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And not to forget that in the invasion of Panama US
marines shot two Spanish journalists in the back. They made the mistake of
approaching a marine HQ to ask for comments on the film they had shot of
thousands of dead civilians killed by the US assault. After a brief conversation
they were told to leave. As they walked out of the field HQ marine guards
shot both of them in the back killing both. Their film disapeared. The
marines said it was a "mistake" their word for murder.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 3:57 PM
Subject: FW: Disgraceful
This one really put me off my double barBqued beef sando with a
huge pile of slaw and a triple-decker shake. Back in the USA is even
worse than I expected. But it's good to see so many Yanks so well
informed and so much against what their regime is doing in Iraq. But the
overall feeling is one of impotency and delusion. I'm going to try to
get back up on that lunch. But, damn. Mick
THE ROVING EYE
The Iraqi killing fields
By
Pepe Escobar
AMMAN - "We know we don't target journalists," said the US
Central Command
(CentCom) in Qatar. Contrary to CentCom's assertions,
non-embedded
journalists know that they have been targeted.
It was
inevitable. When it finally happened, it was like clockwork.
Al-Jazeera's
office in Kabul was incinerated by four missiles in the 2001
ousting of the
Taliban in Afghanistan. True to CentCom form, al-Jazeera's
office in
Baghdad was hit by a Tomahawk this week in the invasion of Iraq -
even
though the Qatari network had offered its global positioning system
(GPS)
position to the Pentagon in late February.
Correspondent-producer Tariq
Ayyoub, 35, Jordanian, father of an infant
girl, was killed and a
photographer was wounded. The Abu Dhabi TV office in
Baghdad was hit by an
Abrams tank - although they have been broadcasting
from the same building
for three years now. Another Abrams tank fired at the
Palestine Hotel, near
Tahir square: even Mesopotamian desert rats know that
this is where
virtually all the Western and Asian journalists in Baghdad
stay: A
Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters and a Spanish cameraman for
Telecinco were
killed, and four other journalists were wounded.
France 3 television
broadcast footage of the turret of the Abrams tank,
positioned on the west
margin of the Tigris, at least 300 meters away from
the Palestine, moving
in the direction of the hotel and taking its time to
aim and shoot. The
official American version - that they were threatened by
sniper fire coming
from the hotel - was universally dismissed. Asia Times
Online was among
many to confirm that no journalists who were in the open
doing live feeds
for TV reported hearing any sniper fire or rocket launchers
being fired
from the hotel. As Sky TV's David Chater put it, the shell "was
aimed
directly at this hotel and directly at journalists. This wasn't
an
accident, it seems to be a very accurate shot."
There's a problem
with the absolute majority of the journalists in Baghdad -
surreptitiously
betrayed by the rhetoric emanating from US CentCom in Qatar.
They are
non-embedded. "Unilaterals" - non-embedded journalists - may be
mistaken
for "legitimate" targets by the Pentagon: or rather "targets
of
opportunity". They can be bombed because of their annoying Thuraya
satellite
telephones with GPS. They can be beaten - like a group of
Portuguese
journalists in southern Iraq. They can be humiliated at will,
just because
they are able to think independently, or they are also
reporting the Iraqi
side, or they are not telling the official, sanitized,
Pentagon-censored
story of the carnage in Iraq.
Even diplomatic convoys
are not immune. Alexander Minakov, a reporter for
Russian TV who was
involved in Sunday's incident when a Russian convoy with
10 diplomats and
10 journalists was trying to leave Baghdad towards
Damascus, confirmed that
they were targeted by M-16 rifles, standard
equipment for American soldiers
and marines. According to the Russian
ambassador, Vladimir Titorenko,
speaking to the Itar-Tass agency, "A column
of American armored vehicles
suddenly blocked our way. There were tanks,
APCs and mobile gun mounts. Our
convoy led by my car under the Russian flag
stopped but they suddenly
opened fire. All the attempts to leave the cars
and explain the situation
were thwarted by bursts from automatic weapons,"
said Titorenko. Several
grenades were hurled at the cars. Four people were
wounded and the
ambassador's driver was seriously wounded in the stomach.
