Robert Fisk..from Iraq

[dudeness]

We Have A Long And Dishonourable Tradition Of Smearing The Dead
Let us remember Ahmed Hanoun Hussein, Mazen Dana, Twefiq Ghazawi, Bahij Mentni, Rachel Corrie and Dr David Kelly

Robert Fisk


24 August 2003: Across the marble floor of the Shrine of the Imam Hussein in Kerbala scampers Suheil with his plastic bag of metal. He points first to a red stain on the flagstones. "This was a red smoke grenade that the Americans fired," he tells me. "And that was another grenade mark." The Shia worshippers are kneeling amid these burn marks, eyes glistening at the gold façade of the mosque which marks the very place, behind silver bars kissed by the faithful, where - in an epic battle far more decisive in human history than any conflict fought by the United States - Imam al-Hussein was cut down in AD680. There is a clink as, one by one, Suheil drops his souvenirs on to the marble.

US forces denied that any ordnance fell upon the shrine when they opened fire close to the Huseiniya mosque last month. Of course they denied it. Denial has become a disease in Iraq - as it has through most of the Middle East. The Americans deny that they kill innocent civilians in Iraq - but kill them all the same. The Israelis deny they kill innocent civilians in the occupied territories - indeed, they even deny the occupation - but kill them all the same. So folk like Suheil are valuable. They expose lies. The evidence, in this case, are his little souvenirs. On one of the grenades in his plastic bag are written the words "Cartridge 44mm Red Smoke Ground Marker M713 PB-79G041-001". Another is designated as a "White Star Cluster M 585", yet another carries the code "40mm M195 KX090 (figure erased) 010-086". They are strange things to read in a religious building whose scholars normally concentrate on the minutiae of Koranic sura rather than the globalised linguistics of the arms trade


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4526.htm