Probe needed into U.S. action in Falluja-watchdog

Common dreams also carried the story with a photo of a girl. I had seen the girl on Reuters livefeed. Hard to forget.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0413-03.htm

If it weren't for Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyah, we wouldn't know about the IDF tactics that the US is employing in the seige of Fallujah.

Falluja ceasefire broken
Tuesday 13 April 2004, 23:06 Makka Time, 20:06 GMT

Occupation forces in Iraq have used F16 fighter planes to bomb the Nizal neighbourhood in Falluja, Aljazeera TV's correspondent has reported.

The journalist also said that the occupation on Tuesday pushed several tanks through the only open gateway used as an exit for Iraqi families in an apparent violation of the latest ceasefire in Falluja.

The invading forces were met with fierce resistance by the Falluja defenders which forced the US tanks into a quick withdrawal," correspondent Abd al-Azim Muhammad reported.

"Five were killed and severel others injured in the battles between the resistance fighters and the occupation troops."

The US fighter planes dropped stun bombs to cover their troops withdrawal, he added.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F8388B06-6A1B-43AB-8DF1-529ADBEA24DA.htm

down by the U.S. and what exactly what was being printed?

This story is, of course, of enormous importance, and comes now from Reuters. I was in France, with no access to American news sources, when the news came from an Iraqi doctor of an estimated 600 dead in Fallujah, and the story hit me with a huge, sickening impact. Can someone tell me if/how this story was reported in the States, and if it is general knowledge there that it is likely that 600 died in Fallujah?

I picked it up from UK and Al-Jazeera.

propaganda, saying that marine sharpshooters were only going after military targets.

Obviously children and old people were the target as well.

Why were $1000 a day mercenaries guarding food in Fullujah? Something sinks, and I believe the Iraqis know more about our shadowy military than the folks in the U.S.

Headline was 700 insurgents killed. Apparently women, children and elderly are being called insurgents. There may have been some innocents killed but that was their misfortune. The "president" responded, if I remember correctly, to a question from a reporter in last night's "press conference" about civilians being killed, as there may have been some caught in the crossfire.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that our government has committed a colossal war crime.

Nothing in any of the reports about men of "fighting age" (over the age of 10), not being allowed to leave, in any news sources here. As always the news being reported here is not what is going on.

For a good report read Rahul Mahajan's blog found at www.empirenotes.org He is an immpecable source. I know him personally.

War crimes.

http://wildfirejo.blogspot.com/ This is a long and very sad, disturbing report. Jo and the group she is with have been trying to work with kids at different centers holding "circuses".

An English activist in Iraq

Monday, April 12, 2004April 11th
Falluja

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few possessions, heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down. .......

snip to end:
And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, “I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right.” Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family home is right. Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right?

Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalise people so much that they’ve nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anaesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city’s under siege and aid isn’t getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you’re in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man’s chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house.

It’s a crime and it’s a disgrace to us all.

Posted by: Jo / 10:33 PM


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040426&s=jamail

Sarajevo on the Euphrates
by DAHR JAMAIL



Falluja, Iraq, a low-rise, mostly Sunni city of about 200,000, has become this war's Sarajevo. I was there on Saturday and Sunday during what was supposed to be a cease-fire. Instead of calm, I found a city under siege from American artillery and snipers.

At one of the city's clinics I saw dozens of freshly wounded women and children, victims of US Marine Corps munitions. Hospital officials report that more than 600 Iraqis have now been killed, most of them civilians. Two soccer fields in Falluja have been converted to graveyards. I went to Falluja with a small group of international journalists and NGO workers. We traveled in a large bus full of medical supplies; our plan was to unload our cargo, take a look around, then leave with as many wounded as we could take out with us.

This story about Fallujah is being buried with all the blather about last night's all important "press Conference" and with the lies and BS and complete and total coverage on every channel about the "testimony" in front of the "Commission".

We need to be calling every one of over representatives and Senators and the media calling attention to the plight of this town. Our military have committed far more atrocities in the course of this last year than the murder and mutilation of the four "civilian contractors" that had the misfortune of being in Fallujah at the wrong place and time. (Where was our military that should have come to their rescue?)

Is everyone here contacting their representatives and senators?

If you did what kind of responses did you receive?