[wvns] Entire Iraq War is an Atrocity
Baghdad's Bloody Sunday
http://www.geocities.com/islamichelp/
Witnesses say the first to be shot by the US firm was a young child.
The mother and infant were practically mutilated and met horrific
deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught
fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi
soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack
helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further
casualties.
Six days ago, at least 28 innocent civilians died in a shooting
incident involving the US security company Blackwater.
The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round
mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as
they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to
escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A
mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the
flames.
The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private
security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and
public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American
patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of
the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003
invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.
Blackwater's security men are accused of going on an unprovoked
killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in
the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted
to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in
bandages at Baghdad's Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of
horror. "I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start
to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Mr Salman. "But
still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a
boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the
head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him,
and she was killed. People were afraid."
At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a
scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage.
Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by
crowds fleeing the gunfire.
Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi
authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as
some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter,
are unlikely to survive.
With public anger among Iraqis showing no sign of abating, the US
administration has suspended all land movement by officials outside
the heavily fortified Green Zone.
The Iraqi government has revoked Blackwater's licence to operate but
it still remains employed by the US government. The Secretary of
State, Condoleezza Rice, has, however, promised a "transparent"
inquiry into what happened.
Blackwater and the US State Department claim that the guards opened
fire as they reacted to a bomb blast and then sniper fire.
The reports from members of the public, Iraqi security personnel and
government officials, as well as research, leads to a markedly
different scenario than the American version. There was a bomb
blast. But it was too far away to pose any danger to the Blackwater
guards, and their State Department charges. No Iraqi present at the
scene saw or heard sniper fire.
Witnesses say the first to be shot by the US firm was a young child.
The mother and infant were practically mutilated and met horrific
deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught
fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi
soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack
helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further
casualties.
Blackwater disputes most of this. In a statement the company claimed
that those killed were "armed insurgents and our personnel acted
lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives".
The day after the killings, Mirenbe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the
US embassy, claimed the Blackwater team had " reacted to a car
bombing". The embassy's information officer, Johann Schmonsees,
stressed "the car bomb was in proximity to the place where occupying
forces and State Department personnel were meeting, and that was the
reason why Blackwater responded to the incident with such
violence" .
Those on the receiving end tell another story. Mr Salman said he had
turned into Nisoor Square behind the Blackwater convoy when the
shooting began. He recalled: "There were eight foreigners in four
utility vehicles, I heard an explosion in the distance and then the
foreigners started shouting and signalling for us to go back. I
turned the car around and must have driven about a hundred feet when
they started shooting. My car was hit with 12 bullets it turned
over. Four bullets hit me in the back and another in the arm. Why
did they open fire on innocent civilians? I do not know. No one, I
repeat no one, had fired at them. The occupying foreigners had asked
us to go back and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason
for them to shoot."
Muhammed Hussein, whose brother was killed in the shooting,
said: "My brother was driving and we saw a black convoy ahead of us.
Then I saw my brother suddenly slump in the car. I dragged him out
of the car and saw he had been shot in the chest. I tried to hide us
both from the firing, but then I realised he was already dead."
Jawad Karim Ali was on his way to pick up his aunt from Yarmukh
Hospital when shooting started and the windscreen exploded cutting
his face. " Then I was hit on my left shoulder by bullets, two of
them another one went past my face. Now my aunt is out of hospital
and I am sitting here. There was a big bang further away but no
shots before the security people fired, and they just kept firing."
Baghdad's "Bloody Sunday" has become a test of sovereignty between
the puppet rulers of the Iraqi government and their US masters. The
Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said: "We will not tolerate
the killing of our citizens in cold blood." Despite over 600
thousand deaths since the US invasion nearly 5 years ago. The
shooting was, he said, the seventh of its kind involving Blackwater.
The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of
the largest beneficiaries of the lucrative and exploitative
occupation dividend, holding the contract to provide security for
top-level American officials.
Its reputation in Iraq is particularly controversial. It was the
lynching of four of the company's employees in 2004 which led to the
bloody confrontation in Fallujah. The men's bodies were set on fire,
dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Blackwater
personnel are recognisable from their "uniform" of wraparound
sunglasses and body armour over dark coloured sweatshirts and
helmets. Employees are thought to earn about $600 (£300) per day.
Sunday's shooting happened at Mansour, once one of the most
fashionable districts of Baghdad, with roads flanked by shops
selling expensive goods, restaurants and art galleries. A semblance
of safety has returned since, and Mansour was held up as an example
of how the US military "surge" was cutting the violence.
We were in Mansour on Sunday when we heard the sound of a deafening
explosion just after midday. Black plumes of smoke rose from a half-
blasted National Guard (army) post near a mosque. Five or six
minutes afterwards there was the sound of prolonged shooting towards
the south.
