There’s no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gate and they shot him. None of them have dared come out since. No one had dared come to get his body, horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditions of treating the body immediately. They couldn’t have known we were coming so it’s inconceivable that anyone came out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.The above is a tiny excerpt from a blogged eyewitness account of what was happening in Falujah, Iraq on April 11, 2004.
The next time you turn on the TV news and think you're getting the whole story, think again. The TV news is USELESS. Thanks to blogs written by people INSIDE Iraq, we can know the real story of Iraq. Because of bloggers INSIDE Fallujah, we can know that in Falluajah there were US Marine snipers killing unarmed men, women and children. In the account the above quote was taken from the writer is a British woman named Jo who calls herself an "English Activist in Iraq." But in this case, activism means trying to help save the wounded from dying in the streets of Falujah after they are cut down by American bullets. It also means being shot at by Americans bent on some sort of strange revenge for four mercenaries who were murdered by locals a few weeks back. Four American mercenaries dead and a town is terrorised, many of it's locals murdered in cold blood by American troops.
This has happened. American snipers murdering innocent civilians, randomly, for being out when they were told not to be - by American forces, who are still trying to get "revenge". They're a foreign occupying force and they've lost friends and allies to the locals who just want to have their country back. No American has a right to revenge in a land that is not their own.
All this has happened - American soldiers sniping at men, women and children, some armed, some not - and it wasn't on the evening news.
Thank god for blogs, is all I can say.
By the way, only men fight. Women do not. I think it's an Islam thing. I know someone who is Muslim and will ask him about this the next time I see him. Of course, I live in America, where I can still go outside any time of the day or night without anything even vaguely resembling the kind of fear those citizens of that town lived with.
One other thing that worries me (aside from the USMil sniping at innocent women and children) is that the woman who wrote that blog I quoted from hasn't updated it since April 12. I hope it's because she hasn't been witness to any more of this kind of violence and has nothing to write about. I hope it's not because she's fallen victim to some of that kind of violence.
Check out Wildfirejo's blog.
Check her post that I quoted above.
Hey Pete...I have been reading your webpage for awhile now and enjoy your page and your views on the world. But this is one issue I must comment on. I was in Iraq for Desert Storm. I will not be naive and say what you read is not true. Its just that I have been there and have seen how this kinda news gets around. When I was there they had groups of the Iraq army dressed in U.S. uniforms and they would snip and kill little children and women and then blame the americans. They do this to scare the people of Iraq and create more uprisings. Just somthing for you to think about. U.S troops are very proud men and yes...not all of them are perfect..but we must look deeper into the rumors before we blame our men in uniform. Thanks for your time. Take care.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve, glad to see you're still hanging around! Well, I can understand your feelings, completely. But the accounts I'm reading are from people who were there as well. I'm not trying to "blame our men in uniform". I'm trying to blame the men who would hold a city hostage for the actions of 10-15 men who caused the death of four people on the USMil's payroll.
ReplyDeleteAs for Iraqi's shooting there own during Desert Storm, are you sure you witnessed this yourself? Or did someone tell you that this was going on? I find it much easier to believe that USMilitary men would follow orders and protect peace and American lives by putting their sniper training to use, than Regular Iraqi civilians shooting their own people just to make the Americans look bad.
Like I said, I don't even blame the US snipers for following orders. It's a different world over there - it's war. But as the stronger side, it's up to the guys running the show over there to think about the interests of their "enemies" as well as their own.
These are Iraqi people, according to what I've read, not Baathist sympathizers - but normal folks scared of what the Americans might do. Let's face it, we don't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to this sort of thing... (Attrocities in Vietnam and Japan come to mind.)
War is Hell... war is ugly! Get over it!!
ReplyDeleteHow Naive! I'm currently in Baghdad. I patrol the streets of Baghdad city on a daily basis and i've served in the "USmil" (as you put it) for almost 16 years. You've got to be out of your mind if you think we have US snipers killing innocent people. I wish you would go on one patrol with me and see the danger we put up with because "bleeding heart" americans like yourself have every regulation possible to actively keep our hands tied in fighting this illusive enemy. Just last night, an innocent iraqi man was shot several times in the head about 25 Meters away from me by a drive by attack. Reason? it's exactly what Steve said above. They killed this man in front of us and in front of the Iraqi people to show the Iraqi people that we can't keep them safe. My gunners weren't able to get a shot off because there were so many people around and they didn't want to hurt anyone else.
ReplyDeleteit's amazing what people will be convenced of with feeble minds!!!
First off, I totally respect any person who decides they want to server their country. My problems are with those who run things and rarely with those who follow orders.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I'm pretty sure you're not in charge of everything regarding theUSMil in Iraq, so you probably can't speak for everything that the various branches of theUSMil do in Iraq.
