Stories from Fallujah that US media are ignoring....

'Unusual Weapons' Used in Fallujah
By Dahr Jamail
Inter Press Service

Friday 26 November 2004

Baghdad - The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-
conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses
report..

"Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah," 35-year-old trader
from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. "They used everything -- tanks,
artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the
ground."

Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the
heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the
use of illegal weapons.

"They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom
cloud," Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told
IPS. "Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke
behind them."

He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that
burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous
weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects. "People
suffered so much from these," he said.

Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the
cordon U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.

"Doctors in Fallujah are reporting to me that there are patients
in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans," said
Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in
Baghdad. "Some doctors there told me they had a major operation
going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to
die."

Kassem Mohammed Ahmed who escaped from Fallujah a little over a
week ago told IPS he witnessed many atrocities committed by U.S.
soldiers in the city.

"I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with
tanks," he said. "This happened so many times."

Abdul Razaq Ismail who escaped from Fallujah two weeks back said
soldiers had used tanks to pull bodies to the soccer stadium to be
buried. "I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them
because of the American snipers," he said. "The Americans were
dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah."

Abu Hammad said he saw people attempt to swim across the
Euphrates to escape the siege. "The Americans shot them with rifles
from the shore," he said. "Even if some of them were holding a white
flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters,
they were all shot…"

Hammad said he had seen elderly women carrying white flags shot
by U.S. soldiers. "Even the wounded people were killed. The Americans
made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to
leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white
flags were killed."

Another Fallujah resident Khalil (40) told IPS he saw civilians
shot as they held up makeshift white flags. "They shot women and old
men in the streets," he said. "Then they shot anyone who tried to get
their bodies … Fallujah is suffering too much, it is almost gone
now."

Refugees had moved to another kind of misery now, he said. "It's
a disaster living here at this camp," Khalil said. "We are living
like dogs and the kids do not have enough clothes."

Spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad Abdel Hamid Salim
told IPS that none of their relief teams had been allowed into
Fallujah, and that the military had said it would be at least two
more weeks before any refugees would be allowed back into the city.

"There is still heavy fighting in Fallujah," said Salim. "And the
Americans won't let us in so we can help people."

In many camps around Fallujah and throughout Baghdad, refugees
are living without enough food, clothing and shelter. Relief groups
estimate there are at least 15,000 refugee families in temporary
shelters outside Fallujah.




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Falluja's Health Damage
By Miles Schuman
The Nation

Friday 26 November 2004

While the North American news media have focused on the military
triumph of US Marines in Falluja, little attention has been paid to
reports that US armed forces killed scores of patients in an attack
on a Falluja health center and have deprived civilians of medical
care, food and water.

Although the US military has dismissed accounts of the health
center bombing as "unsubstantiated," in fact they are credible and
come from multiple sources. Dr. Sami al-Jumaili described how US
warplanes bombed the Central Health Centre in which he was working at
5:30 am on November 9. The clinic had been treating many of the
city's sick and wounded after US forces took over the main hospital
at the start of the invasion. According to Dr. al-Jumaili, US
warplanes dropped three bombs on the clinic, where approximately
sixty patients--many of whom had serious injuries from US aerial
bombings and attacks - were being treated.

Dr. al-Jumaili reports that thirty-five patients were killed in
the airstrike, including two girls and three boys under the age of
10. In addition, he said, fifteen medics, four nurses and five health
support staff were killed, among them health aides Sami Omar and Omar
Mahmoud, nurses Ali Amini and Omar Ahmed, and physicians Muhammad
Abbas, Hamid Rabia, Saluan al-Kubaissy and Mustafa Sheriff.

Although the deaths of these individual health workers could not
be independently confirmed, Dr. al-Jumaili's account is echoed by
Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi reporter for Reuters and the BBC. Reached by
phone in Falluja, Badrani estimated that forty patients and fifteen
health workers had been killed in the bombing. Dr. Eiman al-Ani of
Falluja General Hospital, who said he reached the site shortly after
the attack, said that the entire health center had collapsed on the
patients.

It was well-known that the Falluja facility was a health center
operating as a small hospital, a protected institution under
international law. According to James Ross of Human Rights
Watch, "the onus would be on the US government to demonstrate that
the hospital was being used for military purposes and that its
response was proportionate. Even if there were snipers there, it
would never justify destroying a hospital."

