were alive.
Abdul Razaq Ismail, another
resident who fled Fallujah, said: "I saw dead
bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American
snipers. The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the
A man called Abu Hammad said he witnessed US troops
throwing Iraqi bodies into the
Believing that American and Iraqi forces were bent on killing anyone who stayed
in Fallujah, Hammad said he
watched people attempt to swim across the
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein reported
witnessing similar events. After running out of basic necessities and deciding
to flee the city at the height of the US-led assault, Hussein ran to the
"I decided to swim," Hussein told colleagues at the AP, who wrote up
the photographer’s harrowing story, "but I changed my mind after
seeing US helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the
river."
Hussein said he saw soldiers kill a family of five as they tried to traverse
the
"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some
A man named Khalil, who asked The NewStandard
not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the
shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape
the city. "They shot women and old men in the streets," he said.
"Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies."
"There are bodies the Americans threw in the river," Khalil continued, noting that he personally witnessed US
troops using the
US military commanders reported at least two incidents during which they say
Iraqi resistance fighters used white flags to lure Marines into dangerous
situations, including a well-orchestrated ambush.
Proponents of relaxed rules of engagement for
US and Iraqi officials have called the "pacification" of Fallujah a success and said that the action was necessary
to stabilize
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More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
_________________
B.
from Kathy Kelly :
CounterPunch
copyright December 1, 2004
The Real Crimes of the UN in
Looking the Other Way
by KATHY KELLY
Shortly before sunrise, this morning, a small band of us
gathered at a busy
Had Johan lived in a country that wasn't reeling from 13 years of economic
sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds
of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered
Writing my mental letter, I thought of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's words
of comfort to bereaved parents of four little girls who were murdered when the
Birmingham Baptist church was bombed on September 18, 1963. A former member of
the Ku Klux Klan was convicted of the crime. Addie,
Carol, Cynthia and Carole had been praying inside the church.
"These children-unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-were the victims of
one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against
humanity." Dr. King said. But he offered comfort. "In a real
sense," he continued, "they have something to say to each of us in their
death. . .they did not die in vain. . .Indeed, this
tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its
conscience."
This morning, columnists in major
In fact, many UN officials tried valiantly to put an end to the economic
sanctions. Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday resigned their posts and crisscrossed the globe
educating people about the effects of the economic sanctions which Halliday termed "genocidal." UNICEF's Executive
Director, Carole Bellamy, held a 1999 press conference to announce the release
of a "Situation Analysis of Women in Children in
The sanctions punished children while Saddam's regime profited through
smuggling: Many Westerners who traveled to
The children were punished. When the pictures of those little ones, writhing in
pain, wrinkled with wasting, desperate and bewildered, ...held by equally
despairing and tortured parents...when those pictures were held up, sometimes
as we fasted, sometimes while we were being led off in plastic handcuffs,
sometimes at press conferences in front of the UN in Baghdad, sometimes in the
middle of Basra cesspools and cemeteries...when those pictures were held up,
many people looked the other way.
When I try to understand why columnists in far away places wouldn't take on the
story of these worthy victims, I try to remember that there are many worthy
victims and one person can't undertake care and concern for every devastating,
brutal injustice. Pick your battles. But I can't for the life of me understand
how a steady stream of columns have appeared on op-ed pages, in the NYT and
other papers, alerting us to possible crimes committed by UN officials in the
course of the "oil for food" program while there has been no mention
of the crime of child sacrifice in Iraq.
The concern generating reams of verbiage at this point is that UN officials may
have looked the other way as Saddam Hussein and a number of collaborators
pocketed rake-offs in underhanded dealings using profits from Iraqi oil sales.
I'm not equipped to comment on those charges. But is there no columnist who
will remind us that 500,000 children under age five died as the
Let's consider the UN workers who stood a chance of getting food and medicine
into
They looked the other way. I looked the other way myself. We in our delegations
looked the other way even as we knew that normally we'd be hopping mad and
demonstrating in front of any government bastion that inflicted so much fear on
its people...but that would have been the wrap-up for our entry into
neighborhoods, families, hospitals, schools, ... it was a trade-off.
King said, "And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled
here that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair. We must
not become bitter . . . Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among
them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human
personality." But this said, what words of comfort can I offer to Johan's
brother Laith? I can tell him where we stood this
morning, and whose picture I held. People looked.
*******************
Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a
campaign to nonviolently resist
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