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US marine pointing his rifle at a wounded Iraqi in a mosque
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Millions
of viewers around the world were horrified when their local news
media broadcast footage of a US soldier killing at point blank
range a wounded Iraqi man lying in a mosque.
Pool
journalist Kevin Sites, an embed traveling with US marines, shot
the footage and later said the man appeared unarmed and
unthreatening. This is what the footage showed.
“He's
(expletive) faking he's dead!”
“Yeah,
he's breathing,” another Marine is heard saying.
“He's
faking he's (expletive) dead!” the first Marine says.
A
Marine raises his rifle toward the wounded prisoner lying on the
floor and umps a bullet into his head. US networks blurred the
image or blacked it out. The BBC showed it. So did Aljazeera. As
the wounded man is shot, his legs rise in the air in reaction to
the impact of the bullet to his skull. Blood is spattered on the
mosque wall behind him.
“He's
dead now,” a Marine is heard saying.
There
is no escaping this was a war crime. Now the world can see for
itself that the torture and murderof Iraqis while in detention
at Abu Ghraib was not an isolated matter.
How
many more Iraqis were killed in this way that video cameras were
not able to capture?
Hello
America. This is your US army, valiant and proud. Today we will
review the finer merits of military strategy when taking and
maintaining a hold on a vibrant city of some 300,000 men, women
and children.
Step
1: The Media.
This
has to fully comply with our strategic goals by ensuring that
key words are repeated thoroughly when referring to a certain
subject matter. In Fallujah’s case, we will allow the media to
repeat words like “bastion,” “stronghold,” “insurgent
base,” “insurgent center of Iraq,” “terrorist heart of
the Sunni triangle,” and so on, until all semblance that this
was once a city bustling with civilian life is erased from the
psyche and the reader is fully engrossed in the mandated logic
that the US military is fighting insurgents in their terrorist
base.
Furthermore,
ensure that the local and world media toe the line when it comes
to reporting about Fallujah and any other military campaigns:
Iraq’s
media regulator has warned news organisations to stick to the
government line on the US-led attack in Falluja or face legal
action.
“We
hope you comply ... otherwise we regret we will be forced to
take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national
interests,” the statement said, without elaborating.
Count
on a media blackout and our ordinary citizens’ ignorance to
ensure they do not realize that our tactics are as terrorist and
inhumane as those of countries we previously condemned on the
world stage:
The
fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood seized Hama as the first step
towards its goal of a national uprising against the secular
Baathist regime. The Syrian President demanded their surrender.
His army shelled the city, and special forces went in to kill or
capture the militants. The Syrians employed the same strategy
that the US is using now. Its tanks and artillery waited outside
the city; they fired on militants and civilians alike. Its elite
units, like the American Marines surrounding Falluja today,
braced themselves for a bloody battle.
The
US condemned Syria for the assault that is believed to have cost
10,000 civilian lives. The Syrian army destroyed the historic
centre of Hama, and it rounded up Muslim rebels for imprisonment
or execution. Syria's actions against Hama came to form part of
the American case that Syria was a terrorist state. Partly
because of Hama, Syria is on a list of countries in the Middle
East whose regimes the US wants to change (Charles Glass in
Sulaymaniyah, The Independent, November 9, 2004).
Step
2: Public relations. Tell the world the city we are about to
storm has been emptied of civilians:
Mohammed
Abboud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at
their Falluja home yesterday, unable to take him to hospital as
fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down.
“My
son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn,
but we couldn't take him for treatment,” said Mr Abboud, a
teacher.
“We
buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go
out” (Fadel al-Badrani for the BBC in Fallujah,
November 10, 2004).
Make
sure our soldiers know that they aren't fighting for the people
of Iraq but for cold revenge:
I'm
not sure it will be better when we're gone, but it's gotten to
the point of retribution for all the things that have happened.
The beheadings, the bombings and everything (Tom Lasseter Knight
Ridder/Tribune news – November 13).
Even
if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards,
the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength
of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible
result when madmen take on America (Ralph Peters, New York
Post, November 4).
“This
is for the Americans of Blackwater that were murdered here in
2004 Semper Fidelis (always faithful),” is scrawled in black
print on a section of the bridge across the Euphrates where the
remains of two out of four Americans, killed by a mob in
Fallujah at the end of March, were hung.
The
graffiti is signed “3-5”, an abbreviation of the 3rd
Battalion 5th Marines, one of the units that is taking part in a
massive US-Iraqi assault on the rebel stronghold to regain
control of the city.
It
finished with: “PS, Fuck You” (AFP, November 14).
