Afghanistan War is Insane policy

We are in an economic crisis. We can not afford 2 billion dollars a week for what??

For All Children Who Must Suffer War's Horrors: Outlandish & Sami Yusuf Song, TRY NOT TO CRY

We have been watching with horror the damage done to children by the Gaza assault, the mangled bodies, the rivers of tears, the traumatized faces, and we have to ask, how can the adults in this world perpetrate such horrors? Where is their humanity, or their shame? If they have none, then they have already consigned themselves to the Devil and will enjoy His tender mercies at the appointed time. But for the rest of us who are still human, do we have it in us to put a stop to the scourge of war that is destroying, not only the children of Palestine, but the children of Israel, of Sudan, Somalia, the Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, to name a few? Only a higher identity, a belief in the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind, can end this madness.

To quote from this video's sidebar, first posted on the Internet some two years ago by IstiArief:

Song featured in Sami Yusuf's "My Ummah" album, done with english text of the lyrics.

I made this after watching Sami Yusuf and Isam on a concert together performing this song. They pointed out that this song speaks of any troubled children in the world, even if some lyrics explicitly point to the Palestinian struggle. All of the videos on this song that I saw on YouTube represent that particular struggle only. I'd like to return to the concept of the creators of the music, and try to incorporate all of the world's children's suffering-- this is my attempt at it.

Please rate it and tell me what you think-- constructive criticism is highly preferred over blind offense, and appreciation is always welcomed.

If you want to help, give your time or your earnings to causes you believe in. It's not how much you give, it's that you give.

This is my preference charity outlet that I trust, but you can choose your own:
www.islamic-relief.com (International)
www.irw.org (USA) - recipient of Four Star Charity by Charity Navigator

Time to Kill?

Open your eyes and read the Voices from Gaza

Close your eyes...imagine these atrocities happening in your neighborhood.

Do you want to support the mass slaughter of people just like you around the world? Your tax dollars are being misused to kill innocent civilians.

Silence is the cover needed for these atrocious war crimes. Don't be an accomplice to this crime. Take a few minutes on Monday to speak out and contact your elected officials--all of them--and request that the USA STOP SUPPORTING THE MASS MURDERS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS. This is genocide, it is madness, and these are terrorist acts against the people living in Gaza.

A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

An Excerpt from A Hundred Eyes for an Eye:

Israel's airstrikes "have killed at least 270 people so far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise," Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Sunday, two days into Israel's attack. "This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians." She mentioned that "the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began was the first such casualty in more than a year."

Even if you set aside the magnitude of Israel's violations of the Geneva conventions and the long terrible history of its methodical collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, consider the vastly disproportionate carnage in the conflict.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," Gandhi said.

What about a hundred eyes for an eye? ...

What's going on in Gaza right now is not just an eye for an eye. It's a hundred eyes for an eye. And the current slaughter is not only an ongoing Israeli war crime. It has an accomplice named Uncle Sam.

B'Tselem questions Israeli account of attack - 1 Jan 09

This is how technology and hubris combine to create deadly consequences for civilians in Gaza, or for that matter in Baghdad or Fallujah at the hands of high-tech-worshipping Americans, and why it is actually a war crime to wage war in the middle of a civilian population.

Of course, some who watch this will say that the owner of the truck is a dirty Hamas liar, ect., etc., but that's clearly stretching it I believe. Having worked with gas cannisters many times over the years, I can say that the images in the video were the right size and shape for standard Oxygen or Acetylene bottles used in cutting steel.

Anyway, we all know that modern warfare has largely devolved into warfare on civilians, whether on purpose or by the inevitability of "collateral" damage, and that is one more reason why the institution of war must be taken down brick by brick.

This example of the truck being blasted by the Israeli Air Force also leads us to question how the so-called statistical body-count experts can so confidently state that only this many civilians died and that many military personnel died. How many more incidents were there like this in Gaza since the assault started?

Rob Kall Interview with Rabbi Michael Lerner on Gaza and The History that Brought Us To This Point

Rob Kall is the head of www.OpEdNews.com, one of the larger political websites on the Net, largely liberal to leftist, with some conservatives, some libertarians and a host of other voices off the conformist mainstream media path. He also has a radio program, and on New Year's Eve he aired an interview he had with Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder and publisher of Tikkun Magazine and co-founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Rabbi Lerner is an outspoken critic of the old, self-destructive paradigms afloat in the world of endless war, greed, cynicism and fear that have brought the planet to the brink of collapse, morally, economically and environmentally. He is very keen on what is happening in the Middle East, knows the history, sees the current follies, and has some novel recommendations on how to bring peace to the Middle East, and to Israel and the Palestinians particularly.

You could, then, do worse then to listen to this hour broadcast at http://www.freeconference.com/ by clicking here. Then right click on the"Recording Download Link" and open or save that link.

Rob Kall has now released the transcript of his interview with Rabbi Lerner. Click here to read.

Guest Editorial from OpEdNews: Gaza & beyond: What's the alternative?

OpEdNews (www.opednews.com) Headliner for January 1, 2009

December 31, 2008

Gaza & beyond: What's the alternative?

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Beyond anguish, what can we say about Gaza that points toward an alternative? Not just in pretty theory, but in political practicality?

The alternative for Hamas would have been to multiply the approach of the nonviolent boatloads of people who were in the last month bringing supplies to Gaza, ignoring or violating the Israeli blockade. This approach was building support in much of the world, pointing out the injustice and violence of the blockade. Instead of canceling the cease-fire and aiming rockets once again, Hamas could have turned those boats into a multitude. They might have built an enormous popular pressure in Europe and the US for an end to the blockade and negotiations between Israel, the various powers, and Hamas.