American
officials predictably denied any responsibility.
The attack on the
Palestine hotel has been vehemently condemned all over the
world. The
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says that it is a
possible
war crime, or at least "a grave and serious violation of
international
law". IFJ general secretary Aidan White stressed that "the
bombing of
hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media
are
particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name
of
democracy".
While Arab satellite channels are showing the tragic reality
of war,
American corporate media - also available by satellite all over the
Middle
East - all but totally ignores the suffering of the Iraqi people.
Torrents
of abuse in America are directed against Arab and European news
outlets that
publish and broadcast the real extent of the carnage and human
suffering
that is being inflicted on civilians.
In this context, the
bombing of al-Jazeera could not but please the
neoconservatives in
Washington. Carnage it is. The American advance has been
described as the
"infernal column" by Yves Debay, a war correspondent for
the military
affairs magazine Raids who observed the US modus operandi at
very close
range: "They organize columns of 40 to 50 armored vehicles. Up
front, M1
Abrams tanks, followed by Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees.
They roll
with two tanks up front, occupying the whole road. They shoot
everything in
sight, everything suspicious. It's 'fire at will'. They love
shooting
Saddam portraits with 25 mm cannons. They have no fire discipline.
The
initiative is left to the soldiers, 20-year-old kids. That's the reason
why
they also shoot civilians. An European army would never behave like
this.
By better controlling its troops, the British army kills considerably
less
civilians." Debay's observations are corroborated by what happened at
the
Palestine: crucial tactical decisions are left to low-level local
tank
commanders.
On his way to Baghdad from Mahmudiyah, Debay saw
dozens of burning civilian
vehicles, all of their passengers dead. He
volunteers an explanation for the
indiscriminate killing: "They [the
Americans] have two problems. They are
still taking revenge for September
11, and there are no sanctions when a
soldier kills a civilian. Their
objective is not to kill civilians, but they
behave like cowboys. They even
shoot cows ... I have the impression it's a
way to mask their fear. They
are very afraid. And it gets worse every time
they sustain losses."
The
American superiority in technology, mobility and firepower is
overwhelming
beyond comprehension - also considering that Iraq's military
capability had
been totally smashed in 1991, plus the 12 years of
debilitating United
Nations sanctions. The road to Baghdad for the advancing
American troops
was cleared by a devastating combination of B-52
carpet-bombing, artillery
barrages and strafing by Apache helicopters.
Initially, the killing in
Baghdad had no military objective, or was not
about taking or holding
ground (CentCom briefing). Even after Monday's
spectacular foray into the
National Parade Ground and Saddam's palaces in
Baghdad, the rhetoric
remained the same.
Now territory in central Baghdad has indeed been taken:
the Americans
control large swaths of the west bank of the Tigris (echoes
of Israel
controlling large areas of the West Bank in Palestine). So the
rhetoric has
changed to "targets of opportunity". Like the bombing of
houses of Iraqi
Christians (at least eight civilians dead), or the blitz
with four
satellite-guided 900-kilogram bombs of the famous al-Sa'a
restaurant in the
al-Mansour residential district (at least 14 civilians
dead) where Saddam
Hussein and his sons "might" have been - according to a
web of 37 American
satellites plus "human intelligence" on the ground. The
satellites and the
intelligence failed. Behind the al-Sa'a there is now a
huge crater 10 meters
deep and 15 meters wide, and the families of
residents Abdel Massyah and
Salman Daoud are buried under the
rubble.
Outside the five-star al-Rashid hotel, a Reuters photographer said
that the
marines on Monday were firing indiscriminately on civilians and
militias: he
has bullet holes in his car to prove it. "Human intelligence"
on the ground
in Baghdad has revealed to Asia Times Online that the rate of
casualties in
the city could be anywhere from 100 to 500 Iraqis to each
American. Even
though the resistance is now minimal, the carnage will go on
because
although the Americans have practically encircled Baghdad they
don't have
enough troops to control a sprawling city of 5 million-plus
inhabitants.
