In other news, snakes can't play the harpsichord. It's nice to see that American commanders realize this, though. Maybe we'll get the hell out a little more quickly now. Maybe this will finally kill the flypaper theory.
Grim, Angry Rites as Falluja Buries Its Dead Smoke drifts past a mosque in the restive Iraqi city of Falluja, November 18, 2004. The US says civilian casualties were light, but locals say many residents died. There are no figures for the civilian toll. REUTERS/Akram Saleh FALLUJA -- The urban battlefield of Falluja is disgorging its dead. Slowly. Another truckload of bodies reached the outskirts of the city for burial Friday in a ceremony marked by anger at U.S. troops, who say they killed 1,200 Iraqi and foreign fighters. With Marines scouring the largely deserted city house by house and occasionally clashing with remnants of the insurgent force, travel in or out is limited but the Americans have allowed local voluntary organizations to retrieve some bodies... ...U.S. commanders say they do not believe civilians were killed during the offensive begun 11 days ago... ...As onlookers stood in line to hear the traditional prayers for the dead, the preacher also called for revenge on Americans and their Iraqi allies, who believe the assault on Falluja has "broken the back" of the Sunni Muslim insurgency. "We ask you God to be merciful," the preacher chanted. "Shake the earth beneath the feet of the Americans, shake the earth beneath the feet of the Crusaders, shake the earth beneath the feet of the hypocrites that help them. "God grant victory to Iraq." I say, rather, that if God gets involved at all that he grant victory to the idea that this mode of being in the world is a mode of permanent failure and permanent pain, no matter who employs it.
God's too busy helping people score goals, hit HRs, shoot baskets, etc. The important stuff. Any time left over is needed to rig lottery numbers.
Why Pre-Emptive Invasions Encourage Soldiers to Commit War Crimes The implications of shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in cold blood by Trevor Royle Crime came to the city of Fallujah last week and it was committed under the unforgiving gaze of a television camera, giving it international prominence. When a tense and battle-weary US Marine lifted his assault rifle and fired at a wounded Iraqi, killing him instantly during mopping up operations, he was not only doing a bad thing, he was breaking the law as it is applied to the business of warfare. The US has not signed up to the International Criminal Court, precisely because it wants to protect its troops from prosecution in peace enforcement operations, but the assault on Fallujah was part of a series of military operations in an internal war and should therefore be subject to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Under their terms, wounded or incapacitated combatants must be treated humanely and protected from the summary justice of the casual head-shot. The conventions are quite clear on this point. Murder of stricken opponents is not allowed: it is a war crime. The case is being investigated and no doubt the marine will be punished, but his action symbolizes the hopeless muddle that the post-conflict operations in Iraq have become. It also brings into sharper focus the problems facing the coalition forces on the ground. What kind of war are they fighting and what are its rules? Having been outed on the lack of weapons of mass destruction President George W Bush hides behind the fig-leaf of the interventionist war: it was right to mount a pre-emptive strike against a greater threat, in this case Saddam Hussein. Prime Minister Tony Blair has fallen in line with the policy and sees no reason to change his mind. The intervention in Iraq might be unpopular, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has called it “illegal”, but both leaders say that it is a just conflict. However, if US and British soldiers are engaged in a war – Blair claims that it is now in its second phase – then rules must apply. So far, the US has shown little inclination to pay heed to the Geneva Conventions, witness the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and the impending appointment of Albert Gonzales as attorney-general. This is the lawyer who advised the Bush administration that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant because the war against terrorism “renders quaint some of its provisions”. Small wonder that US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld nodded in agreement because it gave his soldiers carte blanche to act as they saw fit and not as they should. But even if international law has been abandoned, the murder of Iraqis cannot be condoned. Throughout last week’s fighting in Fallujah, US commanders insisted that it was a joint operation with the Iraqis and that it was being undertaken at the request of Iyad Allawi’s interim government. If that is the case, then the US forces were acting in support of the civil authorities and, by right, should be subject to its laws. Any soldier breaking that code would be handed over to the Iraqi police for criminal investigation. Of course, that will not happen...
