Residents of Fallujah Fear a US ‘Genocidal Strategy’
FALLUJAH - Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a ‘genocidal’ strategy.
Since the mysterious explosion at the Shia al-Askari shrine in Samara in February last year, more than 100 Iraqis have been killed daily on average, without any forceful action by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military to stop the killings.
U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces working with them are also executing people seized during home raids and other operations, residents say.
“Seventeen young men were found executed after they were arrested by U.S. troops and Fallujah police,” 40-year-old Yassen of Fallujah told IPS. “My two sons have been detained by police, and I am terrified that they will have the same fate. They are only 17 and 18 years old.”
Residents of Fallujah say the local police detention center holds hundreds of men, who have had no legal representation.
Others are killed by random fire that has long become routine for U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. Sa’ad, a 25-year-old from the al-Thubbat area of western Fallujah was killed in such firing.
“The poor guy kept running home every time he saw U.S. soldiers,” a man from his neighborhood, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “He used to say: Go inside or the Americans will kill you.” Sa’ad is said by neighbors to have developed a mental disability.
He was recently shot and killed by U.S. soldiers when they opened fire after their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb.
Last week, U.S. military fire severely damaged the highest minaret in Fallujah after three soldiers were killed in an attack. What was seen as reprisal fire on the minaret has angered residents.
“They hate us because we are Muslims, and no one can argue with that any more,” 65- year-old Abu Fayssal who witnessed the event told IPS. “They say they are fighting al-Qeada but they are only capable of killing our sons with their genocidal campaign and destroying our mosques.”
Others believe occupation forces have another sinister strategy.
“It is our people killing each other now as planned by the Americans,” Abdul Sattar, a 45- year-old lawyer and human rights activist in Fallujah told IPS. “They recruited Saddam’s security men to control the situation by well-known methods like hanging people by their legs and electrifying them in order to get information. Now they are executing them without trial.”
IPS has obtained photographs of an elderly man who residents say was executed last month by U.S. soldiers.
“Last month was full of horrifying events,” a retired police officer from Fallujah told IPS. “Three men were executed by American soldiers in the al-Bu Issa tribal area just outside Fallujah. One of them was 70 years old and known as a very good man, and the others were his relatives. They were asleep when the raid was conducted.”
Another three men from the same tribe were executed similarly in ar-Rutba town near the Jordanian border. Their tribe did not carry out the usual burial ceremony for fear that more people would be killed. Instead, a cousin performed a religious ceremony in Amman in Jordan.
“Seven people were executed in al-Qa’im recently, at the Syrian border,” Khalid Haleem told IPS on telephone from al-Qa’im. “They were gathering at a friend’s place for dinner when Americans surrounded the house, with armoured vehicles with helicopters covering them from the air. Those killed were good men and we believe the Americans were misinformed.”
Adding to the violence are U.S.-backed Shia militias which regularly raid Sunni areas under the eyes of the U.S. and Iraqi army. Residents of Fallujah, Ramadi, and especially Baghdad have regularly reported to IPS over the last two years that Shia militiamen are allowed through U.S. military cordons into Sunni neighborhoods to conduct raids.
Last month, residents report, more than 100 men aged 20 to 40 were executed by Shia militias in Iskandariya 40 km south of Baghdad and Tal Afar 350 km northwest of the capital. Another 50 were detained by the Iraqi Army’s fifth division, that many believe is the biggest death squad in the country.
A U.S. military spokesperson in Baghdad told IPS that their troops “use caution and care when conducting home raids” and “in no way support Shi’ite death squads and militias.”
In the face of the U.S.-backed violence, most Iraqis now openly support attacks against occupation forces.
“The genocidal Americans are paying for all that,” a young man from Fallujah told IPS. “They seem to be in need of another lesson by the lions of Fallujah and Anbar.” He was referring to the intensive resistance attacks in and around Fallujah that have killed dozens of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers this month.
According to the U.S. military, at least 1,194 U.S. soldiers have died in al-Anbar province since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The number is far higher than in any other province in Iraq.
Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service.
You can see a sample of this barbarity here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17393.htm
Let me state, with God as my witness, to all those who read this, especially my Arab brothers and sisters, my clear and unequivocal, vigorous, absolute oppsition to greed and mammon-driven murderous US aggression, and the profound stupidity, ignrance and ego-ism of the majority of my USAn neighbors that makes this possible.
I did no ask to be ejected from mothers womb into this vile nation. I did not ask for the sins of the US nation to defile my soul. The only penance I know for these sins is to speak out always against US greed and barbarism.