US airstrikes also leveled a warehouse in which medical supplies
were stored next to the health center, Dr. al-Jumaili reports.
Ambulances from the city had been confiscated by the government, he
says, and the only vehicle left was targeted by US fire, killing the
driver and wounding a paramedic. Hamid Salaman of the Falluja General
Hospital told the Associated Press that five patients in the
ambulance were killed.

US and allied Iraqi military forces stormed the Falluja General
Hospital, which is on the perimeter of the city, at the beginning of
the assault, claiming it was under insurgent control and was a center
of propaganda about civilian casualties during last April's attack on
the city. The soldiers encountered no resistance. Dr. Rafe Chiad, the
hospital's director, reached by phone, stated emphatically that it is
a neutral institution, providing humanitarian aid. According to Dr.
Chiad, the US military has prevented hospital physicians, including a
team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, internists and general
practitioners, from entering Falluja. US authorities have denied all
requests to send doctors, ambulances, medical equipment and supplies
from the hospital into the city to tend to the wounded, he said. Now
the city's only health facility is a small Iraqi military clinic,
which is inaccessible to most of the city's remaining population
because of its distance from many neighborhoods and the dangers posed
by US snipers and crossfire.

"Falluja is dying," said Dr. al-Ani. "We want to save whoever we
can." Jim Welsh, health and human rights coordinator for Amnesty
International in London, notes that under the Geneva
Conventions, "medical personnel cannot be forced to refrain from
providing healthcare which they believe is their ethical
responsibility." The 173-bed Falluja General Hospital remains empty,
according to Dr. Chiad.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has called the health conditions
in and around Falluja "catastrophic." One hospital staff member who
recently left the city reports that there were severe outbreaks of
diarrheal infections among the population, with children and the
elderly dying from infectious disease, starvation and dehydration in
greater numbers each day. Dr. al-Jumaili, Dr. al-Ani and journalist
Badrani each stated that the wounded and children are dying because
of lack of medical attention and water. In one case, according to Dr.
al-Jumaili, three children died of dehydration when their father was
unable to find water for them. The US forces cut off the city's water
supply before launching their assault.

"The people are dying because they are injured, have nothing to
eat or drink, almost no healthcare," said Dr. al-Ani. "The small
rations of food and water handed out by the US soldiers cannot
provide for the population." For the thousands living in makeshift
camps outside the city, according to Firdus al-Ubadi of the Red
Crescent Society, hygiene and health conditions are as precarious as
in Falluja. There are no oral rehydration solutions or salts for
those who are dehydrated, she says.

These reports demand an immediate international response, an end
to assaults on Falluja's civilian population and the free passage of
medical aid, food and water. Louise Arbour, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, has vowed to investigate "violations
of the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants" in
Falluja and to bring the perpetrators to justice. The San Francisco-
based Association of Humanitarian Lawyers has petitioned the Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American
States to investigate the deaths. The bombing of hospitalized
patients, forced starvation and dehydration, denial of medicines and
health services to the sick and wounded must be recognized for what
they are: war crimes and crimes against humanity.



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Miles Schuman is a family physician and member of the medical
network of the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

 

This type of barbaric and souless behavior has been going on the whole time. It's an occupation. You will submit to our will or you will be destroyed. I don't understand the term 'illegal weapon'. What is this a game of Rummy, no aces deucies wild? The US is KILLING innnocent people every day. As far as some of the strange new weapons go, though perhaps not as lethal, anyone remember Miami a few months ago? What the hell was that gas? I offer up a link to one Mark Foster Phd and his anti-terrorist manifesto. It's a long and heady read but it makes a point:



http://terrorism.religionsnet.com/

 

If I had a car, I would want a magnet that said "Fuck the troops".

 

I'm sorry, but knowing people who've been there, this just sounds way exaggerated to me. They are not monsters. Who knows...some of them are indeed crazy I'm sure (some of them have been stuck over there for far longer than they were originally told and are losing it), but the majority of them are not, and just would not be doing things like that...

 

Just to clarify, I'm not saying these things don't or aren't happening AT ALL. I'm not saying our men and women over there are totally innocent. I'm just saying it sounds way exaggerated, and that I'm sure most of the troops would be just as appalled at any of their colleagues doing those things as you or I.

