How's It going in Iraq Aug 2003

maybe this should be in it's own thread but...

Rice Likens Iraq to Civil Rights Fight
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

DALLAS - National security adviser Condoleezza Rice likened Iraq's halting steps toward self-government to black Americans' struggle for civil rights, imploring black journalists Thursday to reject arguments that some people are incapable of democracy.

"We've heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it," Rice, who is black, told about 1,200 people at the National Association of Black Journalists convention.

"The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East," she said.

"We should not let our voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking freedom," Rice said. "And we must never, ever indulge in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they're culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=693&e=4&u=/ap/20030808/ap_on_go_pr_wh/rice

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WTF?!?!?

Has anybody, ANYBODY in the anti-war camp used this as an excuse for his or her stance against the war? That Iraq was incapable of a democratic society.

I call Bull****!

 

I don't know if the anti-war camp has used that, but there is a belief that Muslim societies are incapable of democracy. I think it came from the book Clash of Civilizations which was pretty widely read from what I remember. I don't agree with it one bit, but it is a belief that is held by some. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world and they are a democracy, not a great one but at least they are trying.

 

This quote proves that Condi Rice knows absolutely nothing about the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Her statement is the statement of a pure unadulterated assclown.

 

is there any reason why that quote proves what you say?

 

for the love of christ can you at least be accurate? he said major combat was over...not the ****ing war. yes the number of deaths has been much higher than expected after major combat ended because we did not factor in how difficult it would be to actually get saddam and end the guerrila resistance he is putting up. our soliders are the most vulnerable in an urban environment where we can be attacked at anytime and any place without the ability to defend ourselves well. anyhow...at least get it right...he did not declare the war over

 

Actually, according to CNN today, the US military spokespeople in Iraq are saying that the resistence isn't being co-ordinated by Saddam, as he is having to remain too mobile to organize anything. Also CNN reported that the support for Saddam among Iraqi civilians is extremely active and vocal, and said that it is still very common for civilians to chant pro-Saddam statments at US forces, even in areas where presumably the incentive of fear would seem to have been removed. Clearly the resistance cannot be merely dismissed as the unsupported work of Saddam and his henchmen alone, and there appears to be a lot more genuine public support for the tyrant than we were lead to believe.

I know Saddam was a murderous despot, and so it must be assumed that the support for him is probably less about actually liking him than it is about seeing US activites as the greater evil in some quarters.

 

I don't believe it is actual support for Saddam. I think it is a belief that Saddam will come back to power and the people are better off if they seem as if they never waivered in support for him. They already saw what happened last time Saddam came back.

 

I think that would help to explain a lack of opposition to him/support for the US, but not really explain overt support for him itself. I could see fear of chanting " Yeah USA!" on television, were he to regain control it could have disatrous consequences. But for ( often masked or indistinguishgable) individuals to overtly support him in the face of the US forces ( who, remember, these people also justifiably fear quite a bit too) it would seem to suggest actual sincerity, either for him or against us, most likely the latter.

 

Will is hillarious. Ever read Men At Work?

 

glynch -- if you tell me you also root for the jazz and/or the cowboys, you're on my ignore list!

 

I'm too tired to get into anything serious, so here's a little levity... Goodnight everybody!
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It All Depends on What You Mean by 'Have'
By STEVE MARTIN


So if you're asking me did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I'm saying, well, it all depends on what you mean by "have."

See, I can "have" something without actually having it. I can "have" a cold, but I don't own the cold, nor do I harbor it. Really, when you think about it, the cold has me, or even more precisely, the cold has passed through me. Plus, the word "have" has the complicated letter "v" in it. It seems that so many words with the letter "v" are words that are difficult to use and spell. Like "verisimilitude." And "envelope."

Therefore, when you ask me, "Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction," I frankly don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean currently? Then why did you say "did?" Think about "did." What the heck does that mean? Say it a few times out loud. Sounds silly. I'm beginning to think it's just the media's effort to use a fancy palindrome, rather than ask a pertinent question.

