Iraqis Drag Four Corpses Through Streets

[IlliniBob72]

In ignorance I did some quick research on Vlad The Impaler; simply put, he had to be one of the most vile rulers I have ever read about.  I know people think of Stalin, Milosevic, and Hitler as ruthless but Vlad is far more sadistic.  Although this doesn't pertain to the discussion, here's some information (in particular the part of freightening advancing forces is mentioned):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:puke

 

Iraqis are not far off....

And he is viewed as a national hero in Romania.

 

The Vlad story that makes me chuckle is the story about two foreign ambassadors who refused to take their turbans off in his presence as it was against their customs. So he had their turbans nailed to their heads.

[Texsox]

And he is viewed as a national hero in Romania.

 

The Vlad story that makes me chuckle is the story about two foreign ambassadors who refused to take their turbans off in his presence as it was against their customs. So he had their turbans nailed to their heads.

If he was doing this to any of our enemies, we would have sent him some money and perhaps sold him some cool weapons

[LowerCaseRepublican]

I was listening to Air America Radio and found some interesting stuff in a Google search. Reading this it's easy to see why children and the such could and would have such a big anti-America/anti-"Coalition" sentiment in Fallujah. Just Google Fallujah Massacre and you can get a ton of articles on this topic. A bunch of dead unarmed civilians might give them the anger and stuff needed to piss them off enough to do what they did.

 

 

Iraqi rage grows after Fallujah massacre

By Phil Reeves in Fallujah -- The Independent

04 May 2003

 

Nearly a week after troops from the 82nd Airborne Division randomly opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators here, prompting the US military to announce an inquiry, commanders have yet to speak to the doctors who counted the bodies.

 

Nor, by late yesterday, had US commanders been to the home of a 13-year-old boy who was among the dead, even though it is located less than a mile from the main American base in Fallujah, a conservative Sunni town 35 miles west of Baghdad.

 

The Americans' conduct over the Fallujah affair – and their highly implausible version of events – has compounded the anger in Iraq over the killings, in which 13 people died after being hit by a hail of US bullets outside a school which the troops were occupying. It combines all the worst elements of the occupation: panicky troops firing at Iraqis instead of seeking to engage with them or understand their circumstances, then insisting that local people have no cause for anger.

 

The US military's case was enshrined in a 290-word statement issued by its Central Command (Centcom) in Qatar the day afterwards, Tuesday, issued when the interest of the world's media was at its height. This stated that the "parachuters" from the 82nd Airborne Division opened fire in self-defence after being shot at by around 25 armed civilians interspersed among 200 demonstrators and positioned on the neighbouring rooftops. It spoke of a "fire-fight".

 

Witnesses interviewed by The Independent on Sunday stated that there was some shooting in the air in the general vicinity, but it was nowhere near the crowd, which comprised mostly boys and young men who descended on the school at around 9pm to call for the US troops to leave the premises.

 

Gunfire in the air is commonplace – and the Fallujah demonstration coincided with Saddam Hussein's birthday. But there is a consensus among Iraqi witnesses on two issues. There was no fire-fight nor any shooting at the school. And the crowd – although it had one poster of Saddam and may have thrown some stones – had no guns.

 

The evidence at the scene overwhelmingly supports this. Al-Ka'at primary and secondary school is a yellow concrete building about the length and height of seven terraced houses located in a walled compound. The soldiers fired at people gathered below them. There are no bullet marks on the façade of the school or the perimeter wall in front of it. The top floors of the houses directly opposite, from where the troops say they were fired on, also appear unmarked. Their upper windows are intact.

 

The day after the bloodbath, US soldiers displayed three guns which they said they had recovered from a home opposite, but this proved nothing. Every other Iraqi home has at least one firearm. Centcom also refused to confirm that the soldiers from the 82nd Airborne who raked the crowd had killed or injured unarmed civilians. Although it conceded that this was possible, it described the deaths of unarmed people as "allegations" and estimated the toll at seven injuries, all people who were armed.

 

Yet a mile from the US army's base is the home of 13-year-old Abdul Khader al-Jumaili. The boy had tagged along with the demonstration as it passed by his home, having spotted some of his friends. He was shot in the chest, and died in hospital a few hours later. His house – No 3 Al-Monjazat Street – is easy to find. Dozens of relatives gathered there for three days of mourning amid an atmosphere of quiet anger, grief and indignation.

 

"The Americans are just lying," said his father, Abdul Latif al-Jumaili, a clerk. "You can see it for yourself," he added, showing a photograph of his son. "He was just a boy."

 

The affair has angered British Army officials who believe that the US troops lack the vital experience which the British acquired – painfully at first – in Northern Ireland. "Don't talk to me about the US army," said one British military source. "Let's just say that they face a very steep leaning curve."