PJD: But according to our precious president Georgie, the Iraqis asked the U.S. to invade and occupy their country, so, my goodness, American troops and overlords couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong, now could they? Our sweet troops must be completely in the right, isn’t that right? Why, sweetie, they wouldn’t kill or rape anybody who didn’t deserve it, now would they? And if an Arab/Iraqi/Iranian/whatever gets killed or raped, why that person must be a bad person, isn’t that right? It’s only logical, right? I mean, this is America, you know.
In case you missed it, I’m being sarcastic. Things won’t change much until we get rid of Bush, his cronies in and out of government, the Republicans and the wealthy oligarchs who have blindly supported him, and the Republicans that have been inserted into positions in the bureaucracy and the judiciary since Bush came to office. These people are ignorant, they are arrogant, they are utterly corrupt, ethically and morally bankrupt, and they are power-hungry, and they understand nothing except how to get power. If they aren’t rooted out of government then within a generation the streets of America will run as red with blood as the streets of Baghad do now.
!!!!!!!!!!!! EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION !!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t think Bush has any intention of vetoing the Supplemental funding bill if it ever gets to his desk. One of the benchmarks he has to certify turns Iraq’s oil over to the major American and British oil companies is buried in this Supplemental!
Please read Richard Beham’s “George Bush’s Land Mine” just posted here on Common Dreams. Excerpt:
“The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ACT NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have to contact every member in the Congress that is on the panel to reconcile the House and Senate version of the Supplemental funding bill that just passed both houses of Congress. This “benchmark” has to be stripped out of this bill before it goes to Shrub’s desk!
GO! GO! GO!!!
P.S. I’m going to go on over to Move On and see what the can do.
Thanks.
Yeah, I have always suspected CIA or some other involvement in the mosque bombing. It is simple: divide and conquer 101.
Many Americans with no understanding of anything dismiss the civilian death toll in Iraq, “Those people have been killing eachother for thousands of years.”It’s their way to excuse the mass death that has gripped Iraq since Uncle Sam took over. It’s as if they forgot that the Europeans have also been killing eachother for thousands of years.
Maybe Saddam killed over one-hundred thousand people in almost 30 years of rule, but ten times that number have died since we took over Iraq four years ago.
The new darkest day in Iraqi history involves the American invasion. This is not a good PR strategy for a country concerened with random terror attacks by hateful individuals.
Besides, the Shiite holy Muslim shrine, al Askari, had co-existed in Iraq for thousands of years. How convenient that it just all of a sudden gets blown up when America takes over the country?
crazy
mass murder, over what?
It is almost like a game PJD. It makes me sick.
The Great Decider who pretends to be such a big Christian ought to regard his religion’s tract:
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
!!!!!!!!!TAKE NOTE!!!!!!!!!
Counting the cost
Richard Horton
March 27, 2007 1:58 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_horton/2007/03/counting_the_cost.html
Our collective failure has been to take political leaders at their word. This week, the BBC reported that the government’s own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American- and British-led invasion in March 2003.
Immediately after publication, Blair’s official spokesman said that The Lancet’s study “was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate”. The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were “extrapolated” and a “leap”. President Bush said: “I don’t consider it a credible report”.
Scientists at the UK’s Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study’s methods were “tried and tested”. Indeed, the Hopkins approach would likely lead to an “underestimation of mortality”.
The Ministry of Defense’s chief scientific advisor said the research was “robust”, close to “best practice”, and “balanced”. He recommended “caution in publicly criticizing the study”.
I have to say that I think the 70+% of Iraqis who say that violence against american troops is justified are absolutely justified not only is saying that, but in doing whatever they possibly can to force the invaders out of their country. The sooner they succeed, the better. And not just for Iraq, but for the US as well. America needs to learn it’s lessons every generation it seems.
While the article names names and cites incidents, that alone, is not sufficient proof that the claims made here are anything more than claims.
I also note that the opinions expressed are contentions that can as easily be the result of ’street talk’ promotions of insurgents who would like to hide behind distortions that assist their ’cause’ in a reather obvious way.
Repeated lies are a proven device used by experienced propagandists to legitimize claims that have no basis in truth. The objective of any spin is to present the wrong face toward the viewer.
Pictures are always worth far more than words, but we must learn to read the words for exactly what they state, and not what the intended impression is.
Read this article again and evaluate the claims made vs, things that can be proven.
It is almost like a game PJD. It makes me sick.