Police Captain Ali Ibrahim, who was on duty near Nisoor Square,
said: " We heard the bomb go off, it was very loud, but it wasn't at
the square. The police were, in fact, trying to clear the way for
the contractors when they became agitated, they opened fire. No one
was shooting at them."
Asked about the witness accounts, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi
government spokesman, confirmed: "The traffic policemen were trying
to open the road for them. It was a crowded square and one small car
did not stop, it was moving very slowly. They started shooting
randomly, there was a couple and their child inside the car and they
were hit."
===
US Military Admit Entire Iraq War is an Atrocity
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMuslimNews/message/320
"It was the most obscene thing you've ever seen. Every soldier got
out and opened fire on this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could
find, we ripped him to shreds..."
INTRODUCTION
It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US
military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the
men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple
at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a
heroic job under trying circumstances.
That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication
in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50
combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the
interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US
forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with
impunity.
The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the
massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human
rights abuses. "It's not individual atrocity," Specialist Garett
Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. "It's
the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."
SOLDIERS ARE MENTALLY ILL
A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and
physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the
insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those
interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq,
joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views
the war as futile.
This view is echoed in Washington, where increasing numbers of
Democrats and Republicans are openly calling for an early withdrawal
from Iraq. And the Iraq quagmire has pushed President George Bush's
poll ratings to an all-time low.
Journalists and human rights groups have published numerous reports
drawing attention to the killing of Iraqi civilians by US forces.
The Nation's investigation presents for the first time named
military witnesses who back those assertions. Some participated
themselves.
US SOLDIERS BEHAVING WORSE THAN WILD ANIMALS
Through a combination of gung-ho recklessness and criminal behaviour
born of panic, a narrative emerges of an army that frequently
commits acts of cold-blooded violence. A number of interviewees
revealed that the military will attempt to frame innocent bystanders
as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into
groups of unarmed Iraqis. The veterans said the troops involved
would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the
resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to
make it appear that they had died in combat.
"It would always be an AK because they have so many of these lying
around," said Joe Hatcher, 26, a scout with the 4th Calvary
Regiment. He revealed the army also planted 9mm handguns and shovels
to make it look like the civilians were shot while digging a hole
for a roadside bomb.
"Every good cop carries a throwaway," Hatcher said of weapons
planted on innocent victims in incidents that occurred while he was
stationed between Tikrit and Samarra, from February 2004 to March
2005. Any survivors were sent to jail for interrogation.
FOLLOWING CORRUPT ORDERS
There were also deaths caused by the reckless behaviour of military
convoys. Sgt Kelly Dougherty of the Colorado National Guard
described a hit-and-run in which a military convoy ran over a 10-
year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all. "Judging by
the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean... your
order is that you never stop."
The worst abuses seem to have been during raids on private homes
when soldiers were hunting insurgents. Thousands of such raids have
taken place, usually at dead of night. The veterans point out that
most are futile and serve only to terrify the civilians, while
generating sympathy for the resistance.
Sgt John Bruhns, 29, of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armoured Division,
described a typical raid. "You want to catch them off guard," he
explained. "You want to catch them in their sleep ... You grab the
man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You
put him up against the wall... Then you go into a room and you tear
the room to shreds. You'll ask 'Do you have any weapons? Do you have
any anti-US propaganda?'
WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS
"Normally they'll say no, because that's normally the truth," Sgt
Bruhns said. "So you'll take his sofa cushions and dump them. You'll
open up his closet and you'll throw all the clothes on the floor and
basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it." And
at the end, if the soldiers don't find anything, they depart with
a "Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening".
Sgt Dougherty described her squad leader shooting an Iraqi civilian
in the back in 2003. "The mentality of my squad leader was
like, 'Oh, we have to kill them over here so I don't have to kill
them back in Colorado'," she said. "He just seemed to view every
Iraqi as a potential terrorist."
>>>> US SOLDIERS ADMIT CATALOGUE OF ATROCITIES <<<<
'It would always happen. We always got the wrong house...'
"People would make jokes about it, even before we'd go into a raid,
like, 'Oh f***, we're gonna get the wrong house'. Cause it would
always happen. We always got the wrong house."
Sergeant Jesus Bocanegra, 25, of Weslaco, Texas 4th Infantry
Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour that began in March 2003
"I had to go tell this woman that her husband was actually dead. We
gave her money, we gave her, like, 10 crates of water, we gave the
kids, I remember, maybe it was soccer balls and toys. We just didn't
really know what else to do."