TIME Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware with Lopate on what he saw in Fallujah. excerpts: LOPATE: Did you feel that it was okay to leave Fallujah because things have been brought under control? WARE: No, I mean, I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to confidently say that Fallujah is under control. I guess it depends on what your measure of control really is. There will always be insurgents in Fallujah. Fallujah is the dark heart of the insurgency. We may be able to dominate the city now that it’s been retaken, but whether you effectively control it; whether you stamp out that rising tide of resistance, I don’t think so. LOPATE: Is this like Groznyy in Chechnya , where the Russian forces have pretty much levelled the city and still face constant resistance? WARE: Yeah, I mean, there’s things of Groznyy, but certainly it’s not a direct comparison by any measure. There has been widespread destruction in Fallujah in the course of this terrible, terrible battle… LOPATE: Mosques and homes? WARE: Oh, absolutely, I mean… For example, the military unit I was with, I mean, the operation in Fallujah involved largely Marines, but also some army elements. I was with one of those elements. The way they proceeded through the city, given that there was booby-traps, improvised explosive devices, riddling the streets everywhere. Entire houses were rigged to blow. The way they proceeded was what they call “Reconnaissance by Fire.” If you’re going to go down a street first you scour it for any potential danger. How do you do that? You do it with a 25mm cannon on an armoured Bradley fighting vehicle. Or you do it with one 20mm tank round. Just blow up everything that looks vaguely suspicious. Then if someone shoots at you from a building, or there’s an explosion near a vehicle, don’t mess with it. Don’t go into the building looking for the guy… just level the building. And then go through the rubble afterwards. LOPATE: Well, that can’t be pleasing people who are not in support of the insurgents, but who consider Fallujah their home… WARE: Well, Fallujah, is actually called the City of Mosques . And whether you’re a Sunni, like most of the people in Western Iraq are, or whether you’re just an ordinary Iraqi, it still has some resonance. And to see a city destroyed liked that obviously won’t go without some repercussion... ...LOPATE: You talked about the information war, why has there been such disagreement over the dead and wounded on both sides? Is it because… the US government agencies have been downplaying them, and the… the Iraqi insurgents have been inflating them? Or is this also a way that the different media control reporting on this war…..? WARE: It’s a very complicated issue, but let me boil it down to one broad principle: In this war, like every other war I’ve been in, there’s one absolute, and that is that everyone lies. On all sides. Civil, military, the West, the Insurgents, the Jihadis, everyone is spinning the story. For their own purposes. I mean, don’t forget…. LOPATE: Well, what does that mean for you? You were covering the story. You had to go to the sources you could go to… How much could you trust them? WARE: Oh, I don’t trust anyone… ever. Ever. I just can never turn my back, and I can never trust anything that’s told to me. So, you need to check, recheck, and check again. For example, in terms of the insurgents, that’s how I began this long road and painful path that I’ve eventually taken of actually being able to penetrate the insurgents, and even the al Qaida Jihadis. I’d be told many things by them in meetings with them. As would all reporters. But a man masking his face in a scarf sitting in a car can tell you anything he likes. So, I kept saying, “Well, how do I know it’s true?” And it was from that that they eventually took me in deeper and deeper and deeper, to just show me, to prove to me their bona fides, and then the extent of what they were doing. It’s only with your own eyes that you can ever know anything... ...WARE: ...certainly, when we avail ourselves of broader media opportunities on television and radio, we are all saying the exact same thing: Iraq is an absolute disaster. And it’s …it’s… it’s not improving. It’s deteriorating with a rapid pulse. It’s a failing mission. I mean, for me, I’ve been asked, “Are we winning?” And I say, “Well, that’s not really the proper question. The question is how can we prevent from losing?” LOPATE: But, aren’t a lot of people putting their hopes… pinning their hopes on the elections that are coming up? WARE: Well they can pin as much as they like on those elections. I don’t know what good it’s going to do them. I mean, I’ll tell you right now, you can set any Disneyland date you like, let’s call it January 30th. You can hold an election. It will certainly look like an election. And it will sound like an election. But, anything other than sham, you can’t hope to produce.