And how do I know you're not saying "halve?" "Did Iraq halve weapons of mass destruction?" How should I know? What difference does it make? That's a stupid question.

Let me try and clear it up for you. I think what you were trying to say was, "At any time, did anyone in Iraq think about, wish for, dream of, or search the Internet for weapons of mass destruction?"

Of course they did have. Come on, Iraq is just one big salt flat and no dictator can look out on his vast desert and not imagine an A-test going on. And let's face it, it really doesn't matter if they had them or not, because they hate us like a lassoed shorthorn heifer hates bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Finally, all this fuss over 16 lousy words. Shoot, "Honey, I'm home," already has three, with an extra one implied, and practically nothing has been said. It would take way more than 16 words to say something that could be considered a gaffe. I don't really take anything people say seriously until they've used at least 20, sometimes 25, words.

When I was criticized for my comment, I was reluctant to point out it was only 16 words, and I was glad when someone else took the trouble to count them and point out that I wasn't even in paragraph territory. When people heard it was only 16 words, I'm sure most people threw their head back and laughed. And I never heard one negative comment from any of our coalition forces, and they all speak English, too.

 

On Iraq, Bush said his administration hasn't yet come up with any figures on what the cost of the occupation of Iraq may cost in fiscal year 2004.

"We generally don't do our estimates on the back of an envelope," Bush said.

aside.. so generally speaking some times you do?

"Of course, we will go to the Congress with any requests but they have to be well thought out," he added.

Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten has said the administration will seek to pay for the operations in Iraq with a supplemental spending bill. This means this money will add to the projected $455 billion deficit, which if it comes about, will already be a record deficit.

The stance that the admnistration has no budget yet for the cost of the occupation in the new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, has infuriated members of Congress. In a hearing last month, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., demanded to know "when the devil" the White House will make the costs of the occupation known.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...0808/bs_dowjones/200308081359000619&printer=1

 

Oops, we keep killing "civilian" children. When are these people going to learn English...

http://www.boston.com/news/world/mi...l_six_iraqis_trying_to_get_home_before_curfew

Jittery U.S. soldiers firing in the dark kill six Iraqis trying to get home before curfew
By Scheherezade Faramarzi, 8/10/2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The night air hung like a hot wet blanket over the north Baghdad suburb of Slaykh. At 9 p.m., an electrical transformer blew up, plunging the neighborhood into darkness.

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American soldiers, apparently fearing a bomb attack, went on alert. Within 45 minutes, six Iraqis trying to get home before the 11 p.m. curfew were shot and killed by U.S. forces.

Anwaar Kawaz, 36, lost her husband and three of four children. "We kept shouting, 'We're a family! Don't shoot!' But no one listened. They kept shooting," she told The Associated Press.

When asked about the shootings, Lt. Col. Guy Shields, coalition military spokesman, said, "Our checkpoints are usually marked and our soldiers are trained and disciplined. I will check on that. That is serious."

Confronted by daily guerrilla attacks that have claimed 56 American lives since May 1, U.S. troops are on edge. Iraqis complain that many innocent people have died at surprise U.S. checkpoints thrown up on dark streets shortly before the curfew. Drivers hurrying home say they don't see the soldiers or hear their orders to stop.

The Kawaz family left the home of Anwaar's parents on Bilal Habashi Street at 9:15 p.m. for the 10-minute drive home. They had traveled only a half-mile when they reached the intersection where they said the American bullets took their terrible toll.

A few yards in front of them, two soldiers standing near two Humvees were shooting at the family's white Volkswagen, she said. Two other soldiers near a Humvee to the right of the car also fired, she said.

Witnesses told the AP one of the soldiers fell to the ground screaming in pain, apparently a victim of friendly fire.

"They killed us. There was no signal. Nothing at all. We didn't see anything but armored cars," Anwaar said Sunday, two days after the confrontation.

"Our headlights were on. He (her husband) didn't have time to put his foot on the brake. They kept shooting. He was shot in the forehead. I was still sitting next to him. I got out of the car to get help. I was shouting, 'Help me! Help me!' No one came."