Can Hamas still take this turn toward a powerful nonviolent politics instead of a weak and dead-end military pop-gun? Much harder now. Their knee-jerk response will be to keep up enough military action to suck Israel into a land invasion and terrible carnage. Perhaps that was their intention all along. The result will be lose-lose. It will take profound rethinking to pursue a win-win path. All the sticks in the world are not likely to beat such a response out of Hamas. Carrots might, and that requires strong US support for such a move.

The alternative for the Israeli government would be to say: --- Instead of scornfully rejecting the Saudi/ Arab League proposal for a region-wide peace settlement among Israel, all Arab states, and a viable Palestinian state, we encourage it, and encourage its proponents to press Hamas to join in, while making clear that for us the deal must include only very small symbolic numbers of Palestinian refugees returning to Israel itself, and control of the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. And we encourage, instead of blocking, a Palestinian government of national unity, including Hamas as well as Fatah.

And -- we will negotiate directly with Hamas toward ending the blockade, welcoming European and Egyptian aid and investment, releasing the members of their parliament we are holding in jail, and in exchange, get an end to the rocket attacks by Hamas, a commitment to at least fifty years of "calm" or "truce," and their acceptance of governmental responsibility to control other groups that may try to continue.

Can an Israeli government take such steps? Perhaps now any Israeli government can do this and say that they have not rewarded terrorism, are not negotiating from weakness, have shown they can be bloody. But would they want to? That too would require a deep rethinking, because it would mean a serious commitment to ending the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the blockade of Gaza. Settlers and other opponents of doing this will, though fewer in numbers than those who will support it, be much more intense in their opposition. So the government is likely to be paralyzed, refusing to do what is necessary for peace, resorting to old slogans and the institutional and cultural power of the military to justify paralysis.

So the necessary counterweight for this domestic paralysis will have to come from outside -- that is, the United States. The alternative policy for the US government would be to use the disaster of these reciprocal attacks to call for all the above: To insist on a regional Middle East peace conference, to insist that even a Netanyahu government of Israel and even a Hamas leadership of Gaza or Palestine take part and accept a decent peace, to connect the end of the US occupation of Iraq with serious diplomacy with Iran and a political settlement of the Afghan agony; to move swiftly off the fossil fuel addiction that drives a planetary disaster and drives American policy into corruption or conquest in the Middle Eastern oil pools.

Only the biggest response can meet the need. Half-measures, the normal response of governments facing complex conflict, will not work.

And what might make such a break with automatic US policy possible? The Presidency of an unusual person chanting "change" is not enough. There are only two clusters of power in the US with enough passion about the Middle East to matter. One is Big Oil. The other is the ethnic and religious passion of American Christians, Jews, and Muslims. If sizeable parts of these groups could work together for such a policy, it might be possible.

For many Jews and Muslims, that is even harder now than it was two weeks ago. But for others, perhaps the shock of so much blood can make it possible.



Authors Website: http://www.shalomctr.org/

Authors Bio: Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph. D., founded (in 1983) and directs The Shalom Center , a prophetic voice in Jewish, multireligious, and American life that brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursuing justice, healing the earth, and celebrating community. He edits and writes for its weekly on-line Shalom Report. In 1996, Waskow was named by the United Nations a Wisdom Keeper among forty religious and intellectual leaders who met in connection with the Habitat II conference in Istanbul. In 2001, he was presented with the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award by the Jewish Peace Fellowship. In 2005, he was named by the Forward, the leading Jewish weekly in America, one of the "Forward Fifty" as a leader of the Jewish community. In 2007, he was named by Newsweek one of the fifty moist influential American rabbis, and was presented with awards and honors by groups as diverse as the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement of Philadelphia and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

Voices from Gaza

There is nothing like reading what the people actually experiencing war on their community are saying to learn what is really going on, beyond all the propaganda spin by American and Israeli government apologists or even Hamas spin doctors. This is excerpted from an aljazeera.net article. (click here for the original article.)

FOCUS: VOICES FROM GAZA
Gazans: 'We are living a nightmare'

As the death toll from Israel's aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip continues to climb, Al Jazeera asked Gazans to describe the situation where they are and to explain how the offensive is affecting them.

Majed Badra, 23, Gaza City, cartoonist and student at the Islamic University

"Unfortunately the situation is very bad in Gaza city - the Israeli occupation is striking more and more organisations, more houses and the mosque, and my university was hit last night.

They focus on the civilians. It is easy for them.

Nothing is working in Gaza and we don't do anything. We stay inside the house, my family and I. Every family in Gaza is doing the same.

We are used to hearing these airstrikes, everybody here is used to it and we don't have any way to protect ourselves. We just stay inside the home, hearing the news, hearing where the Israeli [army] strikes, hearing the F16s and Apaches and waiting to see what will happen.

We were not prepared for the war. They attack civilians and children and don't care if we are armed or not.

"The world looks at unarmed Palestinian people as though they are a nation with an army, as though we are equal to the Israelis ... but this is not true"

Majed, Gaza City

Yesterday, my sister's house was damaged in a strike on a target nearby. Every room was damaged except for the kitchen, where she and the children were. Allah kept them alive.

The world looks at unarmed Palestinian people as though they are a nation with an army, as though we are equal to the Israelis. They think we have real rockets that cause a lot of damage or have a big effect, but this is not true.

The reality is that we don't have anything and they have struck everything in Gaza.

I have exams coming soon in my university and I want to study but I can't in this situation. So they affect my future, the future of all students here.