Third, "US snipers killing innocent people" can easily be relabled as "US snipers killing insurgents" and become standard operating procedures for the US Marines. I'm guessing you're familiar with what a "free fire zone" is but for those readers who are not, it's something that transforms a potential innocent person into a potential insurgent. If I understand correctly (please correct me if I don't), free fire zones basically allow USGIs to shoot at any potential threat--men, women and children included. The problem comes in how "potential threats" are determined.
Fourth, it's not "bleeding heart" Americans that created the Geneva Conventions it was a group of civilized nations. These conventions help protect all of those people in combat situations from being treated horribly by their enemy. If theUSMil violates those rules, then the enemy feels justified in doing the same. If the US had followed every rule in the book but the insurgents went around committing atrocities like kidnappings, decapitations and so on, the US would have a much easier time labelling the insurgents as savages. Instead we end up, with every person who feels the urge, pointing and accusing the US of being the pot that calls the kettle black.
I'm sorry you have to make life and death decisions as often as you do. I don't envy you at all--what you do is a very difficult job. I hope you understand that people like me want you to be back home and safe. I understand that situations as you and Steve described do occur and to me such stories only serve to strengthen my belief that we should only be involved in wars that are 100% justified.
I do appreciate you serving, Sarge. I hope we can get you home soon. In the meantime I hope the insurgency can just get it through their heads that it's not worth it to keep fighting like they are. They need to realize that there are other paths to peace and control of their own country. Instead of violence, they should be getting involved in stabilizing their country--proving to their own new government and to the US that Iraq is capable of governing itself. I believe that this is the best and shortest road to both peace and to getting the US out of Iraq and I think it serves well everyone involved.
Thanks for posting, Sarge. I do appreciate hearing from people who disagree with me.
I do wish you'd think twice about things like saying I have a feeble mind. Instead of attacking my character, you might just stick to explaining how I'm wrong. I might have to accuse you of being a politician! ;)
Good luck to you. (I really mean that.)
Pete, C'mon you mention the Geneva Convention and rules of war. What about the Serbians who slaughtered numerous bosnians, women and children I might add. I know this because I was in Bosnia near the city of Zvornick with the 3rd armored cav in 2000. It was there where I pulled guard duty over a mass grave site. there were the skeletal remains of men,women and children. Many had there hands still tied behind there backs, but I guess it was okay because I guess they had it coming. What was it that they did to piss off the serbians? Oh yeah, there religious beliefs were different. In other words I guess the Geneva Convention only applies to Americas USMil, because nobody else seems to follow it.
ReplyDeleteHey Randy, don't put words in my mouth--I never say ANYone has it coming.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, the Geneva Convetion applies to anyone who believes that we should be better than our enemies. If you feel that getting just as savage and violent as some of our enemies get, then that's your right to believe what you want. But to me, I feel like we've got to set a good example so people believe us when we say that we believe in freedom, democracy and the inalienable rights of all men and women.
But you know, I'm just a liberal, lefty, Democrat who thinks we need to give our enemies therapy.
Oh wait, I'm NOT. I do believe that going after our enemies with torture and violence only invites others to do the same to us. Don't you guys get that point?
If we do it to them, they're justified to do it to us. If we don't do it to them and they do it to us anyway, the public turns against them and whatever support they were getting dries up. Who actually wants to be on the side that uses savagery unjustly?
Or would you rather the circle of death just continue on forever?
Regarding the Bosnian/Serbian conflict, I don't know enough about it to really comment. My general belief is that it was good for us to be involved over there because there was ethnic cleansing going on. But that's just my very uneducated-about-that-conflict guess. If we were to only go to war in areas of the world threatened by genocidal tendencies, there's a long list of countries we needed to hit before Iraq. Saddam was a murderer, but genocide and ethnic cleansing was not his game. He may have used religion/race as an excuse to kill, but there was no systematic destruction of culture going on. Not as far as I know, anyway.
And back to the point I like to make in regards to America's role in the world, we're not the world's police. We can't afford to march into every country where bad things are hapenning and start killing people. We've got enough to spend money on at home in America. Don't you think we should see a little more cash spent on domestic issues instead of this absurd push to become the World Police Force? What is it up to? $300 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan? Just a fraction of that is spent on education in the US. And still no Osama.
Pete,
ReplyDeleteI jut wanted to say I respect and agree with most of what you have to say. Violence only begets more violence. Unfortunately I think that's kind of the point. By keeping the American people scared by the threat of terrorism (which we only perpetuate with our foreign policy and insistence on policing the world) the people are easier to control and cooerce into giving up their freedoms (not to mention their tax dollars) in support of the war. Those who disagree are condemned as unpatriotic, bledding-heart liberals. Fear is a wonderful device by which to control people and one our government is quite famiar with. I find the entire Iraq invasion sickening. It was built on lies and fear from the begining and has done much more harm than good