Iraqi Prime Minister Announces Timetable: Full Security Takeover by End of 2007
Iraqi Prime Minister Announces Timetable: Full Security Takeover by End of 2007
On the eve of the meeting between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair today to discuss the next steps in Iraq, Iraq’s new prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki stated for the second time in the past week that Iraqi forces should be able to take over security within 18 months – by the end of 2007.
This is the same period of time outlined in Strategic Redeployment 2.0, the progressive plan for Iraq written by Larry Korb and myself at the Center for American Progress.
Signs are that Bush and Blair will avoid setting down a clear marker for withdrawing troops – yesterday White House spokesman Tony Snow pushed back against suggestions that President Bush might finally listen to the Iraqis and set a timeline.
But the call for a timeline for withdrawing troops should not come as a surprise. This is exactly what most Iraqis want. Last fall, Iraqi leaders from across the ethnic and sectarian spectrum called for a timetable for troop withdrawals at a conference in Cairo.
These leaders are voicing the opinions of their constituents – a recent poll found that 70 percent of Iraqis support withdrawing U.S.-led forces by the end of 2007.
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I loved the reporters question riased to Bush yesterday. Bush was asked if the Amreican military, unquestionably the most powerful in the owrld, cannot stop the insurgents what makes you think the new untested Iraq force can.
Chimpy hemmed and hawed, er…uh…next question.
May 25th, 2006 at 6:18 pmI loved the reporters question riased to Bush yesterday. Bush was asked if the American military, unquestionably the most powerful in the orold, cannot stop the insurgents what makes you think the new untested Iraq force can.
Chimpy hemmed and hawed, er…uh…next question.
May 25th, 2006 at 6:19 pmWho gets our mega-bases when our troops leave? Ok, stop laughing.
May 25th, 2006 at 6:24 pmEnd of 2007 – non-election year. There will be a few delays. Some coordinated attacks – but fewwer than now – since the insurgents have a date when they’ll be a free fire zone.
Then, the big declaration of victory by President Bush on his farewell tour – right before the election.
American people get suckered buy the spin. Vote in Republicans, and the thing blows up right after November………..
May 25th, 2006 at 6:28 pmIt may be without a US military presence, that Iraq will settle down. The problem is Bush is not ready to leave Iraq. Remember he said that pulling troops out of Iraq would be for other presidents to decide. Frankly I don’t think Bush cares much for what the Iraqi government wants. Mostly he wants to be able to point to how well thier doing as a way to bolster opinion of Iraq, and his presidency among the american public. I think that he will disregard any push by the Iraqi government for withdrawl of US troops.
May 25th, 2006 at 6:37 pmWasn’t Chimpy waiting for them to ask us to leave? Let’s go…
May 25th, 2006 at 6:37 pmThis whole site is phony – it’s a Democrat flak site. Want to see progress – how about a plan? Dems only know how to attack and hate, not to solve problems!
May 25th, 2006 at 6:45 pmDems only know how to attack and hate, not to solve problems!
Comment by Iowa Tom — May 25, 2006 @ 6:45 pm
Well what do you know, the pot calling the kettle black. Care to add anything on topic here Tom? Or would you prefer to sling crap?
May 25th, 2006 at 6:51 pmHi, Iowa Tom! Maybe you don’t live in the reality based world, but I assure you, this site is real. You posted here, is that weird or what? Maybe you should run along to your Republicrook flak site…
May 25th, 2006 at 6:54 pmThere is no timeline for anything in Iraq > Bush will never pull the troops out as long as he is the president, and Sen. Hillary Clinton if she swindles her way into the presidency would/will keep the troops in Iraq for her term too!
May 25th, 2006 at 6:58 pm“Signs are that Bush and Blair will avoid setting down a clear marker for withdrawing troops – …. Last summer, one-third of Iraq’s democratically elected leaders called for a timetable for troop withdrawals…” – Observations by Brian K.
******In response to stupid sentence #1: I SHOULD HOPE SO!! Only a foreign policy MORON (AKA: someone who worked in the Carter Administration Diplomatic Corps) would suggest failure for failing to set a non-benchmarked timeline. WHIP (Whiny Hysterical International Progs) favour sending Al Jezzeera a COMPLETE military withdrawal plan so as to demonstrate to the enemy how fair the US and her allies are. The Bush Administration rejected that idea.