Why does the Israeli army strike my university and mosques and houses? I don't know the answer. You have to ask them.

The coming days will be very bad. There will be more and more deaths."

Nida' Aniss Abu al-Atta, 26, Gaza City, projects officer

"At first, the Israeli opening raid was unexpected for normal people. We were totally shocked and for the first minutes we didn't realise it was new Israeli military aggression against Gaza.

Children thought there would be new clashes between Hamas and Fatah supporters. They were afraid and started crying and running to their mothers.

I and my family were so angry, believing that no one made enough effort to avoid this. Israel planned for this and we show readiness to resist despite being powerless compared to the Israeli arsenal.

I feel angry with the Palestinian internal scene. They were unable to show themselves unified even before this tragedy.

I hate the way Hamas leaders try to reflect our people's will by claiming that we can face this horrible military machine. Palestinian people are bleeding and shouting "enough". Even our president [Mahmoud Abbas] was powerless to the extent that it makes me sick and makes me lose faith in anybody.

I expected nothing from the international community, the Arab world and Muslims. It is not adequate anyhow; they just shout and burn flags.

At the same time, I would say that I really value the world reaction in Europe and in France in particular. I call on the Arab community to be more effective and to practice its responsibility and power against governments, like the Lebanese did before in Beirut.

We all, the Palestinian people and leaders, are responsible for this crime. We execute the Israeli plans without thinking who would be the only ones benefitting from our division.

My French teacher keeps saying: "Nida' you should not feel this normal, you have to keep saying it is horrible and feel angry. Don't get used to this."

Well, I feel normal. It is strange when there are no martyrs, no helicopters in the air or reconnaissance aircrafts in the Gaza sky."

Hamoudi, Tal el Hawa

"More than three buildings have been brought to the ground in my area.

Two of my neighbours were killed on their way back from school - sixteen-year-old Yasmeen and her sister, 15-year-old Haneen. They were innocent girls.

In my household, where I live with my brothers, sisters and my sister's eight-month-old baby, we have been sleeping far from the windows and living in darkness due to the lack of power.

But despite all of that we are still alive. Life is precious and worth fighting for.

All I seek in these moments is for the truth to get out there. Let it be known that in the 21st century this is happening while the whole world is watching but remains silent.

I wonder how cheap Palestinian blood is."

Amin Asfour, Gaza City, doctor in a public hospital

"The situation here is very difficult. They are shooting at us from everywhere, at all targets - military or not.

Many have been killed and more injured, especially in the first two days.

They are using all sorts of bombs. They weigh up to 500kg and can take out a 15-storey building in a second, like an earthquake.

Everyone is living in fear. You never know who they are going to hit.

Obviously, there is anger. It's our people dying - our kin, our relatives, not strangers. But people stick together. They live because they have to live.

We're just waiting for the next bomb to fall and wondering whether it will hit us or the neighbours. We are not afraid of the bombs falling, just anxious about who they will fall on. It's war.

In the hospital, we are short on medicine, but we work with what we have. We do miss many supplies and the equipment we work with is really old but our doctors are hardened - no situation will surprise them."

Ghada Snunu, 30, Gaza City, human rights worker

"What is happening here is unbelievable, it's shocking – a catastrophe. We've been living a nightmare for the past two days because of what's happening around us.

I fear for myself, my family and the people I care about. In all my life, I've never had such a bad feeling.

The children, my nephew and niece, are so scared. They hide under the beds, terrified, and I can do nothing to help them, except to sing soothing words to them. But nothing can help them in this situation.

We need serious action to be taken right now to end this violence against our people. I am so angry with the world – we hear nothing but words and there is no action, no real change. Enough, we are sick of hearing just words even from the Arab countries. We are human beings living here in Gaza just like animals – although maybe animals live in better conditions. We don't have medicine, food, cooking gas, fuel, power – we haven't seen electricity for a week now.

Every single person in Gaza is in a very bad psychological state – what is happening here is urging you to be unhappy, it is pushing you into despair. I feel depressed and sick and bored of everything around me – also because of the internal fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

I feel so bad for our people being separated from each other – we should unite in this bad situation. But while we are under siege and ongoing attacks, Hamas and Fatah are still fighting. This is the time for them to re-unite and work together and put an end to this deteriorating situation.

In the beginning I thought that Israel is targeting Hamas, but then I saw houses and other buildings and roads being destroyed, and innocent people being killed and injured. Now I think that Israel is targeting Gaza and not Hamas.

We never expected an attack of this scale and this number of people killed. It is a massacre. I didn't believe my own eyes at first, because it is so disgusting to see such a thing."

Hatem Shurrab, aid worker in Gaza

"The situation is getting worse day by day.

They're targeting everything. We don't know when or where they will strike next. They're hitting hospitals, medical centres, universities, homes, security centres, police.

This morning five young sisters who lived near a mosque were killed. This is one story among hundreds.

We are trying to provide support for hospitals but they are not able to deal with the injured. They have no space, no equipment. People are being treated outside hospitals on the streets.

I'm homeless now after my home was destroyed.

My family is afraid. My little nephew starts crying every time he hears an explosion. My mother tries to not let me go to work.

The streets are almost empty. The only crowds are near bakeries. Lots of people are staying at home and trying to hide."

Israel Ordered to Let International Media into Gaza

An excerpt from the Guardian UK:

Israel's supreme court today ordered the government to allow the international media into Gaza to report on the effect of the air strikes on Palestinians.

Over the past two months, foreign journalists and representatives have increasingly been restricted from entering Gaza.

Israel has closed the border completely since it began bombing the besieged Palestinian territory on Saturday.

