Dahr Jamail: Military Slaughters Iraqi Civilians

[babylonsister]

Military Slaughters Iraqi Civilians

By Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com. Posted November 27, 2007.

Mainstream media would have you believe the U.S. military has only killed Iraqi "militants," "extremists" and "criminals" -- even when the people gunned down are women and children.


"Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him." -- Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H


Name them. Maim them. Kill them.

From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the U.S. military have only killed "militants," "criminals," "suspected insurgents," "IED emplacers," "anti-American fighters," "terrorists," "military age males," "armed men," "extremists," or "al-Qaeda."

The pattern for reporting on such attacks has remained the same from the early years of the occupation to today. Take a helicopter attack on October 23rd of this year near the village of Djila, north of Samarra. The U.S. military claimed it had killed 11 among "a group of men planting a roadside bomb." Only later did a military spokesperson acknowledge that at least six of the dead were civilians. Local residents claimed that those killed were farmers, that there were children among them, and that the number of dead was greater than 11.

Here is part of the statement released by U.S. military spokeswoman in northern Iraq, Major Peggy Kageleiry:

"A suspected insurgent and improvised explosive device cell member was identified among the killed in an engagement between Coalition Forces and suspected IED emplacers just north of Samarra…. During the engagement, insurgents used a nearby house as a safe haven to re-engage coalition aircraft. A known member of an IED cell was among the 11 killed during the multiple engagements. We send condolences to the families of those victims and we regret any loss of life."

As usual, the version offered by locals was vastly different. Abdul al-Rahman Iyadeh, a relative of some of the victims, revealed that the "group of men" attacked were actually three farmers who had left their homes at 4:30 A.M. to irrigate their fields. Two were killed in the initial helicopter attack and the survivor ran back to his home where other residents gathered. The second air strike, he claimed, destroyed the house killing 14 people. Another witness told reporters that four separate houses were hit by the helicopter. A local Iraqi policeman, Captain Abdullah al-Isawi, put the death toll at 16 -- seven men, six women, and three children, with another 14 wounded.

As often happens, the U.S. military, once challenged, declared that an "investigation" of the incident was under way.


more...

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/68980/?page=entire

[peacebird]

1. this is a perfect example of how NOT to run a war in a civilian area

If you "suspect" people of planting IEDs then round them up, investigate them, try them and if found guilty then imprison them.

Killing SUSPECTED bad guys means you have a 50-50 chance of murdering innocent people. And a 100% chance of losing the very "hearts and minds" we need to have on our side if we ever hope to "win" the peace.

[enough]

2. One more snip from this staggering article:

snip>

At the time of this writing, the group Just Foreign Policy has offered an estimate of Iraqis killed since the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Their number: 1,118,846. Consider that possibility in the context of the latest round of news from Iraq about lessening violence.

The estimate is based on figures from a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, and published in October 2006 in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, which found 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation. The report methodology has been called "robust" and "close to best practice" by Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific advisor to Britain's Ministry of Defense. Since that time, in addition to Just Foreign Policy, the British research polling agency Opinion Research Business has extrapolated a figure of 1.2 million deaths in Iraq. Based on this, veteran Australian born journalist John Pilger wrote recently, "The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments may well have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century."

snip>

[PuraVidaDreamin]

3. We are all war criminals

[tom_paine]

4. Like the 1930s and 40s Germans, of that there can no longer be any doubt.

We are them and they are us.

Read "Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner or any of the "on theground" observances by regular peopel during this time and the similarities are simply staggering.

Staggering.

No doubt left. We are them and they are us.

[AlertLurker]

5. Add this to the 7 killed yesterday while working on a road construction crew.

Sometimes, you know, people digging up the road are just people digging up the road to repair it.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

6. It wasn't until Falluja that it became clear to me that Iraq would...

...be an intended genocide disguised as a war on terror. It should be pretty obvious by now that the Ruling Class has set about the task of significantly thinning Earth's human population over the next decade (since when do rival religious sects in the Middle East bomb each other's mosques?) -- this is their answer to the warming climate crisis, the growing scarcity of natural resources, the clearing of rain forests, environmental pollution, etc.

Given the direction we've long been headed in, Mother Nature would've tended to the matter in her own way sooner or later (she may yet play a hand in it), and probably with no less brutality than our beloved Ruling Class is going about it.

These people do not intend to spare our continent. A wave of domestic false flag operations to serve as justification for the iron fist police state, and probably scheduled to coincide with the dollar's last gasp nose dive, will very likely be coming here soon.

Have a nice day.