Response to Stupid sentence #2 – One-third want a timetable???? SO WHAT! 2/3 of Iraqs’ democratically elected leaders DO NOT want a bit-by-bit timetable for troop withdrawals – so Brians’ idiotic assertion that 1/3 of the lawmakers have an opinion which should be acted upon is NONSENSE.
May 25th, 2006 at 7:04 pmdon’t get your panties in a bunch MA, US troops are not leaving Iraq until after 2009. Bush already stated that he won’t remove troops, and we know what a “decisive” decider he is.
May 25th, 2006 at 7:08 pmBush really does not care where the troops are as long as he is not one of them…Cheney(5 Deferments) too
May 25th, 2006 at 7:12 pmWe will “leave” Iraq the same way my last girlfriend “left” me.
You won’t see us during the day, but at night we’ll drive all around the border with our lights off, park for a while, then lay on the horn and peel out just so the Iraqis know we’re watching them.
Then, we’ll call the new Iraqi government 40 or 50 times after midnight, and hang up when they lift the receiver.
Anyway, we’ve already cut the big, non-rescindable corporate oil deals…so we can just hang out in Kuwait and Qatar at our girlfriends’ place, until we get drunk and start feeling pimped by that hunky little guy in Iran who never dances with us, no matter how tarty we dress.
May 25th, 2006 at 7:44 pmThank you for your concern but my panties are perfect!! As usual, your comment is not limited to the stupidity of the TP assertion, BUT, look on the bright side – you DID manage to squeeze in the irrelevant.
May 25th, 2006 at 7:44 pmoh wow, runningdog… very funny analogy…
May 25th, 2006 at 7:57 pmsee what you boys do to us?!? ;-)
MA,
Do you think the entire world should be like the U.S. ?
Do you believe that the current administration has any clue how to solve the world’s problems? ie. the so called war on terra, global warming, and Iran
Should the U.S. rule the world?
Just asking…
t-mac
May 25th, 2006 at 8:04 pmSo now the terrorists go on a vacation, and wait for us to leave
May 25th, 2006 at 8:13 pm“Do you think the entire world should be like the U.S. ?” – Question by TM
*****Only if they WANT to. (I am struck by the irrefutable fact that more people immigrate to the US than any other place – so perhaps it is NOT as bad a place as progs seem to think it is.)
“Do you believe that the current administration has any clue how to solve the world’s problems? ie. the so called war on terra, global warming, and Iran”. More from TM
******Yes.
“Should the U.S. rule the world?”- Finally, another kernel from TM
May 25th, 2006 at 8:18 pm******No.
It will be interesting to see what President Bush has to say today, given his past denials regarding his long friendship with Lay. After all, when the Enron scandal first exploded, President Bush on January 10, 2002 offered one of the biggest whoppers of his presidency:
“I got to know Ken Lay when he was the head of the-what they call the Governor’s Business Council in Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994. And she had named him the head of the Governor’s Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that’s when I first got to know Ken.”
Sadly, a mountain of correspondence between the Bush and Lay suggests otherwise.
For the details, see:
May 25th, 2006 at 8:23 pm“Bush Lies About Ken Lay.”
Regardless of what the Iraqi PM says, Bush downplayed the reduction of troops by the end of 2007 as “press speculation.”
May 25th, 2006 at 9:17 pmWhile he continued to praise the Iraqis taking over their own country and needing less help from Americans — just a few minutes later said they called in our troops from Kuwait to help secure Baghdad.
He didn’t talk about the civil war, a.k.a. sectarian violence, he simply focused on what he could tout as positive.
It was a totally unbelievable press conference with Blair. They are both on the ropes and their legacies in history are married as well.
He admitted his tough talk was misinterpreted by some in the world, but that was simply a sop to his critics.
There was not much news to report tonight, it was the usual Bush smirking, grinning when he should have been serious, and generally redundant speeches.
I ended too soon — what will be done with the bases we’re building there?
May 25th, 2006 at 9:18 pmI don’t believe we will be out of there any time soon.
Nice comparison of the timeline, but it’s their call, not ours. Beginning to wonder what part of “Iraqi Sovereignty” the American public doesn’t understand.
May 25th, 2006 at 9:34 pmI actually always get a laugh out of Anvilhead’s stuff. I admire his ability to be simple yet eloquent. He almost gets you to stop worrying, go back to watching Tom and Jerry, and relax.
May 25th, 2006 at 9:51 pm“THERE IS NO MORE IRAQ. THERE WILL BE THREE TERRITORIES.” — Hank Kissinger, early 2004, briefing his Saudi clients.