However, the supreme court told the government it must allow up to 12 journalists to enter whenever it opens the Erez crossing, a passenger gateway, for humanitarian reasons.

The Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents foreign journalists and began a legal battle to open the crossing to the media last month, said it had been "left with no other choice" than to accept what is a limited victory.

"The state's prohibition on journalists violates two fundamental rights – the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press," the FPA's lawyer, Gilead Sher, said.

"There are several countries in this world, such as North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma, that ban press coverage in conflict zones. Israel is a democracy with a free liberal press and it should stay so, even in times of crisis and danger."

For the complete article, click here.

Sderot residents live on the edge 30 Dec 08

Video from Al Jazeera News

As you can see, both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are suffering from hostilities since the breakdown of the ceasefire in November, with both Israel and Hamas accusing each other of causing the breakdown. Both sides also accuse each other of being terrorists as well. The irony here is that since Israel's assault on December 26 began, rocket attacks have by-and-large increased, killing several Israelis. One woman in this interview describes the cycle of violence that is going on, hoping that somehow another round of violence will stop the violence. Not very likely.

Worse still, Hamas has called for a Third Intifada, Hezbollah is threatening to open up a second front and Iran has called for volunteers to defend Palestine. The bloodshed on both sides may increase exponentially.

Nowhere to run for those trapped in Gaza - 30 Dec 08

Israel won't let the Western media into Gaza (who are in turn suing Israel in court to get in), and it's pretty obvious why. Would the Nazis have wanted the media to record what was going on in the Warsaw Ghetto while they were assaulting the Jews? Of course not. You don't allow cameras to pan around when you have something ugly to hide. Fortunately an Al Jazeera English news team DID get into Gaza, and the following video is just a snippet of what Palestinians are going through now as the razing of Gaza continues. Multiply this by a hundred to get an idea of what is happening daily now in the Gaza strip at the hands of Israel's high tech bombs, rockets, missiles and artillery, with massive payloads.

WEST BANK VISITOR'S PROTEST AGAINST ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA, DOWNTOWN NORFOLK, VA, DEC. 30, 2008

Even though most people know Norfolk, Virginia as the home of the largest American naval base in the world, NOB Norfolk, in this greater area known as Hampton Roads, which is inundated with other military bases, schools and commands as well, there is still great diversity of opinions and peoples, even within military ranks. On little notice today, Dec. 30, some thirty protesters began gathering at 4:30 PM in front of the City Hall complex at the corner of St Paul Blvd and City Hall Avenue to speak out against the Israeli assault on Gaza. They were still going strong at nightfall when I left around 6:00 PM. I interviewed four of them during the protest. The 4th interview was with Chris Towne of Norfolk, a member of Amnesty International who has been to the West Bank several times as a member, as well, of Holy Land Trust.

MINISTER'S PROTEST AGAINST ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA, DOWNTOWN NORFOLK, VA, DEC. 30, 2008

Even though most people know Norfolk, Virginia as the home of the largest American naval base in the world, NOB Norfolk, in this greater area known as Hampton Roads, which is inundated with other military bases, schools and commands as well, there is still great diversity of opinions and peoples, even within military ranks. On little notice today, Dec. 30, some thirty protesters began gathering at 4:30 PM in front of the City Hall complex at the corner of St Paul Blvd and City Hall Avenue to speak out against the Israeli assault on Gaza. They were still going strong at nightfall when I left around 6:00 PM. I interviewed four of them during the protest. The 3rd interview was with Reverend Pamela Anne Bro from Virginia Beach, also a minister in Virginia Beach.

MORE PROTEST AGAINST ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA, DOWNTOWN NORFOLK, VA, DEC. 30, 2008 - 2ND INTERVIEW

Even though most people outside Virginia know Norfolk, Virginia as the home of the largest American naval base in the world, NOB Norfolk, in this greater area known as Hampton Roads, which is inundated with other military bases, schools and commands as well, there is still great diversity of opinions and peoples, even within military ranks. On little notice today, Dec. 30, some thirty protesters began gathering at 4:30 PM in front of the City Hall complex at the corner of St Paul Blvd and City Hall Avenue to speak out against the Israeli assault on Gaza. They were still going strong at nightfall when I left around 6:00 PM. I interviewed four of them during the protest. The 2nd interview was with Joe Filipowski from Norfolk, who went into considerable depth of analysis about not only Israeli, but American foreign policy.

The Third Anniversay of the Second Attack on Fallujah: WILLY PETE DOES FALLUJAH

Willy Pete did this Fallujan woman. How much suffering might she have endured while her body carmelized? An official military morgue photo (source)



********

This November marks the third anniversay of the second of two American-led military assaults culminating in the massive destruction of most of the ancient Iraqi city of Fallujah. Consequently, I am republishing my account of this event here on Mosquito Blog, lest we forget what the Bush regime has perpetrated in our names. It was first published by the Southern ((I)) in print form, and later at OpEdNews.com, the web-link of which site you can access by clicking here.

Earlier this year I posted the first four articles in this series at Mosquito Blog. They dealt with the first assault ending in May, and the immediate aftermath. In the rest of the articles, this being the eighth and last, I have started getting into the much more brutal second assault in November, something most of us know little about, due to the moral poverty of the mainstream media.

Posting this last article right now has the benefit of being just before the last week of the Light in the Dark Peace Festival, the program of which is posted farther down on this blog. This Monday night, the 17th, Kathy Kelley, the courageous humanitarian fighter for peace and justice in Iraq, will be speaking at the Naro, and on Tuesday, the dramatic fictionalized film about crimes perpetrated by American troops in Iraq, REDACTED, will be shown. Reading this last article may perhaps motivate you to attend one or both of these events.