 

As Co0kiezgurl said I'm not claiming such things aren't happening at all, but to be fair, it would be rather advantageous to their cause if people believed all this would it not? Propaganda is used by both sides... These people are obviously quite biased...

 

I don't think the people doing this have to be "crazy" or "monsters" to be doing it - they simply have to follow orders. Soldiers don't manufacture weapons or choose which ones to use - they simply deploy the weapons they are told to. Refusing to do so would mean court martial. I think it's pretty clear from even the mainstream media that the US has been using Fallujah as an example of how it "crushes" resistance in a city - obviously, crushing resistance takes firepower.

While the average soldier might not be a disgusting monster who wants to burn the skin off little babies, those in charge are not particularly concerned about doing so, and so it is going to happen. Of course, this does not remove responsibility from the soldier for following such despicable orders, but it should clarify exactly WHY the average soldiers (who may not actually be a "monster" himself) would be committing these heinous acts.

 

Just letting yall know. While were over there were not issued weapons unless they are NATO approved. We use NATO ammunition, and NATO gas cannisters which are just as lethal as the ones police use for riot control. Example of exxageration is calling tear gas "poisonous gas."

Shit is getting fucked up over there, but it is a dangerous place. Our soldiers are in a place that they are not only hated for being americans, and fighting in a war, but hated for not being muslim also. People are going to stop at nothing to get control back over iraq. (this applies to both sides.)
Reports will be exagerrated they have been this entire war. And I anticipate the media will only get more one sided.

 

Why are we in Iraq?

 

Gotta agree with ya hear... I'd find it just as likely that the insurgents would have planted stuff so that when our bombs dropped, it looks like we used them.

 

Refusing to follow illegal orders would not lead to a court martial. In fact it is the opposite that is true - ask Lynddie England.

 

PB, I agree, my entire career we have been told that if we feel that our orders are unjust or illegal, blow the whistle/break the chain/don't do it. Soldiers can't get in trouble for blowing the whistle.

 

There is a vast difference between theory and application when it comes to 'refusing orders'. Also your basic Marine is trained to reach the mental point where their CO could say go kill that missle battery with this butterknife and they would do it. To condition a person to accept such a paradoxical paradigm you're bound to get some screwy results.

 

Not to mention that eventually it is the MILITARY justice system that decides whether the disputed orders were illegal or not. The very same military that put the CO in charge of the grunt who refused the orders. The very same military that could have hordes of recruits questioning their commanders if they ever upheld such an action. The very same military that has a LONG history of illegal/immoral actions, which might then be called into question....

Yeah, sounds like a fair arrangement to me.

 

in most cases the military justice sytem is more harh on people than civilian law. If a person is charged with rape in the military its an automatic 20 years in the brigg. Theres an article for everything in the UCMJ, it covers everything that civilian law can't cover.

 

So what. That isn't what is being debated here. The idea of having a MILITARY panel rule on the legality of orders given by a MILITARY officer is like having a cop who is accused of brutality judged by a jury of cops! While the penalties for individuals convicted under military law may be harsh, the likelihood of a military tribunal finding orders given by an officer in wartime to be improper seems pretty remote. Can you provide information on a case of such in recent history?

Civilian law (on an international level) covers war crimes and crimes against humanity. Witness the new International Criminal Court. THAT is where such cases need to be tried, not in front of a bunch of military lawyers looking to absolve the military structure of accountability for the actions of it's officers....

 

I already gave you an example. Lynndie England. She'll be court martialed in January. Her defence is that she was "following orders". Anyone care to bet against a conviction?

 

I asked for an example of a case where such a defense was UPHELD, and the recruit's CO was convicted of giving illegal orders. Lyndie England CARRIED OUT the disputed orders, she IS NOT being court martialed for refusing illegal orders!

Cases where the responsibility for atrocities is laid completely on the recruit (like the Lyndie England case) are all too common....

 

No, Willow said "they simply have to follow orders... refusing to do so would mean court martial". I said that not refusing illegal orders results in a court martial, and I just provided an example. Another example is Lt. William Calley, who led the unit responsible for the My Lai massacre, and was convicted of murder. He claimed he was following orders. Also in Vietnam was Walter Griffen, convicted of murder after he claimed he executed prisoners but was only "following orders".

Refusing to follow illegal orders does not lead to court martial.

Following illegal orders leads to court martial.

 

This is true. Also, the UCMJ is supposd to act as international law.