There is no withdrawal of ‘the troops,’ if that means withdrawing THE AIRBASES.
All it means is MORE genocide, from the air.
I just LOVE the self-deluding quality of this post, Think. They’ll be out just before the 2008 elections…well la-dee-dah. Won’t that be a fine thing?
Nevermind the full-blown war with Iran that we’ll be having by that time.
For now, it’s SOAP BUBBLE DREAMS WITH GEORGE AND TONY.
Nevermind the pop-pop-pop.
And those TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS OF HALF-STRENGTH URANIUM — don’t worry about those. Kids in former-Iraq will have leukemia for hundreds of years, thanks to the entirely illegal, immoral, GENOCIDE of Iraq.
I don’t feel like making up. HOW COME YOU DO?
May 25th, 2006 at 9:51 pmNot to worry mighty aphrodickhead, you can be sure Bush will make sure our troops are over there dying to protect your traitorous vote for several years.
May 25th, 2006 at 10:09 pmPencildick,er, I mean ANVILHEAD’s video-game-view of the world is like looking into the mind of a teenager – and help’s to explain the “lowest common denominator” factor that the GOP is so great at manipulating.
May 25th, 2006 at 10:29 pmThat is a pretty funny thing for a dude to say.
May 25th, 2006 at 11:31 pmThank you for your concern but my panties are perfect!!
That is a pretty funny thing for a dude to say.
Comment by Spudge_Boy — May 25, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
not one that cross dresses here and in real life…
May 26th, 2006 at 12:12 amPost 31 I am beginning to wonder if Mighty Moron is actually Ken Mehlman on here > rumours are that he likes to cross dress and play act like a female > lol.
May 26th, 2006 at 2:58 amAnd what will change in the next 18 months? Mission Accomplished. Mission soon to be accomplished. More lies, more excuses, more waste, more war crimes, and more suffering for the people of Iraq. Another 18 months will cost the taxpayers another 200 billion dollars, cost the lives of another 1000 US soldiers (wound another 4000), and boost recruiting for extremists. Bring the troops home now.
May 26th, 2006 at 3:54 amWhat a bunch of losers – American civilians paid with there lifes and money for an illegal war that brought them no spoils only hatred from the world
what an Idiot george bush is
May 26th, 2006 at 8:04 amDave in IL, you could hold that convention in a phone booth. Even the most strident anti-war people don’t go that far. So I suppose the military’s view of what is happening, http://www.defendamerica.mil/iraq/rebuilding.html is all a bunch of made-up Bush propaganda.
May 26th, 2006 at 8:08 amThat is a pretty funny thing for a dude to say.
Comment by Spudge_Boy — May 25, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
Further proof that he is a he, I think.
Women generally aren’t open to talking about their ‘unmentionables’ because culturally we are taught that this is crude and unacceptable for women to do. Only someone who wasn’t taught that etiquette, or is a sociopath would be so flip about a subject that is considered to be ‘off limits’ for public conversation.
This means that either Mighty Mouth is a) a redneck with zero self-esteem and was raised in a barn by sheep – or b) he’s a dude. I pick b.
May 26th, 2006 at 8:55 amI like the way he says it. Full Security Takeover. Not Full US Troop Removal. Leaves a lot of wiggle room the basing of US Troops in Iraq.
May 26th, 2006 at 9:23 amWe should send Pat Robertson. He is very strong. Especially in the lower body. More details at jsb.
May 26th, 2006 at 10:43 am“This means that either Mighty Mouth is a) a redneck with zero self-esteem and was raised in a barn by sheep – or b) he’s a dude. I pick b.”
Comment by unbelievable — May 26, 2006 @ 8:55 am
Actually, BOTH! A redeneck dude with zero self-esteem, barnyard manners AND a dude!
May 26th, 2006 at 2:42 pmWho wishes he was a girlie, so sad.
Um… George? You do know that you are not the Prime Minister of Iraq, don’t you? As a matter of fact, you have no authority in their government. Gawd, what an ego. They can tell you to go f*ck yourself, and they really should. You “freed” them, time to butt-out now. Hands Off! You have done enough, more than enough, really.
May 27th, 2006 at 4:59 amHow Massacres Become the Norm
By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 04 April 2006
US soldiers killing innocent civilians in Iraq is not news. Just as it was not news that US soldiers slaughtered countless innocent civilians in Vietnam. However, when some rare reportage of this non news from Iraq does seep through the cracks of the corporate media, albeit briefly, the American public seems shocked. Private and public statements of denial and dismissal immediately start to fill the air. We hear, “American soldiers would never do such a thing,” or “Who would make such a ridiculous claim?”
