Back to the subject of this thread, not a UN resolution one nor a legality of war.
Another view from the east.
THE ROVING EYE
The Iraqi killing fields
By Pepe Escobar
AMMAN - "We know we don't target journalists," said the US Central Command (CentCom) in Qatar. Contrary to CentCom's assertions, non-embedded journalists know that they have been targeted.
It was inevitable. When it finally happened, it was like clockwork. Al-Jazeera's office in Kabul was incinerated by four missiles in the 2001 ousting of the Taliban in Afghanistan. True to CentCom form, al-Jazeera's office in Baghdad was hit by a Tomahawk this week in the invasion of Iraq - even though the Qatari network had offered its global positioning system (GPS) position to the Pentagon in late February.
Correspondent-producer Tariq Ayyoub, 35, Jordanian, father of an infant girl, was killed and a photographer was wounded. The Abu Dhabi TV office in Baghdad was hit by an Abrams tank - although they have been broadcasting from the same building for three years now. Another Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, near Tahir square: even Mesopotamian desert rats know that this is where virtually all the Western and Asian journalists in Baghdad stay: A Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters and a Spanish cameraman for Telecinco were killed, and four other journalists were wounded.
France 3 television broadcast footage of the turret of the Abrams tank, positioned on the west margin of the Tigris, at least 300 meters away from the Palestine, moving in the direction of the hotel and taking its time to aim and shoot. The official American version - that they were threatened by sniper fire coming from the hotel - was universally dismissed. Asia Times Online was among many to confirm that no journalists who were in the open doing live feeds for TV reported hearing any sniper fire or rocket launchers being fired from the hotel. As Sky TV's David Chater put it, the shell "was aimed directly at this hotel and directly at journalists. This wasn't an accident, it seems to be a very accurate shot."
There's a problem with the absolute majority of the journalists in Baghdad - surreptitiously betrayed by the rhetoric emanating from US CentCom in Qatar. They are non-embedded. "Unilaterals" - non-embedded journalists - may be mistaken for "legitimate" targets by the Pentagon: or rather "targets of opportunity". They can be bombed because of their annoying Thuraya satellite telephones with GPS. They can be beaten - like a group of Portuguese journalists in southern Iraq. They can be humiliated at will, just because they are able to think independently, or they are also reporting the Iraqi side, or they are not telling the official, sanitized, Pentagon-censored story of the carnage in Iraq.
Even diplomatic convoys are not immune. Alexander Minakov, a reporter for Russian TV who was involved in Sunday's incident when a Russian convoy with 10 diplomats and 10 journalists was trying to leave Baghdad towards Damascus, confirmed that they were targeted by M-16 rifles, standard equipment for American soldiers and marines. According to the Russian ambassador, Vladimir Titorenko, speaking to the Itar-Tass agency, "A column of American armored vehicles suddenly blocked our way. There were tanks, APCs and mobile gun mounts. Our convoy led by my car under the Russian flag stopped but they suddenly opened fire. All the attempts to leave the cars and explain the situation were thwarted by bursts from automatic weapons," said Titorenko. Several grenades were hurled at the cars. Four people were wounded and the ambassador's driver was seriously wounded in the stomach. American officials predictably denied any responsibility.
The attack on the Palestine hotel has been vehemently condemned all over the world. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says that it is a possible war crime, or at least "a grave and serious violation of international law". IFJ general secretary Aidan White stressed that "the bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy".
While Arab satellite channels are showing the tragic reality of war, American corporate media - also available by satellite all over the Middle East - all but totally ignores the suffering of the Iraqi people. Torrents of abuse in America are directed against Arab and European news outlets that publish and broadcast the real extent of the carnage and human suffering that is being inflicted on civilians.
In this context, the bombing of al-Jazeera could not but please the neoconservatives in Washington. Carnage it is. The American advance has been described as the "infernal column" by Yves Debay, a war correspondent for the military affairs magazine Raids who observed the US modus operandi at very close range: "They organize columns of 40 to 50 armored vehicles. Up front, M1 Abrams tanks, followed by Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees. They roll with two tanks up front, occupying the whole road. They shoot everything in sight, everything suspicious. It's 'fire at will'. They love shooting Saddam portraits with 25 mm cannons. They have no fire discipline. The initiative is left to the soldiers, 20-year-old kids. That's the reason why they also shoot civilians. An European army would never behave like this. By better controlling its troops, the British army kills considerably less civilians." Debay's observations are corroborated by what happened at the Palestine: crucial tactical decisions are left to low-level local tank commanders.
On his way to Baghdad from Mahmudiyah, Debay saw dozens of burning civilian vehicles, all of their passengers dead. He volunteers an explanation for the indiscriminate killing: "They [the Americans] have two problems. They are still taking revenge for September 11, and there are no sanctions when a soldier kills a civilian. Their objective is not to kill civilians, but they behave like cowboys. They even shoot cows ... I have the impression it's a way to mask their fear. They are very afraid. And it gets worse every time they sustain losses."
