Falluja: SNAFU

Fierce fighting between Iraqi forces and rebel groups including al-Qaida was reported near Falluja on Tuesday, 24 hours after the US agreed to speed up arms sales to the government in Baghdad.

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The US announced on Monday it is to accelerate military sales to Iraq, including 10 ScanEagle drones and 48 Raven drones. It said the drones were purely for surveillance. A consignment of 75 Hellfire missiles arrived in Iraq last week.

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Security officials and tribal leaders said Maliki had agreed to hold off an offensive to give people in Falluja time to push the militants out. But it is not clear how long they have before troops storm the town.

"We've done our part of the deal. Now they [tribal leaders] should do theirs. If not, a quick offensive is coming," an Iraqi special forces officer told Reuters.

Iraq's US-equipped armed forces have killed dozens of militants in recent days in shelling and air strikes, officials say. The scale of casualties among civilians, security forces and tribal fighters is not clear.

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Intelligence estimates put membership of al-Qaida in Iraq at 3,000, up from 1,000 in 2011.

Joshi warned that al-Qaida was only one element in a coalition of groups opposed to the Maliki government. "What we are seeing in Anbar is bigger than just al-Qaida. What were are seeing includes a protest movement and armed tribes."

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The US Congress is blocking the sale of Apache helicopter gunships to the Iraqi government amid concerns they might be used for sectarian repression, but the White House, worried about al-Qaida, backs the sale.

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"No outside power can change the situation. Given Iraq's current political divisions and leadership, the most the US and other outside states can do is choose between bad alternatives and pursue the least bad options.”

  Guardian

New Report on Depleted Uranium in Iraq

We have finally found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

From 2009 onwards, credible media reports from the city of Fallujah, which had been the scene of intense urban warfare in 2004, brought reports of high rates of congenital birth defects in the city to the world’s attention. At least two platforms that utilize DU munitions were employed in ‘Phantom Fury’, the most intense operation since the official end of major combat operations in 2003.

At least 440,000kg of DU was used in Iraq, some ending up as DU dust, some as corroding penetrators and leaving a still unknown number of sites with contaminated vehicles, buildings and soils, according to a Dutch report.

“The exposure risks to civilians from the use of DU in populated areas have been compounded by the US’s persistent refusal to release the data that could have helped facilitate the effective assessment and clearance work, providing that the Iraqi government had the capacity and finances to undertake it. Taken as a whole, these issues cast serious doubts over the legitimacy of the use of DU,” the Dutch report says.

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Another report, funded by the Norwegian government, has recently found that depleted uranium was used against civilian targets in populated areas in Iraq, in 2003. It emphasizes a lack of transparency by coalition forces over the use of depleted uranium, but also describes one incident in Najaf where a Bradley armored fighting vehicle fired 305 depleted uranium rounds in a single engagement.

  RT

Meanwhile, in Liberated Iraq

Thousands of Sunni protesters have gathered for protests in Iraq's Anbar province, complaining of marginalisation by the Shia-led government.

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Tribal leaders and political activists had called for protests in Fallujah in solidarity with seven young men killed in clashes between government forces and protesters in the city last week.

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Meanwhile, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group called on Sunnis to take up arms against the government.

  alJazeera

Falluja Reacts to Troop Withdrawal

Apparently, they're sorry to see us leave.

Source

And President #Compromise welcomes home some troops…

“Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries -- from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you -- men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.

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“That’s part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right. There can be no fuller expression of America’s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.

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“And make no mistake -- as we go forward as a nation, we are going to keep America’s armed forces the strongest fighting force the world has ever seen.” And they’ve seen it a lot.

  WIIIAI

Indeed they have. Indeed they have.

Falluja Is Still There

What's left of it.

[The attack on Falluja] was one of the most horrific events of the still-unfolding act of aggression in Iraq. Presented in the U.S. press as an old-fashioned, gung-ho, WWII-style "battle," it was in fact a mass slaughter, largely of trapped civilians; almost all of the "terrorists" and "insurgents" in the city had long escaped during the months-long, oddly public build-up to the assault. It seemed clear that the intent was not to quash an insurgent nest, as stated, but to perpetrate an act of condign, collective punishment -- primarily against civilians -- in order to terrorize the rest of Iraq into submission.

One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. ...

So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.

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The wanton, unnecessary destruction of Fallujah is one of the central stories of our time. Yet it is almost entirely forgotten, especially among the people in whose name this vast crime was committed. But the marks of this atrocity live on in its victims. Over the holidays, while America's high and mighty were making merry, yet another detailed study was released confirming a major spike in birth defects in Fallujah following the attack.

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The new report follows on the harrowing findings reported by the BBC and The Independent (but strangely omitted from the American media) in mid-2010.

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US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

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[Falluja is a] city whose birth defect rate is 11 times the world average. A city where children are suffering from cancers "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors" -- indeed, where the increase in leukemia is far greater than among the first victims of American WMD. [...] O where are our great American progressives, who stood so tall and proud against the American war machine when it was led by an embarrassing vulgarian, but now occupy themselves with handwringing and bead-counting about the political fortunes of his bloodstained predecessor, now perpetrating his own mini-Fallujahs week after week against defenseless villagers in Pakistan?

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I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the "continuity" of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by god I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth.

"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

I will not forget Artica Salim. I will not forget Fallujah. I will not "move on." I will not become part of the inferno. – Chris Floyd

Empire Burlesque

I have never felt that aggressive about bearing witness - more like beating a drum knowing that I’m probably the only one hearing it, and wondering if that’s just masochistic . But from the inception of the atrocity of the attack on (laying waste to, really) Falluja, I felt a specially intense despair about the loss of any sense of morality on the part of my countrymen in particular, but also the world in general. At that point, I began keeping a blog devoted to that special Hell, and I must say I am indeed still amazed at the lack of attention paid it, even in light of the continuing reports of the condition of the people there. At the time, it was used as a source of pride and a rallying point for the pretense that our soldiers are over there protecting our freedom here. Once that was spent, we had no more use for it.

Perhaps if each American adult had to adopt, raise, and care for one child orphaned or afflicted by the war, we’d make our government stop.

Don’t worry. We don’t even have to look at them.

Video on Falluja Atrocity

Windows Media Video

courtesy Information Clearing House

What Really Happened