Witnesses said her husband, Adel Kawaz, survived for at least an hour, still sitting in the car after being hit in the head and back.

Ibrahim Arslan, whose house is on the corner where the Kawaz car came under fire, said Kawaz cried out for help.

Arslan said he and a neighbor tried to remove the wounded Kawaz from the car, but the door was jammed. Then they fled when automatic rifle fire again split the air.

"The next day we heard he had died," Arslan said.

Ali Taha, who lives across the street, said Haydar Kawaz, 18, was sitting up in the back of the car with a bullet wound in his head. His sister, 17-year-old Olaa, slumped dead into his arms.

When the shooting stopped and the American soldiers were gone, Taha said, he and other neighbors ventured out about 11 p.m. and took the bodies of the brother and sister from the car, placed them on the pavement and covered them with a sheet.

The Americans had taken the bodies of Adel, the husband, and another child, 8-year-old Mirvet. Two days later, the family still did not know where the bodies were taken.

A fourth child, a 13-year-old Hadeel, survived.

"I was sitting in the middle, between my brother Haydar and sister Olaa," Hadeel said, her head bandaged.

"I felt blood coming down my head. I tried to drag myself out of the car. An American pulled me out. I kept telling them that my father and my brother were in the car. There was a translator with them.

"My father was shouting, 'We are still alive!' but no went to help him.

"The Americans told me to go with them but I was afraid they would hurt me. I didn't trust them. So I ran to my grandparents' house," Hadeel said. She told the story sitting in her grandparents' home, crying quietly, surrounded by family.

Lt. Sean McLaughlin, stationed at a base near Slaykh, could only express sympathy, although he said his unit was not involved.

"No one feels worse than us. We want to build a safe Iraq for the Iraqis. It's a difficult situation here," McLaughlin said.

A few blocks from where the car was shot up, 19-year-old Sayf Ali was shot and killed as he drove home with a cousin and a friend. He, too, didn't see the American checkpoint, survivors in the car said. Soldiers opened fire on the blue Opel station wagon, which kept moving after Ali was shot. The cousin and the friend jumped out. Soldiers kept firing until the car caught fire incinerating Ali's body, according to one of the witnesses, Arslan.

About the same time nearby, Ali Salman, 31, was driving home, also unaware of the unannounced American checkpoints. He apparently didn't see the soldiers either and was killed.

Ghaleb Laftah, 24, who was sitting in the back of Salman's Honda, and Wisam Sabri, sitting in the front passenger seat, were wounded.

"There was no light. We didn't see the Americans," said Laftah, limping from a leg injury as he walked to Salman's wake that was being held under a tent on Bilal Habashi Street.

"We didn't hurt anyone. We didn't break the law," Laftah said, speaking with difficulty because of four broken teeth from the shooting.

"My son, ... the Americans killed him," said Salman's father, Hikmat, who broke down in sobs. "He was on his way home and was caught up in the shooting. He was afraid, got out of the car and they still shot him. He was frightened, then he died. I only have one (son)," he said.

Family members were also holding a wake for Sayf Ali. The men sat under a tent outside the house and the women were indoors, according to Iraqi tradition.

Sabah Azawmi, an uncle and a Sunni Muslim, said his tribe would seek revenge on the Americans.

"They set fire to the car while he was inside," said Azawmi.

"They are terrified of the Iraqis. If they weren't afraid, they wouldn't behave this way," he said.

But Hikmat Salman, Ali Salman's father and a Shiite Muslim, said he was not interested in revenge. He said he would leave that to God.

The Kawaz family, also Shiites, also said they would leave revenge to God.

"I wish Saddam (Hussein) would return and kill all Americans," Anwaar Kawaz said. Under Saddam, "we used to go out at one in the morning. We went out at 9 now and they killed us.

"I want to drink Bush's blood. They are all criminals," she said, beating her chest.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41178-2003Aug10.html

A Villager Attacks U.S. Troops, but Why?
Iraqi's Life and Death Provide Cautionary Tale
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 11, 2003; Page A01


ALBU ALWAN, Iraq -- On a sun-drenched plain along a bluff of barren cliffs, a cheap headstone made of cement marks the grave of Omar Ibrahim Khalaf. His name was hastily scrawled in white chalk. Underneath is a religious invocation that begins, "In the name of God, the most merciful and compassionate." It is followed simply by the date of his death, Friday, Aug. 1.