The American superiority in technology, mobility and firepower is overwhelming beyond comprehension - also considering that Iraq's military capability had been totally smashed in 1991, plus the 12 years of debilitating United Nations sanctions. The road to Baghdad for the advancing American troops was cleared by a devastating combination of B-52 carpet-bombing, artillery barrages and strafing by Apache helicopters. Initially, the killing in Baghdad had no military objective, or was not about taking or holding ground (CentCom briefing). Even after Monday's spectacular foray into the National Parade Ground and Saddam's palaces in Baghdad, the rhetoric remained the same.
Now territory in central Baghdad has indeed been taken: the Americans control large swaths of the west bank of the Tigris (echoes of Israel controlling large areas of the West Bank in Palestine). So the rhetoric has changed to "targets of opportunity". Like the bombing of houses of Iraqi Christians (at least eight civilians dead), or the blitz with four satellite-guided 900-kilogram bombs of the famous al-Sa'a restaurant in the al-Mansour residential district (at least 14 civilians dead) where Saddam Hussein and his sons "might" have been - according to a web of 37 American satellites plus "human intelligence" on the ground. The satellites and the intelligence failed. Behind the al-Sa'a there is now a huge crater 10 meters deep and 15 meters wide, and the families of residents Abdel Massyah and Salman Daoud are buried under the rubble.
Outside the five-star al-Rashid hotel, a Reuters photographer said that the marines on Monday were firing indiscriminately on civilians and militias: he has bullet holes in his car to prove it. "Human intelligence" on the ground in Baghdad has revealed to Asia Times Online that the rate of casualties in the city could be anywhere from 100 to 500 Iraqis to each American. Even though the resistance is now minimal, the carnage will go on because although the Americans have practically encircled Baghdad they don't have enough troops to control a sprawling city of 5 million-plus inhabitants.
The military plan is to divide the city in pockets and secure it pocket by pocket - with overwhelming support of F/A-18s, A-10 tankbusters and Apache helicopters, now flying very low because there's absolutely no air defense left in Baghdad to speak of. If it looks and sounds like a deadly video game, that's because it is: even American generals are describing it as an aerial form of house-to-house fighting. The main victims are, of course, Iraqi civilians.
Popular reaction has been graphic. The Bush administration, the Pentagon and the breathless, embedded cheerleaders of American corporate media are ecstatic. The whole planet is horrified. By watching those images of the proud cradle of human civilization reduced to Fourth World status, anybody that is not a military expert may understand that the only thing left for the "poor bastards" - as the marines call them - absolutely unable to resist overwhelming military force, is to resort to guerrilla and suicide attacks. History shows that this is how occupied lands and peoples have always reacted. Extraordinary footage by the Capa photo agency shows a group of ragged teenagers with rocket launchers trying to retake a bridge from Abrams tanks: the operation takes a few minutes, and half of the bunch is left soaking in pools of blood.
All over Baghdad, the city's five main hospitals simply cannot cope with an avalanche of civilian casualties. Doctors can't get to the hospitals because of the bombing. Dr Osama Saleh-al-Duleimi, at the al-Kindi hospital, confirms the absolute majority of patients are women and children, victims of bullets, shrapnel and most of all, fragments of cluster bombs: "They are all civilians," he says, "caught in aerial and artillery bombardment."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is in a state of almost desperation. Its spokesman, Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, contacted by satellite telephone, still mentions casualties arriving at hospitals at a rate of as many as 100 per hour and at least 100 per day. This correspondent has been to many Baghdad hospitals: after fighting 12 years of sanctions and a list of as many as 500-prohibited items, it's a miracle that they barely remained functional. In a city now with no regular phones, no electricity and practically no water, they are all operating on generators. One of the larger hospitals has no power and no water at all. Getting clean water for the patients remains a nightmare. Anaesthetics, antibiotics and insulin are almost gone. The hospitals are running out of blood, beds, everything.
The victims of the blitz are inevitably the young and the poor. How many? Even the ICRC cannot determine it yet: hospital doctors talk about hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded. Dr Sadek al-Mukhtar has seen it all in terms of death and destruction. He is adamant: "Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy. Now I do. There are military and there are civilians. War should be against the military. America is killing civilians." Fifty percent of Iraq's population of 24 million is under 15. Malnutrition is endemic. The majority of families depend on state food rations - the meager standard package of flour, rice, tea, cooking oil and soap - and rations should run out by next month.
A-10 tankbusters have fired the hungry, terrified Baghdadis with depleted uranium rounds - the surefire way to win their hearts and minds. There may be some scenes of jubilation with the marines coming to town - basically in the huge Shi'ite Saddam City slum, bursting with more than 2 million people who have been frustrated and oppressed for so long by the Sunni-dominated Saddam regime.
But these desperately poor and angry masses want food.They want water. They don't necessarily want to see marines in tanks for more than a day or two. Eastern Baghdad is in total anarchy. But there's still fighting. And people are not only scared - or involved in looting. They are suffering. One just needs to ask 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas. His father, his five-month-old pregnant mother, his brother, his aunt, three cousins and three other relatives were incinerated by a missile in Diala, eastern Baghdad. He is now an orphan, he is terribly burned and he has lost both his arms. He wants to be a doctor. "But how can I? I lost both hands." George W Bush can always say that at least he has been "liberated".
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