 

The Americans will be hoping that the damage will be repaired once they establish stability and the economy gets going. But they will find no consolation from the signals being sent to them in Fallujah. On Wednesday night, someone fired two grenades into their compound, a former Baath party building, injuring seven soldiers. A banner was hanging from the front gate of the mayor's office next door: "Sooner or later, US killers, we'll kick you out."

 

 

This is by Bill Vann from the World Socialist Web Site (May 1 2003)

 

For the second time in barely 48 hours, US Army paratroopers opened fire Wednesday on unarmed demonstrators in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, killing three people and wounding approximately 16, several of them critically.

 

The carnage erupted during a march by thousands of the town’s residents who were protesting the killing of at least 13 demonstrators on Monday night, when a crowd of students and youth had assembled outside a school occupied by the US troops, demanding that they leave so classes could resume. The soldiers opened fire at close range. Among the dead were three children under the age of 10.

 

Witnesses to Wednesday’s shootings, including town officials, insisted that the American soldiers opened fire after children in the crowd threw stones and shoes at them. Among the many protest signs carried by the crowd, one banner read: “Sooner or later, US killers, we will kick you out.”

 

The first shots reportedly came from a convoy of jeeps and armored vehicles. Other soldiers guarding the headquarters of a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division fired from the rooftop of the compound that the unit has occupied, the local headquarters of the Baathists, the former ruling party.

 

Attack helicopters then swooped low over the city, dispersing the crowd with the threat of even deadlier violence.

 

As with the Monday night shootings, the US Central Command claimed that the American troops “returned fire” after being shot at by demonstrators. But, also as with the earlier massacre, not a single American soldier suffered the slightest injury and there was no physical evidence of bullets having struck the compound or the convoy.

 

“This was a peaceful demonstration. Religious leaders told us not to be armed. There was no exchange of fire,” one witness, Safra Rusli, told reporters. “I saw three people killed before my own eyes.”

 

Prominent figures in the town were clearly taken aback by the repressive violence. “Why? The demonstrators didn’t use guns, so why should the soldiers start attacking them,” asked the imam of the Grand Fallujah Mosque, Jamal Shaquir Mahmood. “There is no (Iraqi) military presence here. Why is there an American military presence?”

 

One could possibly see the first massacre as a terrible, if inevitable, tragedy arising from the conditions of colonial occupation, with young soldiers panicking in the face of a hostile population. The second attack on unarmed demonstrators in the same city, coming on the heels of this massacre, however, points to a deliberate policy of lethal violence aimed at breaking the will of the Iraqi people.

 

Massacre was “within the rules”

 

“Everything was within the rules of engagement,’ ” Capt. Jeff Wilbur, an 82nd Airborne civil affairs officer told the media. “There’ll be no formal investigation.”

 

The question of what US troops are doing in Fallujah, a town of about a quarter of a million people located 35 miles west of Baghdad, is a good one. According to local leaders, there are no military objectives there, given that the Iraqi army and police fled the town on the day Baghdad fell. The local population elected a new mayor, while Muslim clerics succeeded in curtailing looting and even returning property that had been taken.

 

The hostility of the town to foreign occupation has deep roots. In 1991, it was the scene of one of the worst atrocities of the first Persian Gulf War, when a British warplane dropped bombs on a crowded market, killing 150 civilians.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

HRW: No Evidence of Iraqi Gunfire at al-Fallujah Massacre

6/17: An 18-page report released by Human Rights Watch clearly states that "they did not find conclusive evidence of bullet damage" on the school where soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were allegedly fire upon by Iraqi protestors. U.S. soldiers killed 20 protestors and wounded 90 during demonstrations in al-Fallujah on 4/28 and 4/30. On 6/18, U.S. troops shot and killed several rock-throwing Iraqi protestors in Baghdad.

 

US Army Captain Scott Nauman who was involved in the Fallujah event said that no Iraqis fired any firearms at them but then Centcom said that there were weapons fired by Iraqis. (Did CentCom talk to the troops that were on the scene?)

 

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraqfalluja/

 

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraqfalluj...uja.htm#P50_591

 

http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/06/1620414.php

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Not saying that these are 100% factual but it definitely throws a new perspective into the debate.

[Texsox]

Imagine if China decided we were oppressed by an evil government and decided to "set us free". Would we be singing songs of thanks? I wonder if more average Iraqis died in our liberation than would have died if Saddam had stayed in power.

 

Still we can sleep better knowing we neutralized all threats from Iraq.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I was listening to Air America Radio and found some interesting stuff in a Google search.  Reading this it's easy to see why children and the such could and would have such a big anti-America/anti-"Coalition" sentiment in Fallujah.  Just Google Fallujah Massacre and you can get a ton of articles on this topic.  A bunch of dead unarmed civilians might give them the anger and stuff needed to piss them off enough to do what they did.