It amazes me that so many people in the US today somehow seriously believe that American soldiers would never kill civilians. Despite the fact that they are in a no-win guerrilla war in Iraq which, like any other guerrilla war, always generates more civilian casualties than combatant casualties on either side.
Robert J. Lifton is a prominent American psychiatrist who lobbied for the inclusion of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders after his work with US veterans from Vietnam. His studies on the behavior of those who have committed war crimes led him to believe it does not require an unusual level of mental illness or of personal evil to carry out such crimes. Rather, these crimes are nearly guaranteed to occur in what Lifton refers to as “atrocity-producing situations.”
Several of his books, like The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, examine how abnormal conditions work on normal minds, enabling them to commit the most horrendous crimes imaginable.
Iraq today is most certainly an “atrocity-producing situation,” as it has been from the very beginning of the occupation.
The latest reported war crime, a US military raid on the al-Mustafa Shia mosque in Baghdad on March 26th, which killed at least 16 people, is only one instance of the phenomena that Lifton has spoken of.
An AP video of the scene shows male bodies tangled together in a bloody mass on the floor of the Imams’ living quarters – all of them with shotgun wounds and other bullet holes. The tape also shows shell casings of the caliber used by the US military scattered about on the floor. An official from the al-Sadr political bloc reported that American forces had surrounded the hospital where the wounded were taken for treatment after the massacre.
The slaughter was followed by an instant and predictable disinformation blitz by the US military. The second ranking US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, told reporters “someone went in and made the scene look different from what it was.”
On March 15th, 11 Iraqis, mostly women and children, were massacred by US troops in Balad. Witnesses told reporters that US helicopters landed near a home, which was then stormed by US troops. Everyone visible was rounded up and taken inside the house where they were killed. The victims’ ages ranged from six months to 75 years.
The US military acknowledged the raid, but claimed to have captured a resistance fighter and insisted that only four people had been killed. Their claim would have held good but for the discrepancies that the available evidence presents. For one, the photographs that the AP reporter took of the scene reveal a collapsed roof, three destroyed cars and two dead cows. The other indictment comes from the detailed report of the incident prepared by Iraq Police. It matches witness accounts and accuses the American troops of murdering Iraqi civilians.
“The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed the animals.” The report includes the observation of local medics that all of the bodies had bullet wounds in the head.
Ahmed Khalaf, the nephew of one of the victims said, “The killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children. The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death.” AP photos of the aftermath showed the bodies of five children, two men and four others covered in blankets being driven to a nearby hospital.
Reminiscent of Vietnam?
Another appalling example of the effect of an “atrocity-producing situation” was experienced last November 19th in Haditha. American troops, in retaliation against a roadside bomb attack, stormed nearby homes and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a three-year-old girl.
US military response? All 15 civilians were killed by the blast of the roadside bomb.
In this case, reality refuted their claim when a student of journalism from Haditha showed up with a video tape of the dead, still in their nightclothes.
Killing Iraqis in their homes and while they are in bed is not news either, for during the aftermath of the November 2004 assault on Fallujah, scores of Iraqis were killed by US soldiers in this manner.
Neither is it news that the US military regularly targets ambulances and medical infrastructure. Khaled Ahmed Rsayef, whose brother and six other relatives were killed by the troops, vividly described the blind frustration of the American soldiers and their impulsive revenge at losing one of their own. “American troops immediately cordoned off the area and raided two nearby houses, shooting at everyone inside. It was a massacre in every sense of the word,” said Rasayef. While he was not present at the scene, his 15-year-old niece was and her story was corroborated by other residents of the area who witnessed the carnage.
A quick scan of some Arab media reportage for last month exposes further atrocities carried out by US forces in Iraq which find no mention in the corporate media.
March 20, the Daily Dar Al-Salam reported: “US forces destroyed houses in Hasibah and displaced the inhabitants. Also, a source at Abu Ghurayb Secondary School said that US forces raided the school for the third time and arrested the guard.”
In December 2003, I personally witnessed US soldiers raid a secondary school in the al-Amiriyah district of Baghdad and detain 16 children.
March 19, Al-Arabia reported: “In another development, seven people, including a woman, were killed in a raid carried out by joint American-Iraqi forces in Al-Dulu’iyah at dawn today. The US Army has so far not confirmed this information.”