But one word on the marker distinguishes Khalaf's resting place. His epitaph declares him a shahid, a martyr.

In a 15-minute battle so intense that villagers called it a glimpse of hell, U.S. forces killed Khalaf as he tried to fire rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy. A .50-caliber round tore off his skull. Machine-gun fire almost detached his left arm and ankle, which were left dangling from a corpse riddled with bullets and smeared with blood and the powdery dirt of the Euphrates River valley.

Beyond Khalaf's home of Albu Alwan, his death has been little more than a footnote in a simmering guerrilla war that has claimed the lives of 56 U.S. soldiers since major combat operations were declared over May 1. But in the mystery that still shrouds the dozen or so attacks carried out daily against U.S. troops occupying the country, Khalaf's life provides a cautionary tale about today's Iraq -- and where the combustible mix of poverty, anger and resentment can lead.

American officials contend that the vast majority of the attacks are driven by remnants of former president Saddam Hussein's government and the Baath Party he used for 35 years to hold power. Men like Khalaf, they say, are the foot soldiers lured by bounties that run as high as $5,000, perhaps motivated by loyalty to the fallen government, or by fear from threats to their family if they refuse to fight.

But the portrait of Khalaf that emerged from interviews last week suggests a more complicated figure.

A 32-year-old father of six, he was an army deserter who, villagers say, had nothing to do with the Baath Party. He prayed at the mosque on Fridays, although he was not a fervently religious man. His hardscrabble life was shaped by the grinding poverty of his village, whose burdens have mounted since the government's fall on April 9. In the end, many here speculated he was changed irrevocably by the perceived day-to-day humiliations of occupation.

To some of his friends and family, he represents an Iraqi everyman, a recruit whose very commonality does not bode well for U.S. troops battling a four-month guerrilla campaign in northern and western Iraq that few in Albu Alwan seem to believe will end soon.

Hiding in the Canal

A nine-vehicle convoy of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company was just a few miles outside of Fallujah when the attack began. It was 7:15 a.m., and the assailants were hidden about 50 yards from the well-traveled road.

It was already a chaotic day for soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which patrols most of western Iraq, an arid swath intersected by the Euphrates River. Three attacks had been reported overnight. Four more would follow later that day. For a region that had previously witnessed just three or four attacks a week, the ambushes and raids marked one of the most violent 24-hour periods in recent times.

Khalaf and at least 10 others seemed to have chosen their spot for the canals that provided cover. They lay waiting in one, and another canal snaked behind it. Both were filled with stagnant water and overgrown with reeds as high as 10 feet. The village of Falahat was less than a mile away, but the spot itself was interspersed only with fields of clover and orchards of apricot trees and palms laden with ripening dates.

The first volley sent three rocket-propelled grenades at the convoy, soldiers said. Two missed their mark; a third hit the road underneath a Humvee, damaging the oil pan and transmission and disabling the vehicle.

The soldiers returned fire with .50-caliber machine guns, lighter weapons and grenade launchers, the burst so intense that even villagers in Falahat said they sought cover. The U.S. troops immediately called in reinforcements, and Lt. Noah Hanners, the platoon leader of Heavy Company, arrived soon after in a tank from a base about six miles away.

The Iraqi assailants fired their Kalashnikov rifles wildly and lobbed badly aimed grenades every couple of minutes, Hanners said. But outgunned and outtrained, it was a losing battle almost from the start. The U.S. soldiers were on higher ground. Khalaf and the others, all in civilian clothes, were concealed by the canal's vegetation but, Hanners said, they had no way to flee.

"You could see the cattails move as they tried to run, so we just put a large volume of fire down on the canals," Hanners said.

