[Shadow_Group] Fw: In Iraq, the US eliminates those who dare to count the dead

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http://imagicke.blogspot.com/2004/12/in-iraq-us-eliminates-those-who-darehtml<http://imagicke.blogspot.com/2004/12/in-iraq-us-eliminates-those-who-dare.html>

In Iraq, the US eliminates those who dare to count the dead
You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is

Naomi Klein

12/04/04 "The Guardian " --

David T Johnson,
Acting ambassador,
US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the
Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day.
The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer
bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating
anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of
particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either
to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is
quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free
press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while
I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it.
Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome
killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US
troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for
the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country,
triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This
information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on
April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main
clinics around the city and from Falluja general hospital". 2) Arab TV
journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was al-Jazeera and
al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded camera
crews in Falluja, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and children
throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high
civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by
prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack,
turning their congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that
forced US troops to withdraw.

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last
April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For
instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York Times
last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of propaganda". But the
strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about al-Jazeera
and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Falluja,
Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, replied that "what al-Jazeera is
doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once
again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic:
eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention
on civilian casualties last time around.


Eliminating doctors

The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja
general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military
control. The New York Times reported that "the hospital was selected as an
early target because the American military believed that it was the source of
rumours about heavy casual ties", noting that "this time around, the American
military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching
what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons". The Los Angeles
Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers "stole the mobile phones" at
the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.

But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a
crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical
supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working in the
clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35
patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Falluja general
hospital "had told a US general the location of the downtown makeshift medical
centre" before it was hit.

Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the
same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr Jumaili
told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single surgeon in
Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: on entering
the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the al-Zaharawi
hospital.


Eliminating journalists

The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from
reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had
covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been
eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned
from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded
reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US forces
arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's detention has
been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of
Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for
just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of
intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command
urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying
and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed
al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has
documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José Couso, of
the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US
soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges that
US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel and that
they committed a war crime.


Eliminating clerics

Just as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of the
clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in Falluja. On
November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association for
Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to Associated Press, "Al-Sumaidaei
has called on the country's Sunni minority to launch a civil disobedience
campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the attack on Falluja". On
November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi forces stormed a prominent Sunni
mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing three people and arresting 40,
including the chief cleric - another opponent of the Falluja siege. On the same
day, Fox News reported that "US troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near
the Syrian border". The report described the arrests as "retaliation for
opposing the Falluja offensive". Two Shia clerics associated with Moqtada
al-Sadr have also been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, "both had
spoken out against the Falluja attack".

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The
question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies - the
doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document
these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that
these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from
mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained
physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are
waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has
claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.


Source: Information Clearing House


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