*********

Fallujah, the Guernica of Our Times

Part 8: Willy Pete Does Fallujah

By Mac McKinney


"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of the rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'

- Marlow from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness





















This used to be a human face and skull. This is what the Pentagon's exotic weapons and your tax dollars do to humans. Yes, the horror, the horror! An official military morgue photo (source)

************************

On March 3, 2005, Dr Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, made a shocking announcement at a Baghdad press conference, stating that his medical team had discovered that the US military had employed chemical weapons in their November, 2004 assault that all but leveled the city of Fallujah, weapons that included mustard gas, nerve gas and burning agents. The Australian Journal, Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005 issue quoted from Al Jazeera satellite news that "Shaykhli said that during the US assault, fleeing residents described 'seeing corpses that had melted, which suggests that US troops used napalm gas, a poisonous compound of polystyrene and aircraft fuel which melts bodies'. He also said that his researchers had found evidence of the use of mustard gas and nerve gas. 'We found dozens, not to say hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses', he told the press conference, which was held in the health ministry's Baghdad building."
(source)

Although there were several prominent American media representatives there, only the Christian Scientist Monitor carried this story, and only on its website. Once again the American media was ignoring a report of a major American breach of international conventions. Even so, the Pentagon was already getting defensive as early as December of 2004, made nervous perhaps by Islamic website charges as well as GI blogs and "after-action reports" on the Internet that were touting the use of Willy Pete (white phosphorus), propane bombs and napalm against Fallujah. Official Pentagon spokesmen began claiming that white phosphorus was only used as an illumination device:

Official Denials

"In December the US Government formally denied the reports (based on insurgent claims-parentheses mine), describing them as 'widespread myths'. 'Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used outlawed phosphorus shells in Fallujah,' the USinfo website said. 'Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes.' (Peter Popham, the Independent UK) (source)




















Another victim of Willy Pete's handiwork. An official military morgue photo (source)

But the charges persisted throughout 2005, strengthened by bloggers who had started looking back at reports issued by embedded reporters in Fallujah during the November, 2004 siege, bloggers such as Mike Whitney:

"The US also used napalm in the siege of Falluja as was reported in the UK Mirror ('Falluja Napalmed', 11-28-04) The Mirror said, '[that] President George Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet-fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun the world. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh. Since the American assault on Falluja there have been reports of 'melted' corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries." ("Incinerating Iraqis; The Napalm Cover Up" by Mike Whitney) (source)

Finally, the official Pentagon story-line began to unravel after several revelations surfaced toward the end of 2005, the most powerful being an Italian documentary by Sigfrido Ranucci of RAINews24 entitled "Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre." (source)

To again quote from Peter Popham of The Independent UK, Tuesday, November 8, 2005 regarding this film:

"But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.

"In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier [Jeff Englehart] who fought at Fallujah says: 'I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.'

'Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.'

"Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

"A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: 'A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact.'

"The documentary, entitled 'Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre,' also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was (sic) used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets." (source)




















The carmelized head of an Iraqi burned to death by Willy Pete, unless luckily already slain before being scorched to this altered state. An official military morgue photo (source)

At the same time, corroborating evidence now surfaced about the use of Willy Pete as a weapon. To quote Chris Floyd of the Moscow Times in his article, "The White Death of Fallujah":

"A Daily Kos diarist, Stephen D., dug up one of the U.S. military's own publications, Field Artillery Magazine, which eagerly related the use of white phosphorous, which 'proved to be an effective and versatile munition,' the article said. 'We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [High Explosives]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out." (source)

Sophisms

The Pentagon, no longer able to deny its usage of white phosphorus against humans, was now reduced to various sophisms to justify its onerous use. Danny Mayer of ZNet Magazine explores this in his article, "Willy Peter":

"Because the U.S. is not a signatory to the 1980 Geneva Convention and has challenged the legal definition of chemical weapons, the Pentagon now claims that white phosphorus is 'not a chemical weapon' and therefore 'not outlawed or illegal.'

"For the Pentagon, at least, the 'shake and bake' missions are a 'potent psychological weapon' that will drive the enemy 'out of their holes.' The use of white phosphorus has a particularly brutal history. During the war in Vietnam, the U.S. used white phosphorous as an improved form of napalm, terrorizing enemies. Then, as now, it was touted as a psychological tool of warfare necessary to subdue enemy hamlets.

"Unlike napalm, which in Vietnam left villagers and enemies alike with massive burns all over their bodies, white phosphorus burns down to the bone.

"Le The Thrung, a Vietnamese doctor studying white phosphorus burns in 1969, describes its effects on the skin: 'burning phosphorus produces 800-1,000 degrees centigrade heat. Scattered phosphorus particles go on consuming themselves and deepen burn wounds.' Next, chemical compounds 'create a chemical burn, like an acid, drawing water from the cells. This process generates great pain in the nervous system.' Finally, white phosphorus compounds oxygenate and penetrate 'the blood stream and white blood cells in the dermis, subdermis, and deeper skin layers.' This creates what he calls an 'organic toxicity [that] blocks off all blood circulation with the burn area.'.........

"This is what our military and political leaders currently define as a 'potent psychological weapon?' These are the actions that citizens of empire are to support and legitimize, even if tacitly, in the name of spreading democracy and securing our own nebulous borders?

