Fallujah photos (Warning, not for the weak)

[shraby]

<http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1>

Bringing freedom to Iraq.

[Stephanie]

1. Feeling weak

Just tell me what they are, please.

[Katarina]

2. Don't look

unless you have a tough stomach. Jesus, what the hell have we done? This is a nightmare. I'm so ashamed.

[XemaSab]

12. People killed

In their houses. LOTS of people killed in their houses.

[w4rma]

18. Hell on Earth. Scenes only Satan could love. (nt)

[marcologico]

3. Fallujah is America's Guernica, no doubt about it

Pretty grisly. And for what? Payback for those four mercenaries who got themselves killed? This is insane.

[Katarina]

5. It really is insane

And every single person that supports this war should be made to view these photos every minute they are awake. They caused this, let them live with it.

[livinginphotographs]

15. I've emailed pics like these to quite a few Bush supporters.

You know what most of them said? "Casualties happen in war." "War is hell." Or even better (at least they're honest):"I don't care." (That last little gem was from my mother).

Tell some of these parents whose children are burned alive by phosphorous bombs that "casualties happen" or "war is hell" or even "I don't care." I doubt these swaggering, tough-guy Bush supporters would have the balls to do so.

[Katarina]

20. It's crazy

On one the local boards in my town it's been suggested that we just drop "the" bomb. When I questioned how anyone could even think something like that I was told that they lived 10 blocks from the WTC's on 9/11 and even though they don't think Saddam was responsible they are tired of our troops being killed. How they hell does someone that experienced that horrifying ordeal wish something like dropping a nuke on a country that we invaded? I swear I can't figure it out! I'm a rational person. I can't imagine ever thinking something like that. How in the hell did we become such a nation of hate? What is wrong with these people? It just blows me away.

[genieroze]

21. What's wrong with them, they are brain washed morons. eom

[livinginphotographs]

22. They don't care because they

automatically think they're better than the Iraqis. I've confronted the right-wing talking point "Liberals are racist because they don't think the Iraqis can handle democracy" head-on, and it all boils down to 'murikans not giving a shit about what doesn't happen in their own backyard.

I wish Canada would invade to depose King George, and see how they like being called "insurgents" then.

[Bouncy Ball]

25. Yep

one former friend of mine, last summer, sat on her back porch that had been newly redone with a beautiful covered area and sipped 12 year old Scotch out of a cut crystal glass. She bitched about how expensive her new slacks were and eventually the conversation got over to Iraq. I brought up all the Iraqi civilian casualties and she said WITH A SMILE "Well, you know, that's war for ya. Can't be helped."

Her ice clinked, she uncrossed and recrossed her legs. I looked up at the new $150 outdoor ceiling fan and thought about her saying that and wondered what the hell she'd know of war.

I got up and left.

[Vektor]

4. Why are they killing people in their beds?

Who is doing this? Are these Iraqi citizens in their homes being killed by insurgents? I'm not sure if I understand who is doing the killing...

[no_vote_no_count]

6. US soldiers killed those people.

During the Fallujah raid. There were Iraqi fighters killed, but from the photos you can see that there were just regular civilians, including children, killed while still in bed or in their houses.

[Vektor]

8. I don't understand why.

I mean...war is never pretty, and I know that when explosives are detonated in war zones, people are killed in their homes pretty indiscriminately, and though that is NOT COOL, I understand how it happens. But some of these people have been shot. So someone walked into a home and personally shot individual people. What was the rationale? Do they say?

I'm sorry to be so ignorant, but I cannot understand why anyone would need to shoot a civilian lying in bed.

[Stephanie]

9. Good lord, really?

They are photos of children killed in their beds? I'm sorry to ask but I can't look.

[Vektor]

11. Unfortunately,

The bodies are in such bad shape that is is hard to distinguish the gender or age of many of the dead. Some of the photos have captions that tell you. There are photos of civilians, clad in what look like pajamas, dead in their beds from gunfire, and maybe explosives? It's hard to tell with some of the pictures. It is NOT pretty.

[htuttle]

7. US troops have been doing that

According to the accounts I've been reading, their 'M.O.' when 'clearing a neighborhood' is to kick open the doors, and start shouting commands in English. If the people don't respond, they get shot, just like that.

Of course, they usually don't respond since most of them don't speak English. So they get shot in their beds.

[Vektor]

10. This happened in Vietnam all the time...

In those "free-fire" zones that Kerry talked about, in "Tour of Duty."

[DELUSIONAL]

13. I just watched "The Pianist" about how one person survived

in Warsaw Poland -- pianist and composer Wladysaw Szpilman.

The parallels in the way the US military behaved toward the citizens of Fallujah -- and the way the Germans behaved toward the Jews was very upsetting.

People killed and bodies left in the streets. Bodies run over. People shot as they try to run away. People shot in their beds.

This inhumanity by one group toward another group of people is not new -- and it isn't new that it is the US military killing people in their homes. The US military did this to Native Americans -- the archives are full of horror stories of slaughter and starvation of whole Indian communities.

What is sick is that the US had NOT learned a single lesson from history.

The killing WILL continue and the uprising against the US military by the Iraqi will continue until the US gets the hell out of Iraq. This is another lesson from history -- the other history lesson is that the only way to stop the insurgency is to kill as many as possible and then put the rest into concentrations camps (Indian reservations) where they will be shot if they leave the reservation.

The only option is to get the hell out of Iraq -- the genocide option above is unthinkable and unacceptable.