 

 

Iraqi rage grows after Fallujah massacre

By Phil Reeves in Fallujah  -- The Independent

04 May 2003

 

Nearly a week after troops from the 82nd Airborne Division randomly opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators here, prompting the US military to announce an inquiry, commanders have yet to speak to the doctors who counted the bodies.

 

Nor, by late yesterday, had US commanders been to the home of a 13-year-old boy who was among the dead, even though it is located less than a mile from the main American base in Fallujah, a conservative Sunni town 35 miles west of Baghdad.

 

The Americans' conduct over the Fallujah affair – and their highly implausible version of events – has compounded the anger in Iraq over the killings, in which 13 people died after being hit by a hail of US bullets outside a school which the troops were occupying. It combines all the worst elements of the occupation: panicky troops firing at Iraqis instead of seeking to engage with them or understand their circumstances, then insisting that local people have no cause for anger.

 

The US military's case was enshrined in a 290-word statement issued by its Central Command (Centcom) in Qatar the day afterwards, Tuesday, issued when the interest of the world's media was at its height. This stated that the "parachuters" from the 82nd Airborne Division opened fire in self-defence after being shot at by around 25 armed civilians interspersed among 200 demonstrators and positioned on the neighbouring rooftops. It spoke of a "fire-fight".

 

Witnesses interviewed by The Independent on Sunday stated that there was some shooting in the air in the general vicinity, but it was nowhere near the crowd, which comprised mostly boys and young men who descended on the school at around 9pm to call for the US troops to leave the premises.

 

Gunfire in the air is commonplace – and the Fallujah demonstration coincided with Saddam Hussein's birthday. But there is a consensus among Iraqi witnesses on two issues. There was no fire-fight nor any shooting at the school. And the crowd – although it had one poster of Saddam and may have thrown some stones – had no guns.

 

The evidence at the scene overwhelmingly supports this. Al-Ka'at primary and secondary school is a yellow concrete building about the length and height of seven terraced houses located in a walled compound. The soldiers fired at people gathered below them. There are no bullet marks on the façade of the school or the perimeter wall in front of it. The top floors of the houses directly opposite, from where the troops say they were fired on, also appear unmarked. Their upper windows are intact.

 

The day after the bloodbath, US soldiers displayed three guns which they said they had recovered from a home opposite, but this proved nothing. Every other Iraqi home has at least one firearm. Centcom also refused to confirm that the soldiers from the 82nd Airborne who raked the crowd had killed or injured unarmed civilians. Although it conceded that this was possible, it described the deaths of unarmed people as "allegations" and estimated the toll at seven injuries, all people who were armed.

 

Yet a mile from the US army's base is the home of 13-year-old Abdul Khader al-Jumaili. The boy had tagged along with the demonstration as it passed by his home, having spotted some of his friends. He was shot in the chest, and died in hospital a few hours later. His house – No 3 Al-Monjazat Street – is easy to find. Dozens of relatives gathered there for three days of mourning amid an atmosphere of quiet anger, grief and indignation.

 

"The Americans are just lying," said his father, Abdul Latif al-Jumaili, a clerk. "You can see it for yourself," he added, showing a photograph of his son. "He was just a boy."

 

The affair has angered British Army officials who believe that the US troops lack the vital experience which the British acquired – painfully at first – in Northern Ireland. "Don't talk to me about the US army," said one British military source. "Let's just say that they face a very steep leaning curve."

 

The Americans will be hoping that the damage will be repaired once they establish stability and the economy gets going. But they will find no consolation from the signals being sent to them in Fallujah. On Wednesday night, someone fired two grenades into their compound, a former Baath party building, injuring seven soldiers. A banner was hanging from the front gate of the mayor's office next door: "Sooner or later, US killers, we'll kick you out."

 

 

This is by Bill Vann from the World Socialist Web Site (May 1 2003)

 

For the second time in barely 48 hours, US Army paratroopers opened fire Wednesday on unarmed demonstrators in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, killing three people and wounding approximately 16, several of them critically.

 

The carnage erupted during a march by thousands of the town’s residents who were protesting the killing of at least 13 demonstrators on Monday night, when a crowd of students and youth had assembled outside a school occupied by the US troops, demanding that they leave so classes could resume. The soldiers opened fire at close range. Among the dead were three children under the age of 10.

 

Witnesses to Wednesday’s shootings, including town officials, insisted that the American soldiers opened fire after children in the crowd threw stones and shoes at them. Among the many protest signs carried by the crowd, one banner read: “Sooner or later, US killers, we will kick you out.”

 

The first shots reportedly came from a convoy of jeeps and armored vehicles. Other soldiers guarding the headquarters of a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division fired from the rooftop of the compound that the unit has occupied, the local headquarters of the Baathists, the former ruling party.

