Assassination of Reuters Cameraman, who had uncovered evidence...

[Q]

...of MASS US CASUALTIES IN IRAQ.


www.globalresearch.ca
Centre for Research on Globalisation
Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation

Assassination of Reuters Cameraman, who had uncovered evidence of Mass US Casualties in Iraq

Recipe for Terror
by Felicity Arbuthnot

Common Dreams, 20 November 2003
www.globalresearch.ca 27 November 2003

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ARB311A.html

"...With the death toll of US soldiers having exceeded, in just seven months, that of the first three years of Vietnam it is worth asking if even these figures are the full truth. Many of those who have joined the military in Iraq, do not hold American passports, but were, broadly, promised that they would be given them on return, for their efforts against the 'war on terrorism'. According to Dr Rokke, should they die, their deaths are not factored in to 'U.S.' casualties. Further, Mazen Dana, the Award winning Reuters camera man, shot dead by US troops whilst filming outside Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in August - with full permission and press accreditation from the US Authorities in Baghdad - told his brother Nazmi, a chilling tale days before he died.

"Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said. "He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding."

"All international and local news agencies sent cables of condolences to his family, lauding his ...... determination to uncover the truth wherever it was", recorded veteran Middle East correspondent Awed Al Ragoub. Truth is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to record in Iraq. Last week, reported the Boston Globe, thirty major news gathering outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The circumstances of the death of ITN's Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. Journalists' protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.

Iraq is now a vast Guantanamo Bay, with the disappeared unaccounted for, which was why Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib. Even prisoners under Saddam, were more accounted for. The full number of both prison camps and prisoners are simply unknown. With the bombing of the Red Cross building in Baghdad and resultant pull out of staff, the last shred of accountability for the detained has been removed. The Red Cross is enshrined in the Geneva Convention as the neutral body who can interview and account for prisoners in war, held as hostage or in conflict zones. The tragedy of the Red Cross attack had a coincidental convenience for a U.S. human rights time bomb. The Geneva Convention also has emotive words regarding environmental destruction. Viet Nam with Agent Orange, torching of villages, rapes and even the decapitation of a baby by a US soldier to steal her necklace, has been recently chillingly revisited by a stunning, painstaking two year investigation by journalists at the extraordinarily committed but relatively small town Toledo Blade newspaper..."

[AndyTiedye]

1. That Would Explain the Press Ban on Arriving Flag-Draped Coffins

They don't want anybody counting the coffins and comparing their
numbers to the "official" death toll.

[BeFree]

2. The evil is confirmed...

Nobody should be surprised. This is the way evil has worked against humanity since day one.

All I can say is: Not in my name.

C'mon people, see the truth and do not sit back and let it continue. We must fight to live; evil spelled backwards is live. Do not be surprised or even question that it still happens. Fight it. The life you save might be your own.

[DaveSZ]

4. What was that saying?

"If fascism ever arrived in America, it would arrive draped in an American flag..."

Something like that.

If Bush gets in again with a Rethug Congress, I half expect slave labor prison camps here too.

[BeFree]

6. Half?

No, my friend, you can fully expect slave prison camps.

Slave camps are a part of human history. Being that history is repeating itself, we can expect the worst. We may not like it, but it is the truth.

[bpilgrim]

3. reminds me of the imperial japanese in NANKING

and many other places in china and the rest of asia.

our current policy in the ME is STRIKING in it's resemplence to the japanese GEACPS policy during wwII.



histor will not be kind to us.

and so it goes...


peace

[NJCher]

5. legal immigrants in the U.S. Army

"He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding."

If this is true, it means that they are only reporting citizen deaths. It would mean that immigrant soldiers are dying and it is not being reported.

Does anyone remember the stories by done by NPR on immigrant soldiers awhile back? Also, I think one of the major news weeklies--Time, Newsweek or one of those--did a report on the high number of soldiers in the Army who were not citizens.