March 9, Al Sharqiyah Television reported: “US troops opened fire at a civilian vehicle as it passed by Al-Hadba district in the western part of Mosul, northern Iraq. The three occupants of the vehicle were martyred in the incident.”
Throughout the three-year history of the US-led catastrophe that is the occupation of Iraq, we have had one instance after another of brutality meted out to innocent Iraqis, by way of direct executions or bombings from the air, or both.
During an attack on a wedding party in May 2004, US troops killed over 40 people, mostly women and children, in a desert village on the Syrian border of Iraq.
APTN footage showed fragments of musical instruments, blood stains, the headless body of a child, other dead children and clumps of women’s hair in a destroyed house that was bombed by US warplanes. Other photographs showed dead women and children, and an AP reporter identified at least 10 of the bodies as those of children. Relatives who gathered at a cemetery outside of Ramadi, where all the bodies were buried, told reporters that each of the 28 fresh graves contained between one and three bodies.
The few survivors of the massacre later recounted how in the middle of the night long after the wedding feast had ended, US jets began raining bombs on their tents and houses.
Mrs. Shihab, a 30-year-old woman who survived the massacre, told the Guardian, “We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one.” She added that she ran with her two little boys before they were all shot, including herself in the leg. “I left them because they were dead,” she said of her two little boys, one of whom was decapitated by a shell. “I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn’t kill me.”
Thereafter, armored military vehicles entered the village, shooting at all the other houses and the people who were starting to assemble in the open. Following these, two Chinook helicopters offloaded several dozen troops, some of who set explosives in one of the homes and a building next to it. Both exploded into rubble as the helicopters lifted off.
Mr. Nawaf, one of the survivors, said, “I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world. There were children’s bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces. The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying.”
Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, the manager of al-Qa’im general hospital, the nearest medical facility to the scene of the slaughter, said that of the 42 killed, 14 were children and 11 women. “I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village,” he said, “These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?”
As usual, the US military ran a disinformation campaign saying the target was a “suspected safe-house” for foreign fighters and denied that any children were killed. The ever pliant US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters that the troops who reported back from the operation “told us they did not shoot women and children.”
Topping his ridiculous claim was the statement of Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. “How many people go to the middle of the desert … to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilization?”
Perhaps someone should have informed him that these farmers and nomads often “go to the middle of the desert” because they happen to live there.
“These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let’s not be naïve,” Mattis stated before being asked by a reporter to comment on the footage on Arabic television which showed a child’s body being lowered into a grave. His brilliant response was: “I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don’t have to apologize for the conduct of my men.”
If the US were a member of the International Criminal Court, Maj. Gen. Mattis may well have been in The Hague right now being tried for aiding and abetting war crimes. How can someone holding an official position like Mattis publicly sanction atrocities?
It is about unnatural responses such as these that Dr. Lifton has written extensively. In a piece he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine in July 2004, Lifton addressed the issue of US doctors being complicit in torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. This article sheds much light on the situation in Iraq. If we substitute “doctors” with “soldiers” it is easy to understand why American soldiers are regularly committing the excesses that we hear of.
Lifton writes, “American doctors at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere have undoubtedly been aware of their medical responsibility to document injuries and raise questions about their possible source in abuse. But those doctors and other medical personnel were part of a command structure that permitted, encouraged, and sometimes orchestrated torture to a degree that it became the norm – with which they were expected to comply – in the immediate prison environment.”
He continues, “The doctors thus brought a medical component to what I call an “atrocity-producing situation” – one so structured, psychologically and militarily, that ordinary people can readily engage in atrocities. Even without directly participating in the abuse, doctors may have become socialized to an environment of torture and by virtue of their medical authority helped sustain it. In studying various forms of medical abuse, I have found that the participation of doctors can confer an aura of legitimacy and can even create an illusion of therapy and healing.”
I have personally experienced this. Standing with US soldiers at checkpoints and perimeters of operations in Iraq, I have seen them curse and kick Iraqis, heard them threatening to kill even women and children and then look at me as if they had merely said hello to them. My status of journalist did not deter them because they saw no need for checks.
Having stood with soldiers anticipating that each moving car would turn into a bomb and each passerby into a suicide bomber, I have tasted the stress and fear these soldiers live with on a daily basis. When one of their fellow soldiers is killed by a roadside bomb, the need for revenge may be directed at anything. And repeated often enough, the process gets socialized.
It’s about this attitude brought on by the normalization of the abnormal under “atrocity-producing situations” that Dr. Lifton speaks. Unless of course we consider Mattis and others like him to be rare sociopaths who are able to participate in atrocities without suffering lasting emotional harm.