Hanners said he believes Khalaf was one of the first to die, when he raised his head above the canal's reeds and was struck by a .50-caliber round. "His head was pretty much missing," he said. One or two others were killed at about the same time. As the assailants tried to escape through the canals, two or three more were killed, Hanners said. No U.S. soldiers were hurt.

By the time a second tank arrived at about 7:30 a.m., the fight was over, and the soldiers took the body of Khalaf and two others to the base. At least one other corpse -- too badly mangled to move -- was left behind.

Days later, Hanners speculated that Khalaf was at the end of a chain that began with a paymaster, who was in turn linked to a former military officer or someone else who could find weapons and plan the ambush. He was confident that Khalaf was paid.

But as for motives other than money, Hanners said, it was only guesswork. "Pretty much anything you can come up with, any motive you can come up with, is a possibility," he said. "They could be anybody."

A Hatred for Americans

Khalaf was the second-youngest in a family of six brothers and six sisters who belong to a Sunni Muslim tribe that gave its name to the village. He was known as hot-tempered, but with a sense of humor. He had curly black hair and a patchy beard more the product of oversight than grooming. As a 12-year-old, he lost one front tooth and chipped the other while roughhousing.

Like many in the village of a few thousand, his education ended with elementary school, and he soon went to farming hay, barley, wheat and sunflowers on an eight-acre plot he inherited from his father. He was drafted during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but deserted his post after serving six months in the Euphrates town of Hit. He married young and struggled to make money.

A few years ago, he landed a $600 contract hauling construction material to the resort of Sadamiya on Tharthar Lake, friends said. But most of the time was spent surviving, driving a truck back and forth to Jordan and herding his 15 sheep and one cow.

His brother, Abdel-Latif, said that before the war Khalaf managed to make about $90 a month, enough to get by. In its chaotic aftermath, he said, he was making no more than $6 a month. His house, started four years ago, remains an empty shell of concrete floors and unfinished tan brick walls. His wife gave birth to their sixth child last month, a boy named Radwan.

"He had no money," said Khaled Mawash, a neighbor who knew Khalaf's family.

In a village where everybody knows everybody's business, neighbors said he was devastated by the quick fall of Baghdad. One shopkeeper said Khalaf told him that he wept all day at his home after the American forces arrived in the capital. Others recalled the anger that he loudly voiced as the U.S. patrols barreled down the highway perched just over his house and fields. The sight, they said, was so repugnant to him that he quit playing soccer in a dusty field adjacent to the bridge that the convoys used.

A month ago, a boy from the village threw a grenade at a nearby convoy, and soldiers responded by entering the village and surrounding Khalaf's house.

"If I had a grenade, I would kill myself and take them with me," a childhood friend, Mawlud Khaled, recalled him saying.

Neighbors said his behavior grew increasingly erratic as the weeks passed. In vain, he once fired a Kalashnikov rifle at a U.S. helicopter passing overhead. One morning a week before his death, the summer heat already hanging like a haze over the village, he ran at a passing convoy dressed only in shorts, neighbors recalled. His family had to restrain him.

"He hated the Americans," Khaled said. "He didn't care whether he died or not."

Two weeks ago, neighbors said, he wrote the names of three people on a piece of paper. He owed each money -- between $10 and $30. A few days later, on Aug. 1, he woke up early and dressed in gray pants and a plaid shirt. A little before 7 a.m., he was seen taking his sheep to graze in a nearby pasture. He left without saying a word to his wife, his family or anyone else in the village.

"Nobody knew where he went," Nawar Bidawi, a 41-year-old cousin, said.

Honored as a Hero

At a U.S. base near Habaniya, Khalaf's body was stored in a black body bag in a small cement room for three days. The stench from the bodies was so overpowering that soldiers at the front gate, about 100 yards away, burned paper to fend off the smell.

Khalaf's oldest brother, Abdel-Latif, and his brother-in-law were escorted by Iraqi police to the base. Soldiers suggested they take all three bodies, but Abdel-Latif said he claimed only his brother, whom he identified by his bloodied clothes and his chipped front tooth. The rest of his face, he said, was unrecognizable.