Yeah, the while the US thugs are inflicting murder and mayhem, they are hooting and laughing exactly like the drunk local bar patrons when the “Stillers” won the super bowl…
I will tell you what we know to be the truth Bush Lied and People Died! What else do you need, NOUN, even the main stream media bought and sold too the republicans, know it is more our fault then anyone else’s. Read it again and weep, because it is the fault of the Bush Crime Family that this country will not live in peace for many, many years to come and we have no one to blame but the one who put the Bush’s in place in the first place. Vote, and get them out of office in 2008!
I keep telling my congressman out of Iraq now. I have been doing so since before this fiasco ever got started.
And don’t give me this we were misled crap. I with a simple internet connection was able to find the information to know that Bush was pedaling a bunch of lies to get us into this war. It doesn’t speak very highly of a congressman’s intelligence resources if I can do better than him with just the internet.
Also he is a democrat that voted for the war and has voted funding at every turn. I have no representation for my views in DC. Either do most Americans. Our congress does not work on the behalf of the people any more.
Let’s get a third party going and break the duopoly.
I have been in anti war marches, walk and ride my bike everywhere, rarely drive at all, written my congresspeople and sent numerous emails (a waste of time) to the president and veep protesting their actions and lies. Right now I want to offer my regret, from my heart, that this nation has played such horror upon the people of Iraq and the Middle East in general. There are not many words that can express it.
Vote and get them out of office? Is this some sort of Democratic party lovefest or something? Has this party played no role here? And remember the factory that produced drugs for much of north east Africa? The one in Sudan that Clinton bombed.
Most Americans have drawn the conclusion that voting matters very little when the choices are so limited, one of the two wings of the corprorate party.
Wasn’t Johnson a Democrat? Any apologies forthcoming for 3 million dead Vietnamese and 57,000 dead Americans?
I suppose if one considers politics putting a piece of paper in a ballot box every four years then voting for a Democrat is the right thing to do;you’ll starve on Friday instead of Thursday. You’ll get an extra day.
But it is obvious that a movement needs to be built that is independent of these two big business parties. Politics is what you do every day, between elections, and helping to build that alternative wherever you can is a step in the right direction.
Challenging the status quo, not preserving it, will make a difference.
First, to PDJ, I want to personally apologize for the evil that is being done in the Middle East in my name. I am more than ashamed. I’m devestated. But whatever I am feeling, it can never make up for your losses. I am truely sorry.
For everyone else here, I am assuming that you are some of the American electorate that realizes that just voting every four years is not enough! That we as individuals are responsible for the mess we are in because we defend our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our right to have our vote count for a lot of years. Now that we are awake, we have two things that have to be done to right the wrongs of our nation. Number one: IMPEACH BUSH NOW!! Support Kucinich to have him re-introduce Articles of Impeachment in the House.
Number two: Support electoral and finance campaign finance reform. We are already winning in this area; 47 States have already signed on to the “Compact for Agreement Among States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote”. This would end the fiasco’s of Florida and Ohio and make the Electoral College go away. All 47 States have introduced legislation. It has already passed in many. In Oregon, we had our first public hearing this week. Join the effort on your State’s and on the Federal level for reform by joining in the campaigns at Common Cause, fairvote.org, nationalpopularvote.com, and the Progressive States Network. WE ARE WINNING BACK THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE!!!! And some of this will be in place before the next election! Be a part of taking back our democracy!
GO!!! Make it happen!!!! Raise hell! Make it LOUD!!! LOUDER!!!! And don’t forget to laugh every day!
We are all one.
Peace, love and harmony is the only way.
Those who follow the western leaders are being seduced/brainwashed by the darkness.
The western leaders put profit over human life and are not fit to be where they are, in fact they should be imprisoned where they can never again influence our lives.
Resist hate, resist greed, resist division - these are tools of the elite to control and enslave us.
Embrace peace, embrace love, embrace harmony - these are what we are and our tools for true freedom.
noun: first of all I won’t be so crude as to tell you what noun I am thinking of right now. So true; many accusations, but not documentation and proof. Just like the run-up to the war.
What is not an unfounded accusation is the first destruction of Falluja. This was done as an exercise in demonstrating to Iraqis the folly of resistance to overwhelming American firepower. This action alone merits the trial, conviction, and hanging of the hierarchy of the Bush Administration for war crimes.
Though, once again, the article presents accusations without proof, it is not hard to connect the dots between an invading force that is now devoid of purpose except to look out for and avenge their own, and that region where the majority of their own are being killed and maimed.