Thread: War On Iraq
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Old Monday, January 09, 2006
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FALLUJAH During RAMADAN 1425
[A poem by Ale Yasir]

O Muslims of America! Like you, we fast during the Day.
At Night we Watch your Shaitan’s F-16s Light up the Horizons.
Our Mosques are packed with Young People
Their beards are still green
They want to live, to die, for Allah, for Iraq under Islam.
We hear the Adhan: It is Peaceful, Reminding us of Paradise

We say to the Americans: Go back to your families.
This is not your land. Take Allawi with you.

Don’t we have the right to Fast, to Pray in Peace?
Do you, sons of Bush, know nothing sacred?
You bomb homes, hospitals, schools.
You desecrate mosques, burn the Qur’an, shred the Hadith of the blessed Messenger.

Are you not Afraid that the Cries of the Oppressed will Rise up to Heaven?
You break into our homes and “body search” our Maidens who fast and pray!
Have you no Shame? Have you no God?

You had to bomb us in Ramadan? You had to drown out our Adhan with Artillery?

You will never win.
Listen! we are Muslims, the followers of Muhammad (p).
You will never win.
Listen! we have the Qur’an.
You will never win.
Listen! we love Paradise.
The Houris are Waiting for us. Shame and Hellfire is waiting for you.

You will never win. We are the people of Fallujah!
We pray and fast in this blessed Ramadan.

Your big guns speak, your rockets smash our homes.
Yet we pray and fast and WE FIGHT BACK.
Ramadan 1425: The month in which the tyrants drowned decency in blood.

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WHO ARE IRAQ'S 36TH?

So the assault on Fallujah is underway, with the taking of the town's hospital, "a refuge for insurgents and a center of propaganda against allied forces," according to the Times.

Joining in the attack were "two companies from the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion." It's a group that's mentioned constantly in war reports from Iraq -- most recently, in last month's (very temporary) taking of Samarra.

So who are these guys? Defense Tech recently spoke with an Army officer, present at the 36th's creation, to get the scoop.

"The 36th was originally known as the 'political battalion,'" he said. That's because it was formed from the militias of five major political groups in Iraq: Iyad Alwai's Iraq National Accord (INA), Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which backs Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and the two main Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). About 110 soldiers were originally culled from each group.

Because of the group's diverse roots, it's supposed to be the "most reliable" of the Iraqi forces. But, in reality, only a segment of the 36th has really been trustworthy – the Kurdish fighters known as pesh merga. In an early operation, the U.S. Army officer recalls, about 60 of SCIRI's soldiers fled; so did 30-40 each from the INA and INC. But between the two Kurdish groups, only 11 dropped out, total.

Further battles have, hopefully, hardened the 36th's resolve. But they likely haven't eased the resentment that Iraqi Arabs feel towards the Kurds, and their participation in the unit. "I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds," a Fallujah insurgent told the Washington Post (via Iraq'd), after the April assault on the city, to which the 36th contributed.

"The 36th was supposed to grow and become the center of the [Iraqi] national armed forces, not beholden to the warlord leaders," the U.S. Army officer notes. But with these warlords jockeying for position in advance on the January elections – and with Arab-Kurd tension still running high – the 36th remains a fractured group, still loyal to their chieftains. "We're coming to depend on them," the American officer says, "And they're not beholden to the central government."


http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001189.html

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Fallujah: What Sort of Criminal Monsters Bomb Hospitals?

“A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja,” reports the BBC. “A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.”

“Wounded or sick civilians, civilian hospitals and staff, and hospital transport by land, sea or air must be specially respected,” declares the fourth Geneva Convention ("Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War": http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con.h
tml ).

The convention also regulates the treatment of civilians in occupied territories and forbids “grave breaches,” including the “willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment” of civilians,” but this is precisely what happened in Falluja last April. “All of the Middle East and indeed the whole world is now extremely suspicious that US Marine forces slaughtered civilians in Fallujah indiscriminately,” Joseph Arrieta wrote at the time. “Not only that, it appears Marine snipers did a lot of killing. This is not some errant bomb or missile that created ‘collateral damage,’ it’s the alleged deliberate, careful sighting of civilian targets with spotters targeting men, women, children and ambulances,” all war crimes. “According to the relatively few media reports of what took place there, some 600 Iraqis were killed during these two weeks, among them some 450 elderly people, women and children,” Orit Shohat reported for Haaretz on April 28th.

The sight of decapitated children, the rows of dead women and the shocking pictures of the soccer stadium that was turned into a temporary grave for hundreds of the slain—all were broadcast to the world only by the Al Jazeera network. During the operation in Falluja, according to the organization Doctors Without Borders, U.S. Marines even occupied the hospitals and prevented hundreds of the wounded from receiving medical treatment. Snipers fired from the rooftops at anyone who tried to approach.

Rahul Mahajan, who serves on the Administrative Committee of United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest antiwar coalition, writing for Counterpunch on April 19, provides details of massive U.S. war crimes in regard to Iraqi hospitals and ambulances ( http://www.uruknet.info/?colonna=m&p=2024 ):

Although the first Western reports of U.S. snipers shooting at ambulances caused something of a furor, two days ago at a press conference the Iraqi Minister of Health, Khudair Abbas, confirmed that U.S. forces had shot at ambulances not just in Fallujah but also in Sadr City … He condemned the acts and said he had asked for an explanation from his superiors, the Governing Council and Paul Bremer. … There are also persistent claims that after an outbreak of hostilities American soldiers visit hospitals asking for information about the wounded, with the intent of removing potential resistance members and interrogating them. … By any reasonable standard, these hospital closings (and, of course, the shooting at ambulances) are war crimes. … In the case of Fallujah, it’s clear that one of the reasons the mujahideen were willing to talk about ceasefire was to get the hospital open again; in effect, the United States was holding civilians (indirectly) hostage for military ends

Now that Bush has received his “mandate” from the American people (or the 60% that bothered to vote), we can expect more war crimes. Bombing hospitals, more than likely with patients and staff, will now become routine as Bush “stays the course,” that is attempts to defeat the indigenous Iraqi resistance called “terrorists” by the Bush Ministry of Disinformation.

Americans should be ashamed of these war crimes. But the fact is most people are hardly even aware they occur. Of course, this is no excuse, for as Nuremberg Trials demonstrated the German people were responsible for allowing their leaders to engage in war crimes and crimes against humanity. As Telford Taylor said in the opening statement of the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No.10 in 1946, “I do not think the German people have as yet any conception of how deeply the criminal folly that was nazism bit into every phase of German life, or of how utterly ravaging the consequences were. It will be our task to make these things clear.”

Hopefully, in the not too distant future, it will be the task of a likewise tribunal to make clear to the American people the “criminal folly” of Bush and his camarilla of Straussian neocon sadists. Unfortunately, in the meantime, it appears thousands of Iraqis, mostly innocent civilians, will pay the ultimate price, the same way Jews, Poles, Russians, Germans with the wrong political ideas, and millions of others paid the ultimate price.

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