Along the gulf that divides occupier and occupied, the slights often seem unintended, perhaps unavoidable. Khalaf's family was outraged that he had been left lying on his stomach, rather than his back. His head faced the ground, rather than the Muslim holy city of Mecca. His body was left in a hot, windowless room, rather than refrigerated. And they insisted it was already riddled with maggots.

"The treatment was inhuman," said Mohammed Ajami, Khalaf's brother-in-law.

In a blue Volvo, they returned at 3:30 p.m. and, before dusk, buried Khalaf in a wooden coffin at the Kiffa cemetery. As a martyr, he was interred as he died, in his clothes and unwashed. The wounds, according to custom, bore testimony to his martyrdom.

His family said a convoy of 100 cars carrying 250 people accompanied Khalaf's body. And in the mourning that ensued, Khalaf went from spectacle to hero. The three men he owed money forgave his loans, said Omar Aani, the sheik at the village mosque. Neighbors collected money for his children, now considered by Islamic tradition to be orphans. A family that had battled with Khalaf for a year over the rights to water from an irrigation canal apologized to his family and declared they were ashamed by their enmity.

"They recognized that he was a true hero," said Khaled, the childhood friend. "They regretted not talking to him."

In private, a few in Albu Alwan voiced rumors that Khalaf may have been motivated in part by money. Others vigorously and sometimes angrily shook their heads at the suggestion, a denial motivated perhaps more by respect than reality.

"The most important thing is that he was so upset" by the soldiers, said Muwaffaq Khaled, a 21-year-old neighbor. "Money wasn't important because he knew he would be killed. If I'm Muslim and I respect God, I can't die for money. It's haram, forbidden."

"I know him well," his brother, Mawlud, interjected. "It wasn't a matter of money."

In villages like Albu Alwan, bound by tradition and populated by Sunni Muslims who have bristled most at the occupation, many insist they are confused by the source of attacks on U.S. troops. Are they loyalists of Hussein, or driven by Islam?

At one house, a neighbor of Khalaf, Saad Kamil, 22, expressed puzzlement at graffiti he saw recently in nearby Fallujah. One slogan saluted Hussein as "the hero of heroes." But another intoned in religious terms, "God bless the holy fighters of the city of mosques." Nearby was graffiti that read, "Fallujah will remain a symbol of jihad and resistance."

"People are confused. Is it for Saddam or is it for Islam?" he asked. "I tell you I don't know."

But a week following his death, Khalaf's decision to fight the Americans had become a larger symbol of objections to the occupation. A 23-year-old shopkeeper across the street from Kamil's house, Abdel-Salam Ahmed, called Khalaf a hero motivated by hatred of the American presence that many in the village have found humiliating. What will follow, he said, is clear. "Revenge is part of our tradition," he said.

Khalaf's brother talked of the promises he said were broken by the Americans -- a share of Iraq's oil they were supposed to receive, $100 payments that would come with better rations, jobs and prosperity that were supposed to follow more than 12 years of sanctions. His brother-in-law complained of the daily degradations -- U.S. soldiers making men bow their heads to the ground, an act he said should only be done before God. He recalled soldiers pointing guns at men in front of their children and wives.

"He has become a model for everyone to follow," said Aani, the village sheik, who acknowledged that he had to ask friends who Khalaf was after he died. "The person who resists this situation becomes an example."


© 2003 The Washington Post Company

 

But the main reason we're there is to liberate the people we're murdering, right?

I am not at all ashamed to say I am embarassed to be an American right now.

That's got nothing to do with patriotism. We all know that, with our political system, anyone can get elected and grand mistakes can be made. The grandest mistake of all was made when George W. Bush took office. And people are dying unnecessarily because of it. It is disgusting and every single hateful attitude toward America is being earned daily by this murderous, evil, disingenuous criminal administration. They'd better damn well hope they're wrong about all their 'Christian' bull****. Cause if they're not, they will damn sure burn in hell.

 

Family shot dead by panicking US troops

Firing blindly during a power cut, soldiers kill a father and three children in their car

By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
10 August 2003


The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.

"We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us," the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. "We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting."