[Tinoire]

14. Thank you. I was looking for that link. Please read his blog

I looked at it last week. Can't look at it again. Too many pictures of too many unforgivable crimes.

For those who can't bear to look at the pictures, please read his blog. http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/ He's a US educated "unembedded" reporter who's been risking, REALLY RISKING, his life to get these pictures and send out reports. He deserves our support and gratitude.

I pasted an interview with him about a week ago.

From Dec 26

The dump is a dusty wasteland. Heaps of Baghdad’s rotting wastes are strewn about several square miles of the battered capital city. Engaged in their futile battle to remove the endless amounts of garbage from streets, blue garbage trucks rumble through the stinky dump, adding their loads of filth.

32 year-old Hattim lives in this wasteland with his family.

“We are living in a dump. We are living a bad life. We have children, and no school. We have nothing. We are asking the new government to take small care of us. Not big things, just small things. We are transporting water with animals, with donkeys, and it’s not clean water. It’s not clean water at all and we have a lot of diseases.”

Hattim’s family, along with 35 other people, live in houses they’ve built out of old cans of cooking oil. Dried mud is packed between them to keep out the wind and dust.



Inside their makeshift home flies cover everything. A 10 day old baby sleeps nestled in dirty blankets as flies buzz over her tiny head.

Hattim continues, “We lived in the marshes and when Saddam dried the marshes he took our farms and everything and made military camps there. And now, we are living in a dump. The human, which is this holy creature, you can’t imagine living in a dump. Even God doesn’t accept that.”


====


MY GOD! Iraq was the pearl of the Middle East!! We have made it look like Haiti (which we made look as it does). Oh I am so angry today. And a $40 million dollar coronation right around the corner.

==

Before the sanctions, the biggest threat to these children was childhood obesity

look at what "freedom" has brought the children in this story


Do not go gently into the night

[despairing optimist]

16. For anyone who believes that what goes around, comes around,

I think we're in for major retribution. People who brush off photos like this in their arrogance think they're immune from harm. I'm not so sure. I fear for this country. It's like Germany in 1942.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

24. Yeah, this inspires a lot of hatred

Those of us in the USA who haven't seen these pictures can't fathom the animosity the Iraqi people must be feeling toward us, but it may well be the sort of rage that leads to terrorist attacks. The IRA members who terrorized Britain with their bombs during the 1970s, 80s and 90s often claimed their bombs were "payback" for centuries of British brutality in Ireland. Whether or not they were honest about their motivations (and I have my doubts), the reference to the bloody British record in Ireland imparted propaganda value to the attacks.

[driver8]

31. It does seem like Germany...

What the hell are we doing to these poor people? WTF?! How can the people of our country sit back and ignore this? Shrub is a fucking criminal and these pictures are proof.

My God...those poor, poor, innocent people.

[Malva Zebrina]

17. Even though these have not been published for any American to see

in the media most of them depend upon, these photos WILL survive and WILL be a part of George Bush's evil legacy. The will show the world how he lied, over and over and how he , indeed, was a war criminal, without any sense at all toward human beings, but only a sense of what his corporate buddies would provide to him, if he provided to them.

It WILL be recorded in history books the world over, if that is any consolation to those whose children were murdered by American bombs, in great numbers.

[bush_is_wacko]

26. You think any of us will be around when these photos and *Co's

atrocities become common knowledge? I'm not trying to be sarcastic. It took a long time to take Hitler down. I'm hoping *Co. doesn't move on to his own people as fast as Hitler did. In his eyes WE are evil too. What sort of WMD is he going to make up to start a war against us? God I hope I'm just over-reacting to this carnage!

[Tinoire]

27. There was no internet back then. No digital cameras either.

It's going to be a rapid descent.

[OhioBlue]

19. I can't even think of the words to respond.

just why??? Oh how I hate * and the neocons. When will people ever see the truth? It is Germany (1930's & 40's). anyone read "Night" by Elie Wiesel?

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

23. Infamy-- like the French in Algeria and the British in Ireland and India

Just like the French and British during their own colonial misadventures, we're now butchering villages wholesale and slaughtering countless innocents in a misbegotten fiasco that we can't extricate ourselves from. These pictures, assuming they're authentic, illustrate what happens in aerial bombing and artillery shelling. We don't see what occurs on the ground much so it seems sanitized for us in our home media, but it's infernal and cruel for the people who just happen within however many miles of these not-so-smart bombs radii.

[livinginphotographs]

28. Next-day kick.

n/t

[WillieWoohah]

29. I'm starting to get desensitized to these pictures

I hate it, but it's true.

When the war started, I refused to look at these kinds of images because I already opposed the war and I felt I didn't need to see the carnage in graphic detail in order to know that people were suffering.

Then I started to feel that I needed to confront the reality of what was going on. These kinds of images made me shocked and angry.

Now I'm just kind of numb to it, and I hate that.

I still get choked up seeing images grieving relatives.

Sorry for such a self-centred post, I was just wondering if anyone else feels the same way.

[Carolab]

30. I worked for a Medical Examiner in a major county for 8 years.

I saw photos of dead people and actual corpses every day, many who were killed in auto accidents or by self-inflicted gunshot blasts, some who were burned alive. Many were decomposed/decomposing or partially consumed by insects/animals or just charred remains. They horrified me and I never got used to them. These photos are far worse because I know these people weren't killed in accidents and didn't kill themselves. I couldn't enlarge any of them and by the time I paced through them I was in tears.