LIBERATION BY DEATH[thumb=B]pk.JPG[/thumb]
LIBERATION LIES Thousands of Iraqis have received Liberation prize of DEATH by US Liberators. A sad story by MARC details how DEATH Liberated Iraqis helpless women and childern. How many others will be liberated by evil death and how long EVIL will disguise liberation?
COVER STORY
The evil, the grotesque and U.S. official lies
MARC W. HEROLD
When U.S. `precision’ bombing really is not so.
“So far, the liberators have succeeded only in freeing the souls of the Iraqis from their bodies.”
- George Monbiot, April 1, 2003.1
“We had a great day. We killed a lot of people. We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do? I’m sorry… but the chick was in the way.”
CHERYL DIAZ MEYER/THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS/REUTERS
By April 1, 700 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been fired and 8,000 bombs had been dropped [by 12 p.m. on March 29, the respective figures were 675 and 6,000; by 12 a.m. on March 27, and it was 600 and 4,300].3
U.S. commanders and pilots said they were taking great pains to limit casualties in their efforts to overthrow President Saddam Hussein. At the receiving end, Iraqi officials said over 50 civilians were pulverised by a blast at a busy marketplace in northwestern Baghdad on March 28.
Wherein lies the truth? Rageh Omaar of the BBC in Baghdad provides the answer:
By late evening, 52 corpses passed through the al-Noor hospital. Even the battle-hardened doctors at Noor said this U.S. attack marked a fresh descent into horror:
"There were limbs torn off, and burns, multiple shrapnel injuries, head and chest injuries… [doctor Tarif Jamil said] I saw about six children - all dead - and at least three women."10
On the night of March 28, Navy commander Penfield was `apparently still buzzing’, saying “I can’t sleep yet.”
Buzzing and exhilarated.
In the cloudless, star-lit night of Baghdad, the wailing of women emanating from a poor house was a beacon of grief. Inside, a dozen Iraqi women clad in full-length, black cloaks sat huddled on the floor, bobbing back and forth and sending piercing, high-pitched screams into the night of Baghdad. They mourned the three boys - aged 12, 18 and 12 - of the al-Hamdami family.11
Exhilaration and soul-wrenching grief co-existed as the day of March 28 faded away.
“It was all nice and calm in the city…”
Earlier on March 28, two other U.S. “guided” projectiles landed in the Al-Mansour neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing eight persons and injuring 33. Jo Wilding provided a first-hand account of what he saw on March 29:12
Jo Wilding notes:
“Something is wrong. There are too many civilian casualties, too far from military targets, for all of these to be mistakes. Either they are hitting civilians on purpose, to whip up fear in the hope of spurring rebellion, or their weapons are not as precise as they say, in which case they are not suitable for use in an urban environment. There’s no justification for using any weapons here, but if you cannot hit a military target without causing civilian casualties, you don’t have the right to attack it.”
A report, titled "Kids Became Human Torches'", describes the scene at Janabiyah, where U.S. precision’ weapons hit:15
“Bloodied school books and children’s shoes lie amidst animal carcasses on the road leading to the Ismail’a farm in this village… the main building of this hamlet, accessible via a checkpoint manned by militiamen, has been levelled, the second burned out and the third partially destroyed. A neighbour told an AFP journalist that two missiles fired by coalition warplanes on Saturday night caught five sleeping families on the farm. The raid left 20 people dead… littered amongst the rubble spread over the grass were carcasses of four cows, their eye, nose and mouth cavities blackened by swarms of flies. Two dogs, sheep and chickens lay motionless nearby. Five children were turned into human torches in this house because of the gas cylinders inside,' one of the survivors said, wondering how God spared him while four other family members were wounded. Their bodies protected me because I was in a corner.'”
What might General Vincent Brooks have to say about how his precision missiles transformed five children into human torches?
Another six civilians were killed and six homes destroyed inside Baghdad in the al-Amin neighbourhood in east Baghdad.16 The Al-Salehia Telecommunications Centre of Baghdad was completely levelled by U.S. strikes on March 30. The magnitude of the destruction and the obviously injured persons were captured in a published photograph:
That same day, U.S. bombs fell into the industrial neighbourhood of al-Zafaraiya in southern Baghdad, killing another six civilians.