The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: "Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq."

But in this city Iraqi civilians still die needlessly almost every day at the hands of nervous, trigger-happy American soldiers.

Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital.

It happened at 9.30 at night, an hour after sunset, but long before the start of the curfew at 11pm. The Americans had set up roadblocks in the Tunisia quarter of Baghdad, where the abd al-Kerims live. The family pulled up to the roadblock sensibly, slowly and carefully, so as not to alarm the Americans.

But then pandemonium broke out. American soldiers were shooting in every direction. They just turned on the abd al-Kerims' car and sprayed it with bullets. You can see the holes in the front passenger window and in the rear window. You can see the blood of the dead all over the grey, imitation velvet seat covers.

A terrible misunderstanding took place. The Americans thought they were under attack from Iraqi resistance forces, according to several Iraqi witnesses. These are the circumstances of most killings of Iraqi civilians: a US patrol comes under rocket-propelled grenade attack and the soldiers panic and fire randomly.

This time there was no attack. Another car, driven by an Iraqi youth, Sa'ad al-Azawi, drove too fast up to another checkpoint further up the street. Al-Azawi and his two passengers did not hear an order to stop, as their stereo was turned up too loud. The US soldiers, thinking they were under attack, panicked and opened fire.

In the darkness of one of Baghdad's frequent power cuts, other US soldiers on the street heard gunfire and thought they were under attack. They, too, reacted by opening fire, though they could not see what was going on. Soldiers manning look-out posts on a nearby building joined in, firing down the street in the dark.

It was then that the abd al-Kerims drew up to the checkpoint. The panicking US soldiers turned on their car and shot the family to pieces.

"It was anarchy," said Ali al-Issawi, who lives on the street and witnessed the whole thing. "The Americans were firing at each other."

There was plenty of evidence lying in the street under the hot sun. Empty bullet casings lay everywhere. Bullet holes marked the walls and gates of nearby houses. Several parked cars were riddled with bullet-holes, their windows smashed and tyres shredded. From the spread of the bullet holes all over the street, it was clear the soldiers had fired in every direction.

Sa'ad al-Azawi, the driver of the other car, was killed. The Americans dragged his two passengers out and beat them, still thinking they were resistance, Mr al-Issawi said. Watching from his house nearby, Mr al-Issawi did not know that al-Azawi was dead, and when the car burst into flames, he tried to rush over to help the young man.

"The Americans did not let me," he said. "A soldier came over and told me 'Inside'. He pushed me, even though my eight-year-old daughter was with me. They didn't let us get the young guy's body out of the car until he looked like he had been cooked."

Further down the street, Anwar abd al-Kerim, who was heavily pregnant and had somehow managed to escape injury in the car as bullets rained all around her, got out of the car, holding her wounded eight-year-old daughter Mervet, and sought help from her brother, who lived down the road.

She had to leave in the car her injured daughters, 16-year-old Ia and 13-year-old Haded, along with her husband, Adel, who was bleeding badly and groaning. Her 18-year-old son, Haider, was already dead. A bullet went between his eyes.

"I saw my sister running towards me with her daughter in her arms and blood pouring from her," said Ms abd al-Kerim's brother, Tha'er Jawad. "She was crying out to me 'Help, help, go and help Adel'." I put them in my car and tried to drive to the car but the American soldiers pointed their guns at me and the people shouted out to me 'Stop! Stop! They will shoot!'

"We could see the other girls and their brother lying on the back seat of the car. They would not let us go to the hospital." Ia was not as badly injured as the others. "After a while they released her and let her come to us," Mr Jawad said. "But when they finally let us go to the hospital, Mervet died. The doctors checked her injuries and told us she would have lived if we had brought her sooner.

"At 10.45 we heard the Americans had taken Adel and his other girl to another hospital. We went there at six the next morning, when the curfew was lifted, and they told us they both died in the hospital.

"The doctors said they might have lived if they got there sooner: the main cause of death was bleeding. The Americans left them to bleed in the street for hours."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=432202

 

is saddam hussein still alive? what about bin laden?