Damn, this is scary. It seems like every day we learn of some new horror that is so like Nazi Germany.


Cher

p.s. Here's the rule on noncitizens in the Marine Corp:

While the following Marine Corps MOS's (Jobs) do not require U.S. Citizenship, one must be a legal immigrant (with a green card) residing in the United States in order to join any branch of the United States Military. The Marine Corps cannot and will not assist with immigration. One must legally immigrate first, and then apply to join the U.S. Marine Corps. Once an immigrant joins the U.S. Military, normal residency requirements are waived and they can apply to become a United States Citizen after 3 years of active duty. One must be a U.S. Citizen to become a commissioned officer, or to re-enlist in the military.

from: http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/marineenjobs/blnoncitizen.htm

[Eloriel]

7. Doyou have the Common Dreams link? n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. I just found this incredible video about Mazan Dana

it has some of the footage he was shooting when he was killed. I have never seen this footage before.

According to the narrator, it is possible Dana was killed because he had found out that a recent 'mortar' attack on the prison did not happen. He believed that something had happened inside the prison and then the occupation forces targeted the prisoners while they were in their tents. If this is true, not only did US troops murder Dana, they also murdered in cold blood, Iraqi prisoners.


http://www.indybay.org/uploads/mazen_dana.mpg

[donsu]

9. kick

so, US military troops who are not US citizens, are not counted?

and contract workers are not counted.

and if they are injured and die later, they are not counted.

some reports say we have gone well over the 1000 mark.

Is there a list somewhere of all the journalists/media that have been killed, from all countries not just the US?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. Just using the numbers we've been given, the number of deaths in Iraq....

...to date DOUBLES our dead in the first EIGHT years in Vietnam:

Vietnam Dead, 1956-1964:

1956-1960: 9, total of 9
1961: 16, total of 25
1962: 52, total of 77
1963: 118, total of 195
1964: 206, total of 401

Iraq Dead, 2003-2004:

834 to date (as far as we've been publicly)


For more information on the controversial data being supplied by the Pentagon on the true number of deaths in Iraq:

<http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/uscasualties.html>

[NJCher]

11. that video is incredible!

Thank you, DoYouEverWonder. It took me a bit of time to load but it is well worth the wait.

It made me feel sad that we have lost this talented journalist. And oh, btw, I do not buy the excuses offered by the military.


Cher

[Zorra]

12. Here's more on this, and

Another interesting "coincidence" re: Dana and Abu Gharib: UN Headquarters in Iraq was bombed the day after Mazen Dana was murdered.

Reuters Cameraman Killed For Filming U.S. Graves: Brother
Tuesday, August 19 2003 @ 06:51 PM EDT

"The U.S. occupation troops shot dead my brother on purpose, although he was wearing his press badge, which was also emblazoned on the car he was driving," he said.
snip----
"Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks," Nazmi said.
snip----
"He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his findings."
snip------
On Sunday, August 17, U.S. troops shot dead the award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming near the U.S.-run Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad

http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=2003081918513248

Posted on Tue, Aug. 19, 2003
U.N. diplomat killed in blast had worked in several troubled spots

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Sergio Vieira de Mello, 55, the handsome, seasoned U.N. diplomat who was killed in Tuesday's bombing in Iraq, had a resume that read like a road map of the world's trouble spots.

The Brazilian-born diplomat insisted from the day he arrived that his top priority was protecting the interests of Iraq's people. He warned of disaster if Iraqis weren't given self-rule quickly. "Only Iraqis have the capacity and the right to administer Iraq," he said. "The longer it takes, the greater the amount of frustration and impatience on the part of Iraqis."

In his last interview, published in Monday's editions of the Brazilian daily newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo, Vieira de Mello warned that the vast U.S. military presence in Iraq was inciting attacks like the one that took his life a day later.