Lieutenant Jonathan Morgenstein, 35, of Arlington, Virginia, Marine
Corps civil affairs unit. In Ramadi from August 2004 to March 2005
"We were approaching this one house... and we're approaching, and
they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, cause it's
doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots
it... So I see this dog - I'm a huge animal lover... this dog has,
like, these eyes on it and he's running around spraying blood all
over the place. And like, you know, what the hell is going on? The
family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom
and a dad, horrified. And I'm at a loss for words."
Specialist Philip Chrystal, 23, of Reno, 3rd Battalion, 116th
Cavalry Brigade. In Kirkuk and Hawija on 11-month tour beginning
November 2004
"I'll tell you the point where I really turned... [there was] this
little, you know, pudgy little two-year-old child with the cute
little pudgy legs and she has a bullet through her leg... An IED
[improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just
started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked
at me... like asking me why. You know, 'Why do I have a bullet in my
leg?'... I was just like, 'This is, this is it. This is ridiculous'."
Specialist Michael Harmon, 24, of Brooklyn, 167th Armour Regiment,
4th Infantry Division. In Al-Rashidiya on 13-month tour beginning in
April 2003
"I open a bag and I'm trying to get bandages out and the guys in the
guard tower are yelling at me, 'Get that fuck haji out of here,'...
our doctor rolls up in an ambulance and from 30 to 40 meters away
looks out and says, shakes his head and says, 'You know, he looks
fine, he's gonna be all right,' and walks back... kind of like, 'Get
your ass over here and drive me back up to the clinic'. So I'm
standing there, and the whole time both this doctor and the guards
are yelling at me, you know, to get rid of this guy."
Specialist Patrick Resta, 29, from Philadelphia, 252nd Armour, 1st
Infantry Division. In Jalula for nine months beginning March 2004
'Every person opened fire on this kid, using the biggest weapons we
could find...'
"Here's some guy, some 14-year-old kid with an AK47, decides he's
going to start shooting at this convoy. It was the most obscene
thing you've ever seen. Every soldier got out and opened fire on
this kid. Using the biggest weapons we could find, we ripped him to
shreds..."
Sergeant Patrick Campbell, 29, of Camarillo, California, 256th
Infantry Brigade. In Abu Gharth for 11 months beginning November 2004
"Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could
look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat."
Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC, 1st Armoured
Division. Eight-month tour of Baghdad beginning Sept 2003
"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, 'A dead Iraqi
is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'... [Only when we
got home] in... meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt
really takes place, takes root, then."
Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd
Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004
"[The photo] was very graphic... They open the body bags of these
prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got a
spoon. He's reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at
the camera and smiling."
Specialist Aidan Delgado, 25, of Sarasota, Florida, 320th Military
Police Company. Deployed to Talil air base for one year beginning
April 2003
"The car was approaching what was in my opinion a very poorly marked
checkpoint... and probably didn't even see the soldiers... The guys
got spooked and decided it was a possible threat, so they shot up
the car. And they [the bodies] literally sat in the car for the next
three days while we drove by them.
Sergeant Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st
Infantry Division. One-year from February 2004
"The frustration that resulted from our inability to get back at
those who were attacking us led to tactics that seemed designed
simply to punish the local population..."
Sergeant Camilo Mejía, 31, from Miami, National Guardsman, 1-124
Infantry Battalion, 53rd Infantry Brigade. Six-month tour beginning
April 2003
"I just remember thinking, 'I just brought terror to someone under
the American flag'."
Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, 18th Infantry
Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. In Tikrit on year-long tour
beginning February 2004
"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they
don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human
as us, so we can do what we want."
Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City, 2nd Battalion, 82nd
Airborne Division. Four-month tour in Baghdad and Mosul beginning
December 2004
"I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for
people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the
guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned."
Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New
Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning
March 2004
===
600,000 Muslims killed since Iraq Invasion
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMuslimNews/message/311
The British government has embarrassingly backed the methods used by
scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Muslims have been
killed since the invasion of Iraq by US and British forces.
The Government initially publicly rejected the findings, published
in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under
freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that
the study had used sound methods.
The study, conducted by researchers from the American, Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in
Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died, since the
March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation, than one would expect
without the bloody war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those
deaths were from violence.
The researchers, reflecting some uncertainties in such
extrapolations, said they the toll could be as high as 942,636.
The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was
disputed by some so-called experts, and initially rejected by the US
and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the
Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the
study as "robust" and "close to best practice". Another official
said it was "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in
conflict zones".
*********************************************************************
WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE
To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
NEWS ARCHIVE IS OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
Need some good karma? Appreciate the service?
Please consider donating to WVNS today.
Email ummyakoub@yahoo.com for instructions.
To leave this list, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:wvns-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:wvns-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
No comments:
Post a Comment