"No, this is not about our national feelings of moral fortitude. This is about civilians and 'enemies' alike having chemicals dropped on them like rain and their skin bubbling, melting, wasting away with no way to scrape off the pain of oxidizing phosphorus and no way to cauterize the slow, painful melting into the nervous system and bloodstream. No, for those getting 'smoked out of their holes,' there is very little, if anything, psychological about Willy Peter." (source)

How many Fallujans suffered this final indignity of being chemically burned to death in the most agonizing manner imaginable? Dozens, hundreds, several thousand? It is hard to say. Partial American military DD1079 records on the RAI website list 60 bodies destined for Fallujah City Cemetery alone, as well as absolutely macabre photographs of some of the victims. We will likely never know just how many suffered this garish fate. For those readers with strong stomachs who feel compelled to see the photographic proof of the effects of Willy Pete on individual Fallujans, as well as to study the cemetery records, please see:
http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/en/records.asp

This then was the final twist of the knife to Fallujah during the second assault on that hapless city during Operation Phantom Fury in November, 2004, a rain of fiery, excruciating pain and death upon civilians and combatants, ordered by well-groomed and well-educated US commanders with all the moral angst, apparently, of teenagers whacking pixel images at a video game in the Mall. But on some unconscious level at least, those GIs having to load Willy Pete artillery shells certainly knew that those on the receiving end were flesh and blood beings like themselves who were about to be caramelized. Some of them will inevitably have to deal with the ghosts rising from their subconscious in the middle of the night and hope that military or VA shrinks, booze or drugs can make them go away.




















Another surreal victim of Willy Pete. An official military morgue photo (source)

Making History

One soldier who eye-witnessed the massive destruction of Fallujah and who goes by the blogger name of hEkLe, wrote a tour de force letter in December of 2004 on what he had just experienced, from which I quote:

"We reduced Falluja to rubble. We claimed victory and told the world we held Falluja under total and complete control. Our military claimed very few civilian casualties and listed thousands of insurgents dead. CNN and Fox News harped and cheered on the television that the battle of Falluja would go down in history as a complete success, and a testament to the United States' supremacy on the modern battlefield.

"However, after the dust settled, and generals sat in cozy offices smoking their victory cigars, the front lines in Falluja exploded again with indomitable mortar, rocket, and small-arm attacks on U.S. and coalition forces." (source)

Right after Operation Phantom Fury flattened Fallujah, one of those generals that hEkLe was referring to above also invoked history:

"It ought to go down in the history books", Major General Richard Natonski of the Marines told the New York Times, proud of America's handiwork in conquering Fallujah. Indeed it will, General, right alongside the Warsaw Ghetto, Grozny and Guernica as testimonies to modern man's ongoing, savage inhumanity to his fellow man. The only thing that remains to be done is for another artist to express the story on canvas for posterity.

Postscript to This Series:

This is from a WWII article entitled "British in Africa Lack Killer Urge", by James Aldridge writing in the New York Times on June 24, 1942:

"The German Africa Corps defeated the Eighth Army because it had speed, anger, virility and toughness....They (the Germans) are practical men, taken from a most practical and hard life to fight practically: Nazis trained to kill. The German commanders are scientists, who are continually experimenting with and improving the hard, mathematical formula of killing. They are trained as mathematicians, engineers and chemists facing complicated problems....War is pure physics to them. The German soldier is trained with a psychology of a daredevil track rider. He is a professional killer, with no distractions. He believes he is the toughest man on earth....The British soldier is the most heroic on earth, but do not confuse that with military toughness. He has the toughness of determination but he has not the toughness to kill his enemy."

This article prompted these comments by Wilhelm Reich, the famous psychiatrist, sociologist and writer, in his classic work, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1942-Third Edition):

"This is the best description of mechanical militarism that I have ever read. It discloses in one blow the complete identity of mechanistic natural science, mechanical human structure, and sadistic murder. This identity found its highest and most consummate expression in the totalitarian dictatorship-ideology of German imperialism. This mechanical trinity is set in relief against the view of life that regards man not as a machine, the machine not the master of man, and militarism not as his greatest asset. This living functional view has found its last refuge in the Western democracies. It remains to be seen whether it will survive the chaos." (page 332)

Reich goes on to excoriate Aldridge for entreating the British to abandon their appreciation for human live in favor of imitating the Fascists. Again quoting Reich, "Those who attempt to beat the mechanical automations with their own methods will only jump out of the frying pan into the fire, i.e., in their efforts to become more efficient killers, they will transform themselves into mechanical automations and perpetuate the process their opponents have set in motion....

"Our conception of the anti-fascist fight is different. It is a clear, relentless recognition of the historical and biological causes that lead to such murders. The deracination of the fascist plague will come solely from such a recognition and not by imitating it. One cannot vanquish fascism by imitating and subduing it with its own methods, without becoming a fascist oneself. The way of fascism is the way of the automation, death, rigidity, hopelessness. The way of the living is fundamentally different...." (page 333)

Unfortunately, the American Establishment, with its fledgling new CIA, couldn't wait to embrace the research of captured Nazi scientists at the end of WWII and utterly failed to heed this advice. Instead, America has, over time, journeyed into the heart of darkness, succumbing to the fascist plague, and no matter how much various demagogic American politicians project this dark shadow onto those they hypocritically call "Islamo-Fascists" and countless other terms of demonization, this is but deep denial compounding brutal militarism and imperialism, with no end in sight to the ongoing carnage, unless those Americans not infected with this plague can find the will to confront and defeat them.

The Third Anniversay of the Second Attack on Fallujah: Fallujah Becomes Guernica

********
Photo montage of victors and victims: source
Destroyed building: source
Destroyed mosque: source
Inside bombed-out house: source
Critically injured Fallujan boy: source

********

This November marks the third anniversay of the second of two American-led military assaults culminating in the massive destruction of most of the ancient Iraqi city of Fallujah. Consequently, I am republishing my account of this event here on Mosquito Blog, lest we forget what the Bush regime has perpetrated in our names. It was first published by the Southern ((I)) in print form, and later at OpEdNews.com, the web-link of which site you can access by clicking here.