The military plan is to divide the city in pockets and secure
it pocket by
pocket - with overwhelming support of F/A-18s, A-10
tankbusters and Apache
helicopters, now flying very low because there's
absolutely no air defense
left in Baghdad to speak of. If it looks and
sounds like a deadly video
game, that's because it is: even American
generals are describing it as an
aerial form of house-to-house fighting.
The main victims are, of course,
Iraqi civilians.
Popular reaction has
been graphic. The Bush administration, the Pentagon and
the breathless,
embedded cheerleaders of American corporate media are
ecstatic. The whole
planet is horrified. By watching those images of the
proud cradle of human
civilization reduced to Fourth World status, anybody
that is not a military
expert may understand that the only thing left for
the "poor bastards" - as
the marines call them - absolutely unable to resist
overwhelming military
force, is to resort to guerrilla and suicide attacks.
History shows that
this is how occupied lands and peoples have always
reacted. Extraordinary
footage by the Capa photo agency shows a group of
ragged teenagers with
rocket launchers trying to retake a bridge from Abrams
tanks: the operation
takes a few minutes, and half of the bunch is left
soaking in pools of
blood.
All over Baghdad, the city's five main hospitals simply cannot cope
with an
avalanche of civilian casualties. Doctors can't get to the
hospitals because
of the bombing. Dr Osama Saleh-al-Duleimi, at the
al-Kindi hospital,
confirms the absolute majority of patients are women and
children, victims
of bullets, shrapnel and most of all, fragments of
cluster bombs: "They are
all civilians," he says, "caught in aerial and
artillery bombardment."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
is in a state of almost
desperation. Its spokesman, Roland
Huguenin-Benjamin, contacted by satellite
telephone, still mentions
casualties arriving at hospitals at a rate of as
many as 100 per hour and
at least 100 per day. This correspondent has been
to many Baghdad
hospitals: after fighting 12 years of sanctions and a list
of as many as
500-prohibited items, it's a miracle that they barely remained
functional.
In a city now with no regular phones, no electricity and
practically no
water, they are all operating on generators. One of the
larger hospitals
has no power and no water at all. Getting clean water for
the patients
remains a nightmare. Anaesthetics, antibiotics and insulin are
almost gone.
The hospitals are running out of blood, beds, everything.
The victims of
the blitz are inevitably the young and the poor. How many?
Even the ICRC
cannot determine it yet: hospital doctors talk about hundreds
of dead and
thousands of wounded. Dr Sadek al-Mukhtar has seen it all in
terms of death
and destruction. He is adamant: "Before the war I did not
regard America as
my enemy. Now I do. There are military and there are
civilians. War should
be against the military. America is killing
civilians." Fifty percent of
Iraq's population of 24 million is under 15.
Malnutrition is endemic. The
majority of families depend on state food
rations - the meager standard
package of flour, rice, tea, cooking oil and
soap - and rations should run
out by next month.
A-10 tankbusters have fired the hungry, terrified
Baghdadis with depleted
uranium rounds - the surefire way to win their
hearts and minds. There may
be some scenes of jubilation with the marines
coming to town - basically in
the huge Shi'ite Saddam City slum, bursting
with more than 2 million people
who have been frustrated and oppressed for
so long by the Sunni-dominated
Saddam regime.
But these desperately
poor and angry masses want food.They want water. They
don't necessarily
want to see marines in tanks for more than a day or two.
Eastern Baghdad is
in total anarchy. But there's still fighting. And people
are not only
scared - or involved in looting. They are suffering. One just
needs to ask
12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas. His father, his five-month
pregnant
mother, his brother, his aunt, three cousins and three other
relatives were
incinerated by a missile in Diala, eastern Baghdad. He is now
an orphan, he
is terribly burned and he has lost both his arms. He wants to
be a doctor.
"But how can I? I lost both hands." George W Bush can always
say that at
least he has been "liberated".
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