CSMonitor: What Iraq's checkpoints are like

It's a common occurrence in Iraq: A car speeds toward an American checkpoint or foot patrol. They fire warning shots; the car keeps coming. Soldiers then shoot at the car. Sometimes the on-comer is a foiled suicide attacker (see story), but other times, it's an unarmed family.

As an American journalist here, I have been through many checkpoints and have come close to being shot at several times myself. I look vaguely Middle Eastern, which perhaps makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of the typical Iraqi. Here's what it's like.

You're driving along and you see a couple of soldiers standing by the side of the road - but that's a pretty ubiquitous sight in Baghdad, so you don't think anything of it. Next thing you know, soldiers are screaming at you, pointing their rifles and swiveling tank guns in your direction, and you didn't even know it was a checkpoint.

If it's confusing for me - and I'm an American - what is it like for Iraqis who don't speak English?

In situations like this, I've often had Iraqi drivers who step on the gas. It's a natural reaction: Angry soldiers are screaming at you in a language you don't understand, and you think they're saying "get out of here," and you're terrified to boot, so you try to drive your way out.
'Stop or you will be shot'

Another problem is that the US troops tend to have two-stage checkpoints. First there's a knot of Iraqi security forces standing by a sign that says, in Arabic and English, "Stop or you will be shot." Most of the time, the Iraqis will casually wave you through.

Your driver, who slowed down for the checkpoint, will accelerate to resume his normal speed. What he doesn't realize is that there's another, American checkpoint several hundred yards past the Iraqi checkpoint, and he's speeding toward it. Sometimes, he may even think that being waved through the first checkpoint means he's exempt from the second one (especially if he's not familiar with American checkpoint routines).

I remember one terrifying day when my Iraqi driver did just that. We got to a checkpoint manned by Iraqi troops. Chatting and smoking, they waved us through without a glance.

Relieved, he stomped down on the gas pedal, and we zoomed up to about 50 miles per hour before I saw the second checkpoint up ahead. I screamed at him to stop, my translator screamed, and the American soldiers up ahead looked as if they were getting ready to start shooting.

After I got my driver to slow down and we cleared the second checkpoint, I made him stop the car. My voice shaking with fear, I explained to him that once he sees a checkpoint, whether it's behind him or ahead of him, he should drive as slowly as possible for at least five minutes.

He turned to me, his face twisted with the anguish of making me understand: "But Mrs. Annia," he said, "if you go slow, they notice you!"
Under Saddam, idling was risky

This feeling is a holdover from the days of Saddam, when driving slowly past a government building or installation was considered suspicious behavior. Get caught idling past the wrong palaces or ministry, and you might never be seen again.

I remember parking outside a ministry with an Iraqi driver, waiting to pick up a friend. After sitting and staring at the building for about half an hour, waiting for our friend to emerge, the driver shook his head.

"If you even looked at this building before, you'd get arrested," he said, his voice full of disbelief. Before, he would speed past this building, gripping the wheel, staring straight ahead, careful not to even turn his head. After 35 years of this, Iraqis still speed up when they're driving past government buildings - which, since the Americans took over a lot of them, tend be to exactly where the checkpoints are.

Fear of insurgents and kidnappers are another reason for accelerating, and in that scenario, speeding up and getting away could save your life. Many Iraqis know somebody who's been shot at on the road, and a lot of people survived only because they stepped on the gas.

This fear comes into play at checkpoints because US troops are often accompanied by a cordon of Iraqi security forces - and a lot of the assassinations and kidnappings have been carried out by Iraqi security forces or people dressed in their uniforms. Often the Iraqi security forces are the first troops visible at checkpoints. If they are angry-looking and you hear shots being fired, it becomes easier to misread the situation and put the pedal to the metal.

A couple of times soldiers have told me at checkpoints that they had just shot somebody. They're not supposed to talk about it, but they do. I think the soldiers really needed to talk about it. They were traumatized by the experience.
Traumatic for soldiers, too

This is not what they wanted - really not what they wanted - and the whole checkpoint experience is confusing and terrifying for them as well as for the Iraqis. Many of them have probably seen people get killed or injured, including friends of theirs. You can imagine what it's like for them, wondering whether each car that approaches is a normal Iraqi family or a suicide bomber.

The essential problem with checkpoints is that the Americans don't know if the Iraqis are "friendlies" or not, and the Iraqis don't know what the Americans want them to do.

I always wished that the American commanders who set up these checkpoints could drive through themselves, in a civilian car, so they could see what the experience was like for civilians. But it wouldn't be the same: They already know what an American checkpoint is, and how to act at one - which many Iraqis don't.

Is there a way to do checkpoints right? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it seems that the checkpoint experience perfectly encapsulates the contradictions and miseries and misunderstandings of everyone's common experience - both Iraqis and Americans - in Iraq.

Ha'aretz: Al-mahsum, mahsom, checkpoint

Sorry Checkpoints has not been updated that much lately. The site is about to be redesigned and the focus will expand to include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Until then here's an article from Israel that sums up the checkpoints. Stay tuned.

By Yitzhak Laor

Every so often, ghosts from "the Jewish past" are summoned by a contemptible action in the occupied territories. Someone manages to photograph it. There are dramatic headlines about it, as in the case of the young Palestinian ordered to play the violin, but then the affair quickly becomes "an exception." Most of the soldiers do not compel violinists to play at the checkpoints. Most of the soldiers do not kill little girls. Most of the soldiers do not confirm the killing. But the melodramas help to conceal the larger truths. Israelis do not like the truth. And the truth of the Israelis can be found deep inside the occupied territories.

