I told my husband on that day, they would level this town. I am so sorry I was right. I just know how I would feel if it happened in my town.
FALLUJA
One major reason for the decline in attacks is that the US forces have finally accepted some responsibility for the 28 April massacre in Falluja. After the fall of the regime, local citizens took over the running of this western town. US forces barged in and occupied the local school as a military base, without consultation. During a demonstration on the evening of 28 April, nearly three weeks after the fall of the regime, US soldiers fired on the crowd outside the school, killing 13 civilians immediately.
The official US account was that 25 armed civilians, mixed in with the crowd and also positioned on nearby rooftops, fired on the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne, leading to a ‘fire-fight’. (BBC News Online, 29 April 2003)
Phil Reeves, a reporter for the Independent on Sunday, conducted a careful independent investigation and concluded that the official story was a ‘highly implausible version of events’. Witnesses interviewed by Mr Reeves ‘stated that there was some shooting in the air in the general vicinity, but it was nowhere near the crowd.’ US Lieutenant Colonel Eric Nantz admitted that the bloodshed occurred after ‘celebratory firing’, but he claimed that the firing came from the crowd. (BBC News Online, 29 April 2003)
However, all the witnesses Phil Reeves could find agreed that there was no ‘fire-fight’ nor any shooting at the school, and that the crowd had no guns. The Independent journalist observed:
The evidence at the scene overwhelmingly supports this. Al-Ka’at primary and secondary school is a yellow concrete building about the length and height of seven terraced houses located in a walled compound. The soldiers fired at people gathered below them. There are no bullet marks on the facade of the school or the perimeter wall in front of it. The top floors of the houses directly opposite, from where the troops say they were fired on, also appear unmarked. Their upper windows are intact. (Independent on Sunday, 4 May 2003, p. 17)
There were bullet holes in an upper window, ‘but they were on another side of the school building.’ (Independent, 30 April 2003, p. 2) The Telegraph’s report of the bullet holes failed to mention this fact. (p. 10)
Dr Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali told reporters at Falluja Hospital, ‘Medical crews were shot by
soldiers when they tried to get to the injured people.’ (Mirror, 30 April 2003, p. 11)
BLOOD MONEY
The US failed to accept that those killed in the massacre were unarmed; failed to pay compensation to the relatives of the dead or to the injured; and failed to investigate the massacre and punish those responsible. The result was predictable. After the massacre, Falluja became the most dangerous place in Iraq for US occupation forces. The headmaster of the school, who had lost three teenage pupils in the massacre, told Phil Reeves calmly that he was willing to die as a ‘martyr’ to take his revenge against the US troops. (Independent, 30 April 2003, p. 2)
The 28 April massacre was soon being airbrushed out of history. Reporting from Falluja on a US operation on 16 June 2003, the Telegraph (p. 10), the Guardian (p. 10), and the FT (p. 6) all referred to recent attacks on US soldiers in the town, and local hostility, without mentioning the massacre.
The introduction of a new US brigade in June allowed the occupation forces to stage a climbdown. First: a withdrawal of US forces from the town. (Washington Post, 12 July 2003, p. A11) Secondly, US Army officers ‘delivered formal apologies to local tribal sheiks and paid blood money for every dead and injured person deemed not to be a combatant... $1,500 for a death and $500 for an injury... Officers have ordered soldiers to knock on doors before conducting most residential searches. They have also permitted the mayor to field a 75-member armed militia and doled out nearly $2 million on municipal improvements instead of waiting for private American contractors to arrive.’ (Washington Post, 29 July 2003, p. A01)
‘When the 2nd Brigade arrived, the prevailing view among U.S. commanders was that the attacks were being conducted almost exclusively by Hussein loyalists who had the support of other residents... Over time, the brigade’s officers came to realize Fallujah was more traditional than Baathist. Much of the animosity toward U.S. forces was driven by perceived slights of tribal and religious traditions. Several people here said attempts to search women prompted so much humiliation for male relatives that some of them joined the mobs throwing rocks and shooting at U.S. convoys.’ (WP, 29 July)
It seems that much of the resistance is revenge for unpunished and uncompensated US killings, not a Saddamist conspiracy.
http://www.j-n-v.org/AW_briefings/JNV_briefing047.htm
and then there is always my favorite, Robert Fisk
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/robert_fisk.htm
along with Dahr J. and Rahul M ( www.empirenotes.org )
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