The US is Indeed Behaving Like Nazis!! Fallujah in 2005 is Guernica!!

leftchick

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Sun Jan-02-05 06:49 PM
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The US is Indeed Behaving Like Nazis!! Fallujah in 2005 is Guernica!!

Edited on Sun Jan-02-05 06:52 PM by leftchick

Middle East

THE ROVING EYE
From Guernica to Fallujah
By Pepe Escobar

"It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, when people are blogging, emailing and communicating at the speed of light, a whole city is being destroyed and genocide is being committed - and the whole world is aware and silent. Darfur, Americans? Take a look at what you've done in Fallujah."
- Female Iraqi blogger Riverbend

The Fallujah offensive has virtually disappeared from the news cycle. But history - if written by Iraqis - may well enshrine it as the new Guernica. Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre memorably writing about the Algerian War (1956-62), after Fallujah no two Americans shall meet without a corpse lying between them: the up to 500,000 victims of the sanctions in the 1990s, according to United Nations experts; the up to 100,000 victims since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, according to the British medical paper The Lancet; and at least 6,000 victims, and counting, in Fallujah, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent.

The new Guernica
Fallujah is the new Guernica. The residents of the Basque capital in 1937 were resisting the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Fallujah in 2004 was resisting the dictator Iyad Allawi, the US-installed interim premier. Franco asked Nazi Germany - which supported him - to bomb Guernica, just as Allawi "asked" the Pentagon to bomb Fallujah. Guernica had no air force and no anti-aircraft guns to defend itself - just like Fallujah. In Guernica - as in Fallujah - there was no distinction between civilians and guerrillas: the order was to "kill them all". The Nazis shouted "Viva la muerte!" ("Long live death") along with their fascist Spanish counterparts before bombing Guernica.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL02Ak02.html

A man walks down a street in the destroyed city of Fallujah, 50 kilometers west of the capital Baghdad. Nineteen people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack against Iraqi national guards as more US troops were sent to the restive city of Mosul to reinforce security ahead of landmark elections in four weeks.(AFP/Hrvoje Polan)

A body is brought for burial at a cemetery in the partially destroyed city of Fallujah, 50 kms west of Baghdad. Bodies of people who were killed during last months US offensive in the city are still being found and buried. Nineteen people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack against Iraqi national guards as more US troops were sent to the restive city of Mosul to reinforce security ahead of landmark elections in four weeks.(AFP/Fares Dlimi)

A column of vehicles carrying residents wait to pass the checkpoint before entering Fallujah, Iraq (news - web sites), Sunday, Jan. 2, 2005. US forces are still fighting insurgents in parts of Fallujah, although military officials said last month's offensive succeeded in regaining control of the city. Iraqi civilians continue to return to the troubled Sunni city. (AP Photo/Mohammed Khodor)

Iraqi men stand over the graves of their families after burying them in a yard in the western city of Falluja, January 2, 2005. Lakes of sewage in the streets and the smell of corpses inside charred buildings is are one of the first things a person will notice while walking into the city of Falluja, about six weeks after the end of the U.S.-led offensive against the city. REUTERS/Akram Saleh

US Marines from Lima Company patrol the devastated city of Fallujah, some 50 kilometers west of the capital Baghdad.(AFP/Hrvoje Polan)

http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/glevel_1/1_bombing.html

For over three hours, twenty-five or more of Germany's best-equipped bombers, accompanied by at least twenty more Messerschmitt and Fiat Fighters, dumped one hundred thousand pounds of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the village, slowly and systematically pounding it to rubble.

"We were hiding in the shelters and praying. I only thought of running away, I was so scared. I didn't think about my parents, mother, house, nothing. Just escape. Because during those three and one half hours, I thought I was going to die." (eyewitness Luis Aurtenetxea)

Those trying to escape were cut down by the strafing machine guns of fighter planes. "They kept just going back and forth, sometimes in a long line, sometimes in close formation. It was as if they were practicing new moves. They must have fired thousands of bullets." (eyewitness Juan Guezureya) The fires that engulfed the city burned for three days. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed. Sixteen hundred civilians - one third of the population - were killed or wounded.

News of the bombing spread like wildfire. The Nationalists immediately denied any involvement, as did the Germans. But few were fooled by Franco's protestations of innocence. In the face of international outrage at the carnage, Von Richthofen claimed publicly that the target was a bridge over the Mundaca River on the edge of town, chosen in order to cut off the fleeing Republican troops. But although the Condor Legion was made up of the best airmen and planes of Hitler's developing war machine, not a single hit was scored on the presumed target, nor on the railway station, nor on the small-arms factory nearby.