- The media feeding frenzy around what
has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic.
Focus on US Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last
November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal"
of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.
-
- Yet just like
Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre,
countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness
of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally
decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the
daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi "security"
forces had not stopped either.
-
- Earlier this
month, I received a news release from Iraq, which read, "On Saturday,
May 13th, 2006, at 10:00 p.m., US Forces accompanied by the Iraqi National
Guard attacked the houses of Iraqi people in the Al-Latifya district south
of Baghdad by an intensive helicopter shelling. This led the families to
flee to the Al-Mazar and water canals to protect themselves from the fierce
shelling. Then seven helicopters landed to pursue the families who fled
and killed them. The number of victims amounted to more than 25 martyrs.
US forces detained another six persons including two women named Israa
Ahmed Hasan and Widad Ahmed Hasan, and a child named Huda Hitham Mohammed
Hasan, whose father was killed during the shelling."
-
- The report from
the Iraqi NGO called The Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI)
continued, "The forces didn't stop at this limit. They held an attack
on May 15th, 2006, supported also by the Iraqi National Guards. They also
attacked the families' houses, and arrested a number of them while others
fled. US snipers then used the homes to target more Iraqis. The reason
for this crime was due to the downing of a helicopter in an area close
to where the forces held their attack."
-
- The US military
preferred to report the incident as an offensive where they killed 41 "insurgents,"
a line effectively parroted by much of the media.
-
- On that same
day, MHRI also reported that in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad, US forces
raided the home of Essam Fitian al-Rawi. Al-Rawi was killed along with
his son Ahmed; then the soldiers reportedly removed the two bodies along
with Al-Rawi's nephew, who was detained.
-
- Similarly, in
the city of Samara on May 5, MHRI reported, "American soldiers entered
the house of Mr. Zidan Khalif Al-Heed after an attack upon American soldiers
was launched nearby the house. American soldiers entered this home and
killed the family, including the father, mother and daughter who is in
the 6th grade, along with their son, who was suffering from mental and
physical disabilities."
-
- This same group,
MHRI, also estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 Iraqi civilians were
killed during the November 2004 US assault on Fallujah. Numbers which make
those from the Haditha massacre pale in comparison.
-
- Instead of reporting
incidents such as these, mainstream outlets are referring to the Haditha
slaughter as one of a few cases that "present the most serious challenge
to US handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal."
-
- Marc Garlasco,
of Human Rights Watch, told reporters recently, "What happened at
Haditha appears to be outright murder. The Haditha massacre will go down
as Iraq's My Lai."
-
- Then there is
the daily reality of sectarian and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, which is being
carried out by US-backed Iraqi "security" forces. A recent example
of this was provided by a representative of the Voice of Freedom Association
for Human Rights, another Iraqi NGO which logs ongoing atrocities resulting
from the US occupation.
-
- "The representative
visited Fursan Village (Bani Zaid) with the Iraqi Red Crescent Al-Madayin
Branch. The village of 60 houses, inhabited by Sunni families, was attacked
on February 27, 2006, by groups of men wearing black clothes and driving
cars from the Ministry of Interior. Most of the villagers escaped, but
eight were caught and immediately executed. One of them was the Imam of
the village mosque, Abu Aisha, and another was a 10-year-old boy, Adnan
Madab. They were executed inside the room where they were hiding. Many
animals (sheep, cows and dogs) were shot by the armed men also. The village
mosque and most of the houses were destroyed and burnt."
-
- The representative
had obtained the information when four men who had fled the scene of the
massacre returned to provide the details. The other survivors had all left
to seek refuge in Baghdad. "The survivors who returned to give the
details guided the representative and the Red Crescent personnel to where
the bodies had been buried. They [the bodies] were of men, women and one
of the village babies."
-
- The director
of MHRI, Muhamad T. Al-Deraji, said of this incident, "This situation
is a simple part of a larger problem that is orchestrated by the government
the delay in protecting more villagers from this will only increase the
number of tragedies."
-
- Arun Gupta, an
investigative journalist and editor with the New York Indypendent newspaper
of the New York Independent Media Center, has written extensively about
US-backed militias and death squads in Iraq. He is also the former editor
at the Guardian weekly in New York and writes frequently for Z Magazine
and Left Turn.
-
- "The fact
is, while I think the militias have, to a degree, spiraled out of US control,
it's the US who trains, arms, funds, and supplies all the police and military
forces, and gives them critical logistical support," he told me this
week. "For instance, there were reports at the beginning of the year
that a US army unit caught a "death squad" operating inside the
Iraqi Highway Patrol. There were the usual claims that the US has nothing
to do with them. It's all a big lie. The American reporters are lazy. If
they did just a little digging, there is loads of material out there showing
how the US set up the highway patrol, established a special training academy
just for them, equipped them, armed them, built all their bases, etc. It's
all in government documents, so it's irrefutable. But then they tell the
media we have nothing to do with them and they don't even fact check it.
In any case, I think the story is significant only insofar as it shows
how the US tries to cover up its involvement."
-
- Once again, like
Abu Ghraib, a few US soldiers are being investigated about what occurred
in Haditha. The "few bad apples" scenario is being repeated in
order to obscure the fact that Iraqis are being slaughtered every single
day. The "shoot first ask questions later" policy, which has
been in effect from nearly the beginning in Iraq, creates trigger-happy
American soldiers and US-backed Iraqi death squads who have no respect
for the lives of the Iraqi people. Yet, rather than high-ranking members
of the Bush administration who give the orders, including Bush himself,
being tried for the war crimes they are most certainly guilty of, we have
the ceremonial "public hanging" of a few lowly soldiers for their
crimes committed on the ground.
-
- In an interview
with CNN on May 29th concerning the Haditha massacre, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace commented, "It's going to be a
couple more weeks before those investigations are complete, and we should
not prejudge the outcome. But we should, in fact, as leaders take on the
responsibility to get out and talk to our troops and make sure that they
understand that what 99.9 percent of them are doing, which is fighting
with honor and courage, is exactly what we expect of them."
-
- This is the same
Peter Pace who when asked how things were going in Iraq by Tim Russert
on Meet the Press this past March 5th said, "I'd say they're going
well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're
going very, very well from everything you look at "
-
- Things are not
"going very, very well" in Iraq. There have been countless My
Lai massacres, and we cannot blame 0.1% of the soldiers on the ground in
Iraq for killing as many as a quarter of a million Iraqis, when it is the
policies of the Bush administration that generated the failed occupation
to begin with.
-
- Dahr Jamail is
an independent journalist who spent over 8 months reporting from occupied
Iraq. He presented evidence of US war crimes in Iraq at the International
Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush
Administration in New York City in January 2006. He writes regularly for
TruthOut, Inter Press Service, Asia Times and TomDispatch, and maintains
his own web site, dahrjamailiraq.com.
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