Journalists tell of US Falluja killings
by
Thursday 17 March 2005 10:41 AM GMT


Journalists accuse US soldiers of targeting children


All is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different story.



The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.

One of the few reporters who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service. He interviewed a doctor who had filmed the testimony of a 16-year-old girl.

"She stayed for three days with the bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother and two sisters.

She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and father directly, without saying anything. They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head. After this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at them, so they shot him dead," Jamail relates.

Disturbing reports

Another report comes from an aid convoy headed up by Dr Salem Ismael. He was in Falluja last month. As well as delivering aid he photographed the dead, including children, and interviewed remaining residents.

Again his story does not tally with the indifference shown by the main media networks.

"The accounts I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined"

Dr Salem Ismael,
aid convoy leader

"The accounts I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined," he says.

He relates the story of Hudda Fawzi Salam Issawi from the Julan district of Falluja: "Five of us, including a 55-year-old neighbour, were trapped together in our house in Falluja when the siege began. On 9 November American marines came to our house.

'My father and the neighbour went to the door to meet them. We were not fighters. We thought we had nothing to fear. I ran into the kitchen to put on my veil, since men were going to enter our house and it would be wrong for them to see me with my hair uncovered.

"This saved my life. As my father and neighbour approached the door, the Americans opened fire on them. They died instantly.

"Me and my 13-year-old brother hid in the kitchen behind the fridge. The soldiers came into the house and caught my older sister. They beat her. Then they shot her. But they did not see me. Soon they left, but not before they had destroyed our furniture and stolen the money from my father's pocket."

Targeting media

Journalist and writer Naomi Klein has also come under attack for insisting that US forces are eliminating those who dare to count casualties.

No less than the US ambassador to the UK David Johnson wrote a letter to British newspaper The Guardian that published Klein's work, demanding evidence, which she then provided.

The first piece of evidence Klein sent to Johnson was that the hospital in Falluja was raided to stop any reporting of casualties, a tactic that was later repeated in Mosul.

"The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control.





"The New York Times reported that 'the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casualties', noting that 'this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons'.

The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers 'stole the mobile phones' at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world."

As Dahr Jamail reports from his online diary "doctors are now technically forbidden to talk to the media or allow them to take photos in Iraqi hospitals unless granted permission from the Ministry of Health and its US-adviser".

Napalm-like weapons

Allied to this are various reports of the US using napalm and napalm-like weaponry in Falluja.




Jamail recounts: "Last November, another Falluja refugee from the Julan area, Abu Sabah, told me: 'They (US military) used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.'

"He explained that pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burned peoples' skin even when water was dumped on their bodies, which is the effect of phosphorous weapons, as well as napalm."

The reports of the use of napalm in civilian areas are widespread, as are many other frightening allegations.

The attacks on the hospitals and medical facilities in Falluja are also in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions.

But as Richard Perle, a senior adviser to US President George Bush said at the start of the Iraq war: "The greatest triumph of the Iraq war is the destruction of the evil of international law."


Aljazeera
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/689...2C060978A07.htm

Close

The only film footage of Fallujah was stolen in what appears to be a US domestic black Ops job. I guess the Neocons did not want the evidence of war their crimes getting out.

Today (feb 16) on Flashpoints: Within 24 hours of filmmaker Mark Manning arriving back from Fallujah with original footage has his hotel room and car broken into simultaneously and his footage stolen

Listen D'load ( http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:DRwaP0Q...+fallujah&hl=en links will be live at the google cache site / colored word highlights will make the right section easy to find ) (thanks to KPFA.org)

As I have said on another post, Bush will not always be president. War crimes have a way of being found out in the long run. It is funny that people who do war crimes always think that this time it is different. My cause is just and no one will care. They are always wrong. Ask the Waffen SS. When the Russans caught them they pounded shell caseings into their heads. Extreme example but a sample from history. Those officers in Iraq should have read more history. Your cause is never just enough to do the war crimes.

Today on CNN, Wolf Blitz was reporting from right "outside" of Fallujah. Wolf said that 1/3 of the 300,000 Fallujans were moving back into the badly war torn city. He interviewed a couple of US military officers who said that Fallujah was insurgent-free now. Although, the report did make it clear that Fallujah suffered a great deal of destruction--it was being rebuilt and Wolf painted an optimistic picture for the future of the city. However, there are reports by American and International independent reporters who paint a different picture of Fallujah during the attack and today.

Dahr Jamail has reported on Fallujah since the beginning of the attacks, but now other reporters are backing his stories. The Italian woman reporter who was recently released from her captors originally said she thought the Americans fired on her car because she was investigating Fallujah. Below is another story that has similarities to the one posted by Calken:


Journalist arrested in Iraqby
Monday 28 March 2005 4:17 PM GMT




Iraqi police have detained a correspondent of Dubai-based television Al-Arabiya at Baghdad airport after confiscating film footage, the interior ministry confirmed.



"He was arrested at the airport because police found in his baggage a cassette about Falluja," a bastion of resistance recaptured in a US-led offensive late last year, a ministry official said on Monday.



The television said it was in contact with the ministry to secure the release of the correspondent, whom it named as Wail Isam.



According to the station, another correspondent based in Falluja was detained for 11 days in November by the US military, which led the massive onslaught to wrest the city from anti-US fighters.


Agencies
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/641...E60F13CF53B.htm

NBC, BBC, CNN, ITN and others all have and have shown extensive footage taken during the most recent battle in Fallujah. Someone even posted a link to some that was available on the net in a thread in the U.S. Military forum about two months ago methinks, but the bunker buddies have that place so topsey turvey it's hard to find now. If I can find it I'll post a link, eh?

Okay, here's the thread with the link to BBC film footage of the preparation for and battle in Fallujah last November, eh? Enjoy!

If I can locate any other sources I'll post the links here if you'd like.