Earlier this year I posted the first four articles in this series at Mosquito Blog. They dealt with the first assault ending in May, and the immediate aftermath. In the rest of the articles, this being the seventh, I have started getting into the much more brutal second assault in November, something most of us know little about, due to the moral poverty of the mainstream media.

*********

Fallujah, the Guernica of Our Times

Part 7: Fallujah Becomes Guernica

By Mac McKinney

"The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being. When he violates this sacred trust, he not only profanes his entire cult but threatens the very fabric of international society. The traditions of fighting men are long and honorable. They are based upon the noblest of human traits - sacrifice."

-General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur, 1946, confirming the death by hanging sentence imposed by a United States military commission on General Tomayuki Yamashita, convicted of failing to prevent Japanese Imperial troops under his command from committing massacres and outrages against prisoners of war and civilians in the last stages of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.

***************

After "capturing" Fallujah General Hospital and isolating its staff from the outside world, American forces continued to sweep into the city, pounding targeted areas with artillery and air power to soften them up, as well as cutting all electrical power by late Tuesday, 09 November 2004. Insurgent resistance varied from neighborhood to neighborhood, in some instances light, in others heavy, but fluid enough to reinforce some areas under attack that were hard-pressed. Even so, the best the Mujaheddin, playing David to the U.S. Goliath, could hope to do was to delay the inevitable against overwhelmingly superior firepower, logistics and technology.

By November 10, after two days of fighting, CENTCOM announced that they had taken about 70% of the city. The northwestern Jolan district was occupied with little resistance, as well as the main east-west highway. However, to the southwest, the Resala and Nazal neighborhoods were putting up a better fight. Coalition forces, generally going house to house, continued to target for assault or destruction all buildings that were deemed to be sheltering insurgents, whom we must recall are usually difficult to differentiate from civilians. Unfortunately, targets included many mosques, such as Al Tawfiq and Muhammadia , which were alleged to either be housing wounded fighters or serving as command centers and bunkers.

On November 12, Coalition forces continued to force the Mujaheddin into the southeast corner of the city while the Iraqi Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, declaring the situation in Fallujah a "big disaster", requested permission to enter the city, but received no official reply. By the following day, officials stated they had achieved control of most of the city and were beginning house-to-house clearing operations, claiming that a thousand or so insurgents had been slain and 200 captured.

By November 15, ground troops were still plodding on, house-to-house, aided by ongoing air strikes, artillery, tanks, and explosives experts. The Red Crescent was still not allowed into the city, so they turned their trucks toward the outlying villages where tens of thousands of Fallujans were encamped in tents in very desperate straits.

The following day CENTCOM declared victory in Fallujah, other than for isolated pockets of resistance, which would linger on with nagging persistence. According to GlobalSecurity.org: "As of 15 November 2004, 38 U.S. troops, six Iraqi soldiers and an estimated 1200 insurgents had been killed. Three of the U.S. fatalities were non-battle related injuries. Approximately 275 U.S. troops were wounded as well." (source)

Several senior military officers now began to predict that the insurgency in Iraq would soon collapse.

This, in a nutshell, was the sanitized version of events that was flowing from the corporate media in November. The Pentagon's embedded reporters were, as usual, kept on a tight leash regarding physical access to the city and were briefed regularly by military spokesmen on the "liberation of Fallujah". Moreover, there were no independent, live-reporting media crews within Fallujah during major hostilities, unlike the April siege. Still, the universe itself has eyes and ears, so to speak, and so the unvarnished, other side of the story, with powerful allegations, eventually began to surface, a tiny portion of which I am recounting here. Some of what follows has been corroborated, some of it not, so the reader must decide for himself the veracity of each eye-witness account.


















Marines moving out in Fallujah. (source)

Eye-Witnesses

Let us begin with information provided in this year's Project Censored book, "Censored 2006", that lists civilian suffering in Fallujah as the second biggest story ignored by the Establishment media in 2005. The following is recounted from the book's report, Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll, and addresses, among other things, American house-to house searches:

"Burhan Fasa'a, an Iraqi journalist, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English. 'Americans did not have interpreters with them, so they entered houses and killed people because they didn't speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and shot people because [the people] didn't obey [the soldiers'] orders, even just because the people couldn't understand a word of English.'

"Abu Hammad, a resident of Fallujah, told the Inter Press Service that he saw people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. 'The Americans shot them with rifles from the shore. Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their head to show they are not fighters, they were all shot.' Furthermore, 'even the wound[ed] people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed.' Former residents of Fallujah recall other tragic methods of killing the wounded. 'I watched them [US Forces] roll over wounded people in the street with tanks ... This happened so many times.'

"Preliminary estimates as of December of 2004 revealed that at least 6,000 Iraqi citizens in Fallujah had been killed.....The illegal, heavy handed tactics practiced by the US military in Iraq evident in these news stories have become what appears to be their standard operating procedure in occupied Iraq. Countless violations of international law and crimes against humanity occurred in Fallujah during the November massacre...... According to Iraqis inside the city, at least 60 percent of Fallujah went on to be totally destroyed in the siege, and eight months after the siege entire districts of the city remained without electricity or water. Israeli style checkpoints were set up in the city, prohibiting anyone from entering who did not live inside the city. Of course non-embedded media were not allowed in the city." (source)

The above Project Censored report of American troops wantonly gunning down civilians in the Euphrates River is so ghastly that corroboration is demanded. Revolutionary Worker Online Article #1260, November 28, 2004, does just that with the story of Bilal Hussein:

"Bilal Hussein is an Iraqi photographer for the Associated Press. He stayed inside Fallujah during the invasion, and planned to photograph the advance of U.S. troops from that side.

