this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
5 images and poem below the fold
An Iraqi man walks through the remains of a house in the city of Ramadi November 3, 2005. The house was completely destroyed in an air strike on Wednesday in which a U.S. fighter jet dropped two 500-lb bombs on it a few hours after a U.S. AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter had crashed nearby. The al Qaeda group in Iraq said on Thursday it shot down a U.S. helicopter in Ramadi on Wednesday, killing two Marine crewmen, and the U.S. military said it was investigating reports it was shot down. The U.S. military said today it has identified the house as a command and control bunker for enemy insurgents.
REUTERS/Stringer
People search for survivors digging through the rubble of collapsed homes, in Ramadi, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005. According to local residents the homes collapsed on Wednesday after a U.S. fighter jet dropped two bombs on what the U.S. military described as an ‘insurgent command center’ about 400 yards from where a US helicopter went down, near Ramadi.
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
People pray in front the coffin of a man found dead in the rubble of collapsed homes, in Ramadi, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005. According to local residents the homes collapsed on Wednesday after a U.S. fighter jet dropped two 500-pound bombs on what the U.S. military described as an ‘insurgent command center’ about 400 yards from where a U.S. helicopter went down, near Ramadi.
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
An Iraqi boy cries as a child, who was found dead in the rubble of collapsed homes, is buried, in Ramadi, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005. According to local residents the homes collapsed on Wednesday after a U.S. fighter jet dropped two bombs on what the U.S. military described as an ‘insurgent command center’ about 400 yards from where a US helicopter went down, near Ramadi.
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
The body of a child is buried after being found dead in the rubble of collapsed homes, in Ramadi, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005. According to local residents the homes collapsed on Wednesday after a U.S. fighter jet dropped two 500-pound bombs on what the U.S. military described as an ‘insurgent command center’ about 400 yards from where a U.S. helicopter went down, near Ramadi.
(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,–but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, —
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
– – –
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)
support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
Click on the candle to copy the image into your own comment (you can leave it on my server), and/or rate this one – not for mojo, but to leave a small mark after taking this moment.
” I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
Copy and paste this to light your own candle:
<img src=”http://www.jsoucy.org/iraq/images/candle_flame_1.gif“ height=”68″ width=”52″ />
God this makes me so sick. Insurgent stronghold my ass. GD you to hell George W. Bush. These are children and families NOT effing insurgents.
And who shall we ask to be the last to die? An innocent child?
OUT OF IRAQ NOW!!!!!!
…to cause a firestorm of activism for Peace.
Stop the abuse!
Iraqi Sunnis demand abuse inquiry
.
U.S. Forces Break Up Iraq Torture Ring at Interior Ministry
You Want
To Go To College?
I Need You
To Kill Some Iraqis!
BTW it is always a moral choice, and depends on trust in leadership and your government.
Read full comment »»
Light a candle…
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
Peace
That boy looks just like my boy when he cries, and I want to hold him and comfort him just as badly. I ache inside, I ache for the pain, for the grief, for the shattered lives.
If being indifferent to this is being human, I no longer want to call myself that.
.
Diary @EuroTrib ::
Detainees Paralyzed and Skin Peeled In Abuse
“I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralyzed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies. “
Hussein Kamal, Deputy Interior Minister
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has ordered an investigation.
Washington is backing the Iraqi inquiry – but the US is itself facing pressure to be more transparent about the treatment of its prisoners.
Read on »»
IT’S TIME TO CLEAN-UP CONGRESS IN 2006!
LEAVE Iraq to the Iraqis
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
“Slaughterhouse-Five” – A Novel For This Time Also
Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For Innocence Lost!
{If you’ve read it before it’s Past time to Re-Read, if you’ve read it Recently you Understand, if you’ve never read You Should and you can pick up a copy here:
. But this is a discussion that should be heard by All!!}
Readers’ Review: “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut
The Diane Rehm Show-NPR-11-16-05
Diane and her guests talk about Vonnegut’s story of a World War II soldier who becomes “unstuck” in time.
Guests
Jackson Bryer, Professor of English at the University of Maryland and co-editor of “Dear Scott, Dear Zelda” (St. Martin’s Press)
Ronald Goldfarb, attorney, author, and literary agent.
Susan Tolchin, professor of Public Policy at George Mason University
To Listen: Readers Review:Slaughterhouse Five
And an Article To Read while Listening:
The invisible enemy in Iraq
“Soldiers should not be held up as national heroes ” – “I would rather be Edison than Hannibal; Peabody rather than Radetzki, Newton rather than Wellington.”
Source – Invertarium einer Seele by Bertha von Suttner, the first woman awarded the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize.
I look at that child’s grieving face, and the small brown hand on his shoulder, attempting comfort. And I think of my own son, his beautiful brown face and hands. The knowledge that the world devalues him because he is brown brings me more rage and pain than anything else I have ever known.
The knowledge that the world devalues these dead Iraqi children because they are brown, turns away from them in complicit wilful ignorance, fills me with rage and pain.
I long with every cell in my body for a world in which all human lives are valued.
{And ‘War Crimes’ Ordered From The Top}
Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For Innocence Lost!
Read and pass on:
For anyone demanding accountibility of George Bush for his war crimes–and the ranks are growing daily–it may be difficult to focus on specific incidents because there are so many. If you feel that way, my suggestion is summed up in one word: Fallujah.
Veterans For Peace has called for Bush’s impeachment since the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, March 20, 2004. A significant part of our “Case for Impeachment” involves Fallujah. And Dahr Jamail’s reporting provided some of the particulars in our case.