And it is this attitude that is responsible for the incessant replication of wanton slaughter and madness in Iraq today.
Back in November of 2004, I wrote about 12-year-old Fatima Harouz. She lay dazed in a crowded room in Yarmouk Hospital in Bahgdad, feebly waving her bruised arm at flies. Her shins had been shattered by bullets from US soldiers when they fired through the front door of her home in Latifiya, a small city just south of Baghdad. Small plastic drainage bags filled with red fluid sat upon her abdomen, where she took shrapnel from another bullet.
Her mother, who was standing with us, said, “They attacked our home and there weren’t even any resistance fighters in our area.” Her brother had been shot and killed, and his wife was wounded as their home was ransacked by soldiers. “Before they left, they killed all of our chickens,” she added, her eyes a mixture of fear, shock and rage.
On hearing the story, a doctor looked at me sternly and asked, “This is the freedom … in their Disney Land are there kids just like this?”
Another wounded young woman in a nearby hospital bed, Rana Obeidy, had been walking home with her brother. She assumed the soldiers shot her and her brother because he was carrying a bottle of soda. This happened in Baghdad. She had a chest wound where a bullet had grazed her, unlike her little brother, whom the bullets had killed.
There exist many more such cases. Amnesty International has documented scores of human rights violations committed by US troops in Iraq during the first six months of the occupation. To mention but a few:
US troops shot dead and injured scores of Iraqi demonstrators in several incidents. For example, seven people were reportedly shot dead and dozens injured in Mosul on 15 April.
At least 15 people, including children, were shot dead and more than 70 injured in Fallujah on 29 April.
Two demonstrators were shot dead outside the Republican Palace in Baghdad on 18 June.
On 14 May, two US armed vehicles broke through the perimeter wall of the home of Sa’adi Suleiman Ibrahim al-’Ubaydi in Ramadi. Soldiers beat him with rifle butts and then shot him dead as he tried to flee.
US forces shot 12-year-old Mohammad al-Kubaisi as they carried out search operations around his house in the Hay al-Jihad area in Baghdad on 26 June. He was carrying the family bedding to the roof of his house when he was shot. Neighbors tried to rush him to the nearby hospital by car, but US soldiers stopped them and ordered them to go back. By the time they returned to his home, Mohammad al-Kubaisi was dead.
On 17 September, a 14-year-old boy was killed and six people were injured when US troops opened fire at a wedding party in Fallujah.
On 23 September, three farmers, ‘Ali Khalaf, Sa’adi Faqri and Salem Khalil, were killed and three others injured when US troops opened a barrage of gunfire reportedly lasting for at least an hour in the village of al-Jisr near Fallujah. A US military official stated that this happened when the troops came under attack but this was vehemently denied by relatives of the dead. Later that day, US military officials reportedly went to the farmhouse, took photographs and apologized to the family.
This last incident ended in a way similar to the one I covered in Ramadi in November, 2003. On the 23rd of that month during Ramadan, US soldiers raided a home where a family was just sitting down together to break their fast.
Three men of the family had their hands tied behind them with plastic ties and were laid on the ground face down while the women and children were made to stand inside a nearby storage closet.
Khalil Ahmed, 30 years old, the brother of two of the victims and cousin with a third, wept when he described to me how after executing the three men the soldiers completely destroyed the home, using Humvees with machine guns, small tanks, and gunfire from the many troops on foot and helicopters.
“We don’t know the reason why the soldiers came here. They didn’t tell us the reason. We don’t know why they killed our family members.” Khalil seemed to demand an answer from me. “There are no weapons in this house, there are no resistance fighters. So why did these people have to die? Why?”
Khalil told me that the day after the executions took place, soldiers returned to apologize. They handed him a cake saying they were sorry that they had been given wrong information by someone that told them there were resistance fighters in their house.
This is only a very small sampling. The only way to prevent any of this from being repeated ad infinitum is to remove US soldiers from their “atrocity-producing situation” in Iraq. For it is clearer than ever that the longer the failed, illegal occupation persists, the larger will be the numbers of Iraqis slaughtered by the occupation forces.
mmmmmmmm
May 30th, 2006 at 5:56 pmCut and run fever running wild!…
What ever happened to that Karl Rove strategy of branding anyone who wants to set a timetable for beginning the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as a “cut-and-run” coward?…
June 28th, 2006 at 9:03 am