“I
see the little kids in the cars and I feel sorry for them, but
when they turn 16 they’re evil.” (Lindsey Hilsum, with the
1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah, November 14, 2004)
Tell
enough lies to our troops until even our own spokesman starts to
believe them:
The
goals are simple: to win the gratitude of Fallujah civilians who
will no longer have to cope with Iraqi and foreign fighters in
their midst; and to demonstrate to other insurgent-dominated
towns and cities what can happen if they refuse to participate
peacefully in the Iraqi political process (John Diamond, Steve
Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY, November 12).
Let
our troops know that God wants them to kill Iraqis in Fallujah,
that US President George Bush received direct orders from the
Divine that war was sanctioned in Fallujah:
The
marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have
been attacked by a faceless enemy,” said Colonel Gareth Brandl.
“But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in
Falluja. And we're going to destroy him” (Paul Wood, BBC News,
embedded with US Marines near Fallujah, November 7).
We
must not be afraid to make an example of Fallujah. While we
always seek to fight humanely, the most humane thing we can do
in that tormented city is just to win, to burn out the plague of
fanaticism and prove to Iraq's people that the forces of terror
will not be allowed to enslave them (Ralph Peters, New York
Post, November 4).
Tell
the Iraqi people that their own representatives in the interim
government are negotiating a peaceful settlement, while in
reality, we are preparing for a major assault:
Although
the Fallujah operation has lasted less than a week, it was
several weeks in the planning and the forces involved may be
tied down establishing stability for some time to come (John
Diamond, Steve Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY –
November 12).
Make
the fighting seem like a video game our young soldiers may have
played a few years ago, or even better, a Hollywood production:
“A
psychological operations Humvee drove by, blaring Richard
Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries,” the music used in a
famous helicopter attack scene in the movie “Apocalypse Now”
(James Janega, Chicago Tribune staff reporter, November 10).
Step
3: Kill everything in sight.
Fire
at everything that moves. This will guarantee that we save our
own skins. Fire before you even know what you are firing at:
“Jump
out. Kick in door. Spray machine-gun fire. Run to rooftop. Kill
enemy. Jump back into armored vehicle. Move to new location”
(Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder/Tribune news, November
13).
To
disarm possible booby traps, mines, and other explosives, the
advancing forces fired rockets charged with plastic explosives
down the empty streets and alleys, which detonated a number of
jury-rigged bombs (Anne Barnard, Boston Globe Staff,
November 9, 2004).
“I'm
supposed to shoot into the houses before our troops go in”, a
weary Porter told an Agence France-Presse correspondent in this
dusty, devastated city that was once home to around 300,000
Sunni Muslims.
Shoot
unarmed Iraqi soldiers. It’s okay; we’ll probably get a few
Purple Hearts for it:
Jeff
was about five feet away from two unarmed Iraqi
soldier-prisoners - each about his own age - when he was ordered
to shoot them. He said he looked them in their eyes before
closing his own, then pulled the trigger.
He
took off two dog tags around his neck, threw them at me and
said, ‘Don't you understand? Your brother is a murderer,’
Debbie said (Adam Gorlick, Associated Press, November
13).
A
US marine has sparked world-wide revulsion after being seen
shooting an injured and helpless Iraqi. The sickening scene was
broadcast by Channel 4 News after a fire-fight in the rebel
stronghold of Falluja.
The
trigger-happy soldier had been asked to get nearer to the
injured man. But instead of trying to capture him, the marine is
seen leaning over a wall and cold-bloodedly shooting him (Paul
Gilfeather, Political Editor, Sunday Mirror, November
14).
“I
decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S.
helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the
river.”
He
watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they
tried to cross. Then, he “helped bury a man by the river bank,
with my own hands.”
“I
kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see
some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit
the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours
through orchards” (AP, ABCNews.com, from accounts by AP
photographer Bilal Hussein, November 14).
The
morbid gallery of quotes, facts, and figures above printed and
published in Western media by verifiable and veritable sources
can stream on endlessly. But these testimonials are enough to
conjure the reality of the US onslaught in Iraq. It is not
humanitarian, nor is it compassionate. It bears the mark of
skull ‘n’ bones—the more killed the better.
It
is the taste of hatred and brutality, one that has been equalled
by the razing armies of history—the Nazis, the Romans, the
Visigoths, the Mongols—but rarely exceeded.
This
article is not endowing the reader with fuel for hatred. It is
not about wanton violence or revenge. It is about truth, the
truth that has been kept from a majority of readers and viewers.
Insulated and protected from the way war is waged, they refuse
to believe that a Western army can execute people in cold blood
and fire on unarmed civilians, that a free press is actually
less free than many presume.
Firas
Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at
firascape@hotmail.com.
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