Post by Washington Unleashes Bloodbath on Apr 29, 2004 0:06:05 GMT -5
Washington Unleashes Bloodbath in Iraq
News Analysis
With thousands of troops massed outside the besieged cities of Fallujah in central Iraq and Najaf in the south, the Bush administration has unleashed a bloodbath against the Iraqi people.
In Fallujah, US forces on Tuesday escalated their attack, with AC-130 gunships firing cannon rounds into crowded residential areas. The city was also pounded by fire from helicopter gunships, jet fighters, tanks and machine guns.
In one instance, tank fire was used to topple the minaret of a local mosque. Marines reportedly closed the last entrance to Fallujah, barring any more of the residents who had fled earlier fighting from returning to their homes. The action was seen by observers as the prelude to the renewal of a full-scale assault on the city of 300,000, which has been a center of resistance to the US occupation. One Marine commander referred to the city—comparable in size to Birmingham, Alabama or Newark, New Jersey—as a “huge rats’ nest.”<br>
In Najaf, Pentagon officials claimed Tuesday that US occupation forces killed scores of members of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Missile-firing helicopter gunships were called in to mow down some 60 militiamen, according to US officials. Local hospital staff, however, reported that the casualties included unarmed civilians. It was also reported that US troops had seized a major hospital and were denying access or supplies to those seeking to treat wounded Iraqis.
In the aftermath of the clash, throngs of Najaf residents carried the coffins of seven of the slain fighters through the streets, vowing to resist any attempt by US forces to take control of the city.
“We’re going to drive this guy into the dirt,” a commanding officer of the US 1st Armored Division said of Sadr.
What is being prepared is a wave of mass killing aimed at terrorizing the Iraqi people into accepting the continued occupation of their country by the US military. Lacking anywhere near the forces necessary to police a country of 25 million people, Washington is determined to make an example out of Fallujah and Sadr’s movement, much in the same fashion that the Nazi occupiers of World War II Europe leveled the Czech town of Lidice and razed the Warsaw ghetto.
Given the sadism and backwardness of the occupant of the White House, who is said to be making the ultimate decisions on the two sieges, the looming assaults are no doubt also driven by a thirst for revenge. Since the beginning of April, 122 US troops have lost their lives in combat. During the same period, ten times as many Iraqis have been killed, many of them women and children.
Laying siege to cities, attacking hospitals and mosques, denying medical care, food and other essential services to entire civilian populations and imprisoning close to 20,000 Iraqis without charges or hearings are all war crimes, and they are being carried out in the name of the American people.
The original pretexts advanced for invading and occupying Iraq—from weapons of mass destruction to supposed ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda—have long since been proven lies. Now, the claim that Washington is seeking to bring “freedom” and “democracy” in Iraq is being exposed as a fraud as the full horror of Washington’s dirty colonialist war becomes increasingly evident.
While millions of Americans oppose this war and watch with revulsion as the killing escalates, the onslaught against the Iraqi people enjoys the full support of the US establishment and both of its political parties. That the bloodletting in Iraq is the consensus policy of the entire ruling elite was made clear by editorials appearing in two influential dailies this week.
In an editorial entitled “The Fallujah Stakes,” the Wall Street Journal on Monday gave vent to the thirst for blood that predominates among the right-wing Republican layers that are politically closest to the Bush administration. These elements are increasingly agitated over what they see as a retreat from the administration’s unilateralist policy in Iraq. This has intensified since Bush’s announcement that he will allow United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to effectively select the personnel for the so-called interim government that is to be installed on July 1. The Journal, which in response to the first Persian Gulf war coined the infamous slogan, “Force works,” wants to see blood soon and in great quantities. The newspaper warned Monday that the Bush administration must not “shrink from the military campaign that is inevitable.” It continued:
“Sooner or later the Baath remnants, jihadists and criminals who have used Fallujah as a sanctuary have to be killed. They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with, because for them a peaceful transition to Iraqi control after June 30 means defeat...
ooner or later the insurgents have to be defeated, and at the point of a gun, not by diplomacy. If we’re not prepared to do that, Mr. Bush might as well order the troops home now.” The day before, the New York Times published an editorial entitled “A Stronger Force in Iraq” that corresponded in large measure to the positions taken by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. It called upon the Bush administration to confront “unpleasant realities,” including the prospect that an additional 50,000 troops or more will have to be sent to occupy Iraq, and that the occupation will continue well past 2006. It complained that the Bush White House was denying “our forces and the Iraqi people the protection that adequate troop strength would provide.”<br>
The editorial concluded: “We may, in the end, find that the task Mr. Bush has laid out for the brave men and women in the military and the brave Iraqi citizens who are struggling to create a better future is simply impossible to achieve. But we have not reached that point. This is not the moment for retreat and it certainly is not the moment for half measures.” (Emphasis added).
The meaning of this last sentence—written in the context of the sieges mounted by the US military against Fallujah and Najaf—is unmistakable. No “half measures” means unleashing the full force of the US military against a popular uprising that cannot be crushed without massive civilian casualties. Both the Bush administration’s most fervent right-wing backers and its supposed political opponents in what passes for the liberal establishment have come together to employ the same lies to justify the slaughter in Iraq. They both claim that the US occupation forces are in Iraq as armed missionaries of “freedom” and “democracy.”<br>
For the Wall Street Journal, the transition to “Iraqi control” is possible only through the slaying of those Iraqis who are resisting foreign occupation. For the Times, “security” for the Iraqis is to be achieved through a massive escalation of a US occupation that has already claimed the lives of well over 10,000 civilians.