 

Attack helicopters then swooped low over the city, dispersing the crowd with the threat of even deadlier violence.

 

As with the Monday night shootings, the US Central Command claimed that the American troops “returned fire” after being shot at by demonstrators. But, also as with the earlier massacre, not a single American soldier suffered the slightest injury and there was no physical evidence of bullets having struck the compound or the convoy.

 

“This was a peaceful demonstration. Religious leaders told us not to be armed. There was no exchange of fire,” one witness, Safra Rusli, told reporters. “I saw three people killed before my own eyes.”

 

Prominent figures in the town were clearly taken aback by the repressive violence. “Why? The demonstrators didn’t use guns, so why should the soldiers start attacking them,” asked the imam of the Grand Fallujah Mosque, Jamal Shaquir Mahmood. “There is no (Iraqi) military presence here. Why is there an American military presence?”

 

One could possibly see the first massacre as a terrible, if inevitable, tragedy arising from the conditions of colonial occupation, with young soldiers panicking in the face of a hostile population. The second attack on unarmed demonstrators in the same city, coming on the heels of this massacre, however, points to a deliberate policy of lethal violence aimed at breaking the will of the Iraqi people.

 

Massacre was “within the rules”

 

“Everything was within the rules of engagement,’ ” Capt. Jeff Wilbur, an 82nd Airborne civil affairs officer told the media. “There’ll be no formal investigation.”

 

The question of what US troops are doing in Fallujah, a town of about a quarter of a million people located 35 miles west of Baghdad, is a good one. According to local leaders, there are no military objectives there, given that the Iraqi army and police fled the town on the day Baghdad fell. The local population elected a new mayor, while Muslim clerics succeeded in curtailing looting and even returning property that had been taken.

 

The hostility of the town to foreign occupation has deep roots. In 1991, it was the scene of one of the worst atrocities of the first Persian Gulf War, when a British warplane dropped bombs on a crowded market, killing 150 civilians.

Finally you got one right. I know all about that one cause the commander of the unit's in that area, after the backlash hit, threw up his hands and asked to be relocated.

 

 

Meanwhile, the unit I was in ( I was part of 2ND Brigade 3d ID) was all packed up and ready to start shipping home when we got a call from our general telling us that we had to go relieve the guys in that area and that we were going to be there indefenitely ( Potentially as long as November ). We got there and the town was like the wild west. I'm not even kidding, right down to the tumbleweed. We had to stay there like 2 months after we were supposed to be home.

 

While we were there by battalion only lost 1 soldier to a roadside bomb but we got shot at a lot and anytime a patrol I was on got stuck in traffic you can bet my hands were sweating on the grips of the .50 cal.

 

We finally got out of there at the end of July and when that same unit came back after some time on the Syrian border the sergeant who relieved me on gate guard at our compound was talking all kinds of s*** about how they were going to clean the place up. This guy outranked me by a lot but I couldn't help but say to him "But aren't you the same people that got run outta here like a bunch of b****es 2 months ago" and I walked off leaving him standing there with nothing to say.

[israel4ever]

:fyou f*** those son of a b****es. They can not be helped. I don't think they even want to be helped, It is starting to turn into like f***ing Somalia and it is f***ing pissing me and a lot of others off. I know some aren't thrilled with the liberation like Texsox said, but god dammit show some f***ing desency. If they keep pulling this s*** I say we f***ing blow off their heads and drag them down the streets of chicago and have the crazy bastards kicked and run over with cars and have our kids laugh and cheer, but we are America and we can't go as low as the f***ing dumb asses over in that s***-hole of a counrty, so I say nuke the f*** out of those big b****es  :fyou  :fyou  :fyou

I agree with you.

 

I say we pullall of the US military out, then let there be a "civil" war in Iraq. Let them kill each other off for awhile.

 

Then, we can go in and "pick up the pieces" (oil) later!

[Flash Tizzle]

I say we pullall of the US military out, then let there be a "civil" war in Iraq. Let them kill each other off for awhile.

Good idea, let the animals whipe themselves out.

 

Heres a question for the masses: If Bush fails to win re-election this year, would Kerry immediately remove troops from Iraq? He speaks out against his opposition to the war but I wonder if he has the balls to leave the citizens of Iraq with their wangs in the air.

[Queen Prawn]

Heres a question for the masses:  If Bush fails to win re-election this year, would Kerry immediately remove troops from Iraq?  He speaks out against his opposition to the war but I wonder if he has the balls to leave the citizens of Iraq with their wangs in the air.

Firstly, I've been against the Iraq war since the idea was made public. Fact of the matter is we've made a mess there and we should clean it up. With that said, I would be disgusted if we just upped and pulled out without finishing what we started.