"But once the bombing and artillery started to flatten his Jolan neighborhood, Hussein realized he was facing death. 'U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses... Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them,' he said. 'There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days.'



















A dead Iraqi, decapitated, apparently holding his dead daughter (source)

"As the U.S. forces entered his neighborhood, Hussein fled in total panic. He decided to escape by crossing the Euphrates River along the western side of Fallujah. Hussein stuck to the shadows, dodging the gunfire, moving house to house, toward the river. He says, 'I decided to swim... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.' In shock, he watched a family of five shot dead in the water. He helped bury a man by the river bank, digging with his hands. 'I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards.' A peasant family gave him shelter in their house, so he survived to tell what he had seen." (source)

"Inside the city, many are dead. Reporters describe desperate dogs and cats feeding on corpses in the streets...... Much of the city is impassable: Crushed cars fill the streets and intersections. Sewage pipes broken and spewing lakes of filth. Power and telephone lines snarl into spaghetti-like tangles.

"Everything lies covered in layers of soot and debris. This makes the ruins look ancient-as if they had been abandoned and untouched for years. But the heavy dust is only days old, dropped from a fiery sky filled by explosions and the thick smoke of a burning city. The northern neighborhoods were flattened in the fury and flames of the opening attack. The southern industrial districts were leveled in the fierce fighting of the attack's last days. The city's huge northern rail station-once a major transfer point for all of Iraq-was obliterated forever by a single earth-shaking 2000-pound bomb." (source)

Tolls and Ironies

What was the overall toll of destruction? Moscow Times columnist Chris Floyd writes: "By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines. The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources disagree. When medical teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 bodies in only one third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly civilians....."
(Chris Floyd from his article, The White Death of Fallujah) (source)

Indeed, during the middle of the American attack on Fallujah, insurgents suddenly poured into Mosul on November 10, attacking police stations and causing most of the several thousands-strong police ranks to abruptly flee or resign en masse. Furthermore, Dr Ali Fadhil, the Iraqi physician turned journalist, who snuck into Fallujah after the main assault and shot enough footage to eventually broadcast a video-report for Channel Four News in England, actually managed to interview Abu Shaiba, the commander of the 'Army of Mohammad' based in south Fallujah's al-Shuhada'a district:

"With his face covered, Shaiba relates what had happened to the insurgents under his command: 'The fighters withdrew from the town following an order from our senior leadership. We pulled out, but not because we had lost the fight with the Americans. It was a tactical decision to re-group.'


















Resistance fighters on alert in Fallujah (source)

"Finally, Fadhil speculates on the results of the US military offensive against the city. 'If so many of the insurgents escaped, what did the American forces really achieve in Fallujah? The violence has simply spread to other parts of the country; over 300,000 people have lost their homes and now bitterly resent the Americans. 'The City of Mosques' has become the 'City of Rubble.' " (source)

So if many or most of the Mujaheddin had followed the old ditty of "he who fights and runs away will live to fight another day", then who were all the bodies lying buried underneath rubble or being gnawed on by starving, rabid dogs in the streets? Civilians, many of them women and children, or what was left of them, because many had been horribly shredded by ordnance.

















Slain Iraqi in street, his body either eaten by starving dogs or very likely burned to the bone by American incendiaries, judging by the charring on clothes and what looks like charring on bones (source)




















Slain woman in a home (source)

Again, Pepe Escobar writes: "Terrified Fallujans calling Baghdad tell of A-10 jets raining cluster bombs on the city's streets. Iraqi (very) black humor qualifies unexploded cluster bombs as the Iraqi version of Toys 'R' Us: children get injured or killed because they think cluster bombs are toys. Everyone is talking of 'scores of bodies' in streets destroyed by US bombing. There is no power, no water, shops are closed, food is scarce and practically no medical supplies remain, according to Dr Sami al-Jumaili, speaking to al-Jazeera. No more clinics are open throughout the city - and there is no possible way to estimate how many civilians are dead, blown up, burned or injured, although al-Jumaili tells of 'scores of injured civilians'. A brand-new clinic funded by a Saudi Islamic relief non-governmental agency was bombed by the Americans during the weekend, as well as a medical dispensary in the city center: this was apparently the last place where anybody could get any medical attention." (source)

The use of cluster bombs in populated cities is illegal, but then again, so are military assaults against civilian populations. But our commanders were used to ignoring ethics by now, so why not throw in some white phosphorus to boot. But that is in the next chapter.

********

Next Chapter, Part 8:

Willie Pete Does Fallujah

Happy XMAS--War is Over

Warning--Video contains images of war

Merry XMAS and Peace on Earth! God Blesses EVERYONE not just Americans.....

This war is over if we want it. We spoke out loufl during the midterm. Now they are hoping we will shut up and go on about our lives while they continue to mislead us.

IF we want out of Iraq we will need to keep speaking out and not shut up until all our troops are home. GO TO D.C. ON JANUARY 3 OR 4 AND LOBBY CONGRESS TO END THIS WAR. If you can't do it in person CALL or EMAIL ALL your elected officials in D.C.

We voted to end this war. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gates, et al are going to spin it and lie to keep us in Iraq AND have us start ANOTHER war in Iran. Let's do what is necessary to stop these war profiteers and "their" terrorism of others.