"This must be one of the most humiliating periods in history for these people. Who would like to see their country occupied? I wouldn't want to see foreign tanks in Copacabana," Vieira de Mello said. He added that American-led coalition forces needed to win over Iraqis by restoring essential services rather than dominating the country.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6570481.htm

U.N. rethinking Iraq presence
Associated Press
Posted 8/20/2003

The ill-defined U.N. mission in Iraq was authorized to improve the humanitarian situation and assist in reconstruction. The mission's chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was to coordinate with U.S. authorities and Iraqis. Vieira de Mello, who was hosting a meeting in his office when a suicide truck bomb exploded outside the compound, was killed.

http://www.dailyherald.com/special/iraq/wwi_paststory.asp?intID=3785313

Makes me wonder now, after the revelations about the tortures at Abu Gharib and the scandal that ensued, if Mazen Dana and Sergio de Mello weren't murdered for "damage control" purposes. Given the documentable interventionist criminal history of some of the right wing holdovers from the Reagan administration that are now in high level defense positions in the Bu$h administration, is it unreasonable to speculate that these people are capable of murder for the purposes of covering up their dirty deeds?

What if Mazen Dana gave his film footage of the corpses to de Mello? What happened to that film footage? Was it destroyed in the UN Headquarters bombing?

[Q]

13. Excerpt from the article:

"The Geneva Convention also has emotive words regarding environmental destruction. Viet Nam with Agent Orange, torching of villages, rapes and even the decapitation of a baby by a US soldier to steal her necklace, has been recently chillingly revisited by a stunning, painstaking two year investigation by journalists at the extraordinarily committed but relatively small town Toledo Blade newspaper.


'Will this be another Viet Nam?' has been a frequent haunting, relating to American body bags. Maybe. But little addressed is : environmentally, it is. Distraught reports have come out of Iraq of fauna, flora, wheat, barley, agriculture, bushes being torched by US soldiers with, like Viet Nam, music blaring and redolent of Palestine's olive groves, Iraq's great dates palms being mown down. Iraq has maybe six hundred different kinds of dates, is the worlds biggest producer. Nothing is wasted: sugar syrup is made, the stones are polished and made into beads, the fronds become anything from brooms to intricate, evocative bird cages. The date harvest (about now) is a vivid, beautiful celebration; towns and cities display them in markets in their vibrant colors: from sand and gold to brown and near vermillion, in great, intricately woven baskets - made of the fronds. Date palms are near sacred. Asking the way to a home, people will deliberate the location of the house and then , invariably say: "the garden has the tallest (smallest, most twisted etc) palm ..."



The full horror and lack of accountability is outside the scope of an article, but was starkly outlined by an Iraqi academic - old friend, rabidly anti- Saddam - I met recently. She told me of a beloved alter-ego, the sister she never had, who had gone to find medication for one of her two children. The two kids were in the back of the car and she trawled the pharmacies for the medicine. (Hospitals are now , say Iraqi doctors, worse equipped than after the 1991 war, but under the new freedom no journalists are allowed to visit to record.) Finally, she found what she was needing. Driving back over the 14th of July Bridge (hugely emotive and named after another revolution against the British) she was shot at by US troops, the car burned out and she and her children burned to the unrecognizable. Baghdad, being a village of five million people, her husband quickly learned what had happened and ran across the town with friends and blankets, to cover and succor them in death. They were shot at, as they returned repeatedly, for three days, by the troops as wife and childrens' remains stayed in the car, before they could be collected and interred.


"For telling you this, I await the knock at the door, any day, like all academics do who speak out in this occupation", said my friend. Academics are being disappeared at stunning speed in Iraq. "You know" she said quietly, her eyes meeting mine: "many of us say we want Saddam and our country back."

[Q]

14. Is this fascism?

- These people aren't responsible for 9-11 or ANY terrorism against the United States. Why then is the Bush* admin. sending Americans to die for a lie? Worse...the Bushies appear to be covering up the number of American AND Iraqi deaths to make themselves look better.

- George...the 'war president'.