This killing of Iraqis and the pointless sacrifice of hundreds of young American soldiers’ lives is being carried out not for any of the preposterous reasons—freedom, democracy, security—put forward by the war’s defenders. Rather, US imperialism has decided to conquer and occupy an entire country and suppress its people in order to seize control of its vast oil resources and assert its hegemony over one of the world’s most strategically vital regions.
News Analysis
With thousands of troops massed outside the besieged cities of Fallujah in central Iraq and Najaf in the south, the Bush administration has unleashed a bloodbath against the Iraqi people.
In Fallujah, US forces on Tuesday escalated their attack, with AC-130 gunships firing cannon rounds into crowded residential areas. The city was also pounded by fire from helicopter gunships, jet fighters, tanks and machine guns.
In one instance, tank fire was used to topple the minaret of a local mosque. Marines reportedly closed the last entrance to Fallujah, barring any more of the residents who had fled earlier fighting from returning to their homes. The action was seen by observers as the prelude to the renewal of a full-scale assault on the city of 300,000, which has been a center of resistance to the US occupation. One Marine commander referred to the city—comparable in size to Birmingham, Alabama or Newark, New Jersey—as a “huge rats’ nest.”<br>
In Najaf, Pentagon officials claimed Tuesday that US occupation forces killed scores of members of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr. Missile-firing helicopter gunships were called in to mow down some 60 militiamen, according to US officials. Local hospital staff, however, reported that the casualties included unarmed civilians. It was also reported that US troops had seized a major hospital and were denying access or supplies to those seeking to treat wounded Iraqis.
In the aftermath of the clash, throngs of Najaf residents carried the coffins of seven of the slain fighters through the streets, vowing to resist any attempt by US forces to take control of the city.
“We’re going to drive this guy into the dirt,” a commanding officer of the US 1st Armored Division said of Sadr.
What is being prepared is a wave of mass killing aimed at terrorizing the Iraqi people into accepting the continued occupation of their country by the US military. Lacking anywhere near the forces necessary to police a country of 25 million people, Washington is determined to make an example out of Fallujah and Sadr’s movement, much in the same fashion that the Nazi occupiers of World War II Europe leveled the Czech town of Lidice and razed the Warsaw ghetto.
Given the sadism and backwardness of the occupant of the White House, who is said to be making the ultimate decisions on the two sieges, the looming assaults are no doubt also driven by a thirst for revenge. Since the beginning of April, 122 US troops have lost their lives in combat. During the same period, ten times as many Iraqis have been killed, many of them women and children.
Laying siege to cities, attacking hospitals and mosques, denying medical care, food and other essential services to entire civilian populations and imprisoning close to 20,000 Iraqis without charges or hearings are all war crimes, and they are being carried out in the name of the American people.
The original pretexts advanced for invading and occupying Iraq—from weapons of mass destruction to supposed ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda—have long since been proven lies. Now, the claim that Washington is seeking to bring “freedom” and “democracy” in Iraq is being exposed as a fraud as the full horror of Washington’s dirty colonialist war becomes increasingly evident.
While millions of Americans oppose this war and watch with revulsion as the killing escalates, the onslaught against the Iraqi people enjoys the full support of the US establishment and both of its political parties. That the bloodletting in Iraq is the consensus policy of the entire ruling elite was made clear by editorials appearing in two influential dailies this week.
In an editorial entitled “The Fallujah Stakes,” the Wall Street Journal on Monday gave vent to the thirst for blood that predominates among the right-wing Republican layers that are politically closest to the Bush administration. These elements are increasingly agitated over what they see as a retreat from the administration’s unilateralist policy in Iraq. This has intensified since Bush’s announcement that he will allow United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to effectively select the personnel for the so-called interim government that is to be installed on July 1. The Journal, which in response to the first Persian Gulf war coined the infamous slogan, “Force works,” wants to see blood soon and in great quantities. The newspaper warned Monday that the Bush administration must not “shrink from the military campaign that is inevitable.” It continued:
“Sooner or later the Baath remnants, jihadists and criminals who have used Fallujah as a sanctuary have to be killed. They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with, because for them a peaceful transition to Iraqi control after June 30 means defeat...
The editorial concluded: “We may, in the end, find that the task Mr. Bush has laid out for the brave men and women in the military and the brave Iraqi citizens who are struggling to create a better future is simply impossible to achieve. But we have not reached that point. This is not the moment for retreat and it certainly is not the moment for half measures.” (Emphasis added).
The meaning of this last sentence—written in the context of the sieges mounted by the US military against Fallujah and Najaf—is unmistakable. No “half measures” means unleashing the full force of the US military against a popular uprising that cannot be crushed without massive civilian casualties. Both the Bush administration’s most fervent right-wing backers and its supposed political opponents in what passes for the liberal establishment have come together to employ the same lies to justify the slaughter in Iraq. They both claim that the US occupation forces are in Iraq as armed missionaries of “freedom” and “democracy.”<br>
For the Wall Street Journal, the transition to “Iraqi control” is possible only through the slaying of those Iraqis who are resisting foreign occupation. For the Times, “security” for the Iraqis is to be achieved through a massive escalation of a US occupation that has already claimed the lives of well over 10,000 civilians.
This killing of Iraqis and the pointless sacrifice of hundreds of young American soldiers’ lives is being carried out not for any of the preposterous reasons—freedom, democracy, security—put forward by the war’s defenders. Rather, US imperialism has decided to conquer and occupy an entire country and suppress its people in order to seize control of its vast oil resources and assert its hegemony over one of the world’s most strategically vital regions.