We must demand accountability for these crimes, beginning at the top.
Please:
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/impeachment/petition2.htm
4) Print out the petition pdf and circulate it:
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/impeachment/petition.pdf
Dahr Jamail nails it:
“Nearly a year after they occurred, a few of the war crimes committed in Fallujah by members of the US military have gained the attention of some major media outlets (excluding, of course, any of the corporate media outlets in the US)…why should any of us be surprised at this? When we have an administration which led the country into an illegal war of aggression and continues to lie about it, events like torturing and the use of incendiary weapons on civilians are small change.”
Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
Fallujah Revisited
November 14, 2005
Nearly a year after they occurred, a few of the war crimes committed in Fallujah by members of the US military have gained the attention of some major media outlets (excluding, of course, any of the corporate media outlets in the US).
Back on November 26, 2004, in a story I wrote for the Inter Press Service titled ‘Unusual Weapons’ Used in Fallujah
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000137.php , refugees from that city described, in detail, various odd weapons used in Fallujah. In addition, they provided detailed descriptions such as “pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns.”
This was also mentioned in a web log I’d penned nine days before, on November 17, 2004, named Slash and Burn
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000122.php where one of the descriptions of these same weapons by the same refugee from Fallujah said, “These exploded on the ground with large fires that burnt for half an hour. They used these near the train tracks. You could hear these dropped from a large airplane and the bombs were the size of a tank. When anyone touched those fires, their body burned for hours.”
On December 9th of 2004 I posted a gallery of photos http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album28 , many of which are included in the new RAI television documentary about
incendiary weapons having been used in Fallujah.
Like the torture “scandal” of Abu Ghraib that for people in the west didn’t become “real” until late April of 2004, Iraqis and journalists in Iraq who engaged in actual reporting knew that US and British forces were torturing Iraqis from nearly the beginning of the occupation, and continue to do so to this day.
All of this makes me wonder how much longer it will take for other atrocities to come to light. Even just discussing Fallujah, there are many we can choose from. While I’m not the only journalist to have reported on these, let me draw your attention to just a few things that I’ve recorded which took place in Fallujah during the November, 2004
massacre.
In my story “Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone”
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000145.php
published on December 3, 2004 there are many instances of war crimes which will, hopefully, be granted the attention they deserve.
Burhan Fasa’a, an Iraqi journalist who worked for the Lebanese satellite TV station, LBC and who was in Fallujah for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English.
“Americans did not have interpreters with them,” Fasa’a said, “so they entered houses and killed people because they didn’t speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and [they] shot people because [the people] didn’t obey [the soldiers’] orders, even just because the people couldn’t understand a word of English.” He also added, “Soldiers thought the people were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just couldn’t understand them.”
A man named Khalil, who asked not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city.
“I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a resident of Fallujah. “This happened so many times.”
Other refugees recounted similar stories. “I saw so many civilians killed there, and I saw several tanks roll over the wounded in the streets,” said Aziz Abdulla, 27 years old, who fled the fighting last November. Another resident, Abu Aziz, said he also witnessed American armored vehicles crushing people he believes were alive.
Abdul Razaq Ismail, another resident who fled Fallujah, said: “I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers. The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah.”
A man called Abu Hammad said he witnessed US troops throwing Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates River. Abu Hammed and others also said they saw Americans shooting unarmed Iraqis who waved white flags.
Believing that American and Iraqi forces were bent on killing anyone who stayed in Fallujah, Hammad said he watched people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. “Even then the Americans shot them
with rifles from the shore,” he said. “Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot.”
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein reported witnessing similar events. After running out of basic necessities and deciding to flee the city at the height of the US-led assault, Hussein ran to the Euphrates.
“I decided to swim,” Hussein told colleagues at the AP, who wrote up the photographer’s harrowing story, “but I changed my mind after seeing US helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.”
Hussein said he saw soldiers kill a family of five as they tried to traverse the Euphrates, before he buried a man by the riverbank with his bare hands.
“I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some US snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim,” Hussein recounted. “I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards.”
A man named Khalil, who asked not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city. “They shot women and old men in the streets,” he said. “Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies.”
“There are bodies the Americans threw in the river,” Khalil continued, noting that he personally witnessed US troops using the Euphrates to dispose of Iraqi dead. “And anyone who stayed thought they would be killed by the Americans, so they tried to swim across the river. Even people who couldn’t swim tried to cross the river. They drowned rather than staying to be killed by the Americans,” said Khalil.
Why should blatant lying from the military come as a surprise? Even back in November of 2003, I wrote about how US forces claimed to have been attacked by, and then killed 48 Fedayin Saddam in Samarra. Then magically, overnight, they raised the number to 54. Upon investigation of this, I found that 8 civilians had been killed in the city, and wrote about it here http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/2003_11_30.php and posted photos of it here
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album02 .
However, why should any of us be surprised at this? When we have an administration which led the country into an illegal war of aggression and continues to lie about it, events like torturing and the use of incendiary weapons on civilians are small change.
_________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr’s Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website. Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger’s Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com . Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward Dahr’s dispatches via email.
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
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read dahr’s story on this subject in today’s “Independent”
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article327136.ece
read the Independent’s story “The fog of war: white phosphorus, Fallujah and some burning questions” where they talk with several other sources on this issue:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article327094.ece
I will cry tonight for the dead children and innocent Iraqis who die needlessly. I will cry tonight for the needless death of our service members who will loose their lives in this ugly and unnecessary war. Make the madness stop, please………..peace