Usually I don't particularly agree with lots of Mel's links ( and I do at least try to read most of them), but this one I loved. Thanks for posting it.
Interesting story there Mel, so the journalist is telling us that everyone lies. I guess that means he does too.
He's saying, in war, if you are seeking the truth, you have to be skeptical, ask questions and you shouldn't trust anyone - that's good journalism. Now, you can choose to decide what is true or not from a journalist like this, or from a reporter who merely reports something that's fed him. One of the reason's we are in the mess we're in is that most people (in the US anyway) can't differentiate from the bad/lazy reporting big media is giving them and true journalism.
"In this war, like every other war I’ve been in, there’s one absolute, and that is that everyone lies" I take that everyone to literally mean everyone, even journalist and reporters. They've got their own reasons for lieing and it's for selling papers (or magazines).
What he meant was that "everyone lies but me." What you should take from it is exactly what you ARE taking from it, I agree. Everything must be qualified, because you and I are not there, on the ground seeing specifics, and we are not in the control center seeing the big picture. We're seeing one take on one frame of an issue in a form suitable for broadcast. The "lie" may be damn near inherent to the form the info takes, regardless of intent. I am very much Jerry Mander-esque on form determining function when it comes to technology. You don't play paper-scissors-rock with a Trident missile; no matter how nice you are, a Trident missile has a singular form, a single function. Same with radio and television; their form determines much of what we get as so-called "information," and that wil not change wether or not the purveyor of such is "good" and trying to tell you the truth, or "bad" and lying. The most profound effect one can glean of this, if you don't work in production, is to be at the scene of some event, and then watch the portrayal of that event on the news. It's THEN that, having personal knowledge of the timbre and spectrum of that event, you come to understand the limitations of mass media to tell us ANY truth, and certainly it absolute failure in terms of succeeding to impart any Truth, captial T. That being said, pieces of what CAN be known are there, for the sifting, but any conclusion you come to must be both limited to the nexus of qualifications required for engaging mass media at all, and a reutrn/reliance on what you think you already know about how the world works and how it must work to go on in any significant sense. That's why so many conversations around here are intractable; we're often looking at the same information, the same frame of the same event (take 9/11 for example), and coming up with radically different conclusions...RADICALLY so. Because, in the absence of the fullest information, we fill in the gaps with ourselves, with who we've decided to be, and how we've decided to see the world.
It's nice when we can agree. I think it's unfortunate that there's not a more accurate way of reporting something, ufortunately just letting the camera roll doesn't always give an accurate representation either.
interesting link Mel .... here is another link with a another point of view http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1289429/posts#comment interesting comments about # of foreign fighters, drugs used by foreign fighters, and insurgent tactics.
Would this be the same Free Republic whose members accused Matt Drudge of throwing the election to Kerry by publishing exit polls early on Election Day?
From your link: "It was amazing to see how the American military had brought the world's most evil city to its knees." Why should I take this framing of events seriously?
Military Families & 9/11 Families Raise $500,000 for Falluja Refugees A delegation of military family members whose sons died while fighting in the Iraq war will travel to Jordan from December 27, 2004 to January 4, 2005 to deliver $600,000 worth of humanitarian supplies for refugees from the U.S. attack on Falluja. [includes rush transcript] The November attack, which virtually leveled the city and left some 2,000 Iraqis and 71 U.S. soldiers dead, also created thousands of refugees, who are living without adequate food, water, electricity and healthcare. Most of these refugees are children. In an Internet appeal, the military family members, in collaboration with U.S. peace groups, physicians" organizations, and September 11 families, quickly raised $100,000 in donations. And humanitarian groups such as the Middle East Children"s Alliance and Operation USA contributed $500,000 worth of medical supplies...