At 11 a.m. on March 31, a U.S. bomb struck the dirt-poor Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of Rahmaniya in Baghdad.17
“That Bush is a despicable coward. But we will be victorious with the help of God.”
On March 31, U.S. Marines in a Bradley fighting vehicle machine-gunned to death, 11 civilians at a U.S. Army check point on Route 9 near Najaf. The Iraqi family of 17 had left their village, packed into a 1974 Land Rover, wearing their best clothes “to look American” for the trip through the American lines. At least seven women and children died in the assault on a vehicle filled with civilians - Bakhat Hassan, 35, said from his hospital bed that he lost 11 members of his family [two daughters aged 2 and 5, a son aged 3, his parents, two older brothers and their wives, and two nieces aged 12 and 15].19 His wife, Lamea, 36, who is nine months pregnant, said she saw her three children die:
“I saw the heads of my two girls come off… my girls, I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead.” 20
“I watched their heads come off their bodies.”
The captain in charge at the checkpoint blamed his own troops for
"She just fell. I could see blood coming from her stomach. She was gasping, and as I ran to her she was crying, Mama, Mama'... It was so terrible... There were others also hurt, and everyone was crying and screaming. We had to wait for a car because ours was so badly damaged. But I knew my Samar would not last until we got to the hospital. And that is what happened... she died in my arms..." On April 3, yet another smart’ bomb struck a vegetable market at Nahrawan on the southeastern edge of Baghdad, killing eight civilians and injuring five.36 Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf reported the same day that 27 civilians had been killed and 193 wounded in the U.S.-U.K. bombing of Baghdad on April 3.37
"The missile, something big and unexploded, had come through her chest and her heart. She was covered in blood, unconscious. I ran down to the street, Daddy and Mummy behind me, screaming for an ambulance. There wasn’t any. A neighbour said he would drive us here to the hospital.
“We all knew it was too late. But we hoped, we hoped.' "Her father Najem Khalaf stood beside her corpse... A shell came down into the room as she was standing by the dressing-table,’ Najem says. `My daughter had just completed her Ph.D in Psychology and was waiting for her first job. She was born in 1970. She was 33. She was very clever. Everyone said I have a fabulous daughter. She spent all her time studying. Her head buried in books. She didn’t have a care about going out enjoying herself. My other daughter is the same. She has a Master’s degree in English and teaches at the University. Me? I’m just a lorry driver. A simple man.'” He holds out his dead daughter’s identity card for us to see. His fingers are covered in her blood… "38
His fingers are covered in her blood.
A litany of lies has spewed forth from the U.S. and U.K. officialdom, whose intent appears to be to capture the headlines regardless of the substance said.39
The biggest official U.S. lie remains the constantly repeated claim - one endlessly intoned by the solemn U.S. corporate media choir with solos sung by `defence intellectuals’ - that unprecedented precision bombing is taking place in Iraq, bombing which largely spares civilians.
The mainstream corporate media have, alas, once again blindly accepted Pentagon claims of precise' and surgical’ bombing. After the first night of U.S. attacks, NBC’s Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski pontificated: "Every weapon is precision guided - deadly accuracy designed to kill only the targets, not innocent civilians."40 The initial spin about deadly accuracy' would later give away to simply ignoring compelling evidence [from Britain] that the U.S. had bombed and killed many civilians, for example, parroting the Pentagon claim of having no knowledge of the deadly attack on the al-Shu'la market.41 When U.S. Marines machine-gun Iraqi civilians at a checkpoint outside Najaf, most of the mainstream U.S. media prefer the Pentagon's sanitised version.42 Egypt's leading newspaper, Al-Ahram, said in an editorial on April 2 that the clean war’ had become the dirtiest of wars, the bloodiest and the most destructive. Smart weapons have become deliberately stupid, blindly killing people in markets and popular neighbourhoods.43 Even the Red Cross said its doctors who visited southern Iraq saw “incredible” levels of civilian casualties.44 A Red Cross spokesperson in Baghdad mentioned a truckload of dismembered women and children in al-Hillah. And as American tanks blasted their way into the western suburbs of Baghdad on April 5, they pulverised more homes and a truck driver witnessed children `flying in the air’.45
American tanks firing… and on the receiving end, Iraqi children flying in the air.
“It was all nice and calm in the city… [but] once those bombs hit all hell broke loose.”
LIBERATION BY DEATH