If not for the self-deceit of the Israelis, they would have succeeded in reading a long time ago what every Palestinian knows and has added to his vernacular during the past 13 years as al-mahsum (plural: al-mahasim) - the Arabized version of the Hebrew word for checkpoint (mahsom).

The fact is that the checkpoints are not a product of the intifada. When the truth is written about the history of the checkpoints, and not from the chronicles taken from the desk of the army commanders, it will become clear that the checkpoints gave birth to the intifada. They were born in 1991, two years before the Oslo Accords, and were greatly reinforced after these agreements were signed. Only complete blindness on the part of Israelis - who know more about the chic restaurants in New York than they do about the checkpoints in the West Bank, the checkpoints that divide and slice it, turning its citizens into the victims of good or sadistic soldiers - only this blindness could have begotten the "surprise" of Autumn 2000: What did they want? After all, everything was already OK.

But from the perspective of someone waiting long hours in line, it does not matter whether the soldiers standing facing you is a sadist or a nice guy. Ask any Israeli who is forced to wait 15 minutes in line at the bank if there is any difference whether the teller is nice or not when his turn finally comes. But something more important can be learned from the Israelis' hatred of lines: they have no idea what the Palestinians experience on a daily basis.

The checkpoint system is not part of the intifada, but it did grow and strengthen "thanks" to it. The checkpoint system is also not going to end when the intifada is over. The checkpoint system belongs entirely to the Israeli unwillingness to give up all of the territory of the West Bank, including all of the settlements. The checkpoint system is aimed at ensuring Israeli control over the lives of the Palestinians. Thus, it was strengthened after the signing of the Oslo Accords.

From this perspective, the settlements are not the reason for the checkpoints. The "isolated" settlements and the settlement blocs - part of the "new" consensus of the Oslo era - are the pretext for the checkpoints, but they reveal their real function: We are present everywhere, we will split the Palestinian territory in every way, we will control them.

Anyone who knows the West Bank since the Oslo Accords knows how much humiliation tens of thousands of people have experienced at the checkpoints. Anyone who knows the Oslo Accords from the Palestinian side knows how they looked there: Besides the expropriations, the bypass roads and the expansion of settlements, the checkpoints were their nightmare, a nightmare we knew nothing about.

Melodramas about the hard-hearted soldiers who forced the Palestinian to play his violin compartmentalize this as an exception, and again conceal the system. Again, "the generations of Jewish people" return to the center of the picture. Again, the Jews will remember their past. Again, it will be about our lives, our decline, and not about Palestinian suffering. And again the tabloids will set the "lynch-like" tone of our lives in their pornographic headlines. But the truth is stronger. Whoever is unprepared to separate from the West Bank, with all of its settlements, does not understand that he is paving the way for generations of checkpoint soldiers, sadistic or friendly.

The chief of staff is again giving a "completely frank" speech now. Again he will say, "We failed," and we will understand that his failure is our failure. So there is actually no failure because if the chief of staff had truly failed, he would have had to go, like the commander of the Gaza division. And we will continue to hear occasionally about what each Palestinian child is experiencing daily at the checkpoints, with or without the soft-hearted military volunteers who come to create a humane checkpoint, because the decision about who may or may not pass is made by foreigners, not by the people who must traverse these checkpoints. And this is all under the auspices of the only democracy in the Middle East.

Boston Globe: Inside Fallujah's war

Captain Paul Fowler sat on the curb next to a deserted gas station. Behind him, smoke rose over Fallujah. His company of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles had roamed the eastern third of the city for 13 days, shooting holes in every building that might pose a threat, leaving behind a landscape of half-collapsed houses and factories singed with soot.

''I really hate that it had to be destroyed. But that was the only way to root these guys out," said Fowler, 33, the son of a Baptist preacher in North Carolina. ''The only way to root them out is to destroy everything in your path."

Two days later, Fowler's soldiers and the rest of Task Force 2-2, a reinforced battalion of the Army's First Infantry Division, were rolling back to their bases in cities to the east and north after lending the Marines their muscle to invade Fallujah. The job of heavy armor was largely done, and it was time for civil affairs troops to put the city back together.

''We get to make the mess, and they have to clean it up," Fowler said. ''Their job is a lot tougher than ours."

The battle of Fallujah this month pitted the world's most powerful military force against fighters in tennis shoes wielding homemade rocket launchers. Military planners had decided to use the blunt instrument of heavy armor against an insurgency that they acknowledge cannot be defeated by force alone -- betting that the blow to the guerrillas would outweigh the resentment stirred by the attack. So the job fell to the soldiers from Task Force 2-2, who were accompanied by a Globe reporter.

Afterward, even as they took pride in their speed and sheer destructive power, grunts and officers alike reflected that their handiwork could cause a backlash -- and that the battle has yet to be won in the hearts of Fallujah's people.

''I think it's going to get hotter for a while, when people come back and see what we did," said Specialist Todd Taylor, 21.

US commanders gave the unit a contradictory task: Take back the city with minimal US casualties, but leave it as intact as possible. The latter proved difficult.

To avoid booby traps and ambushes, battalion leaders told the men to fire at houses and buildings before entering them. That made for a trail of destruction. There was no way to know for sure if they were hurting noncombatants, even in a city where most residents had fled.

The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Newell, said US forces could never apply a ''Fallujah method" to other insurgent hubs in Iraq, such as Mosul and Baqubah, where civilian life continues more normally amid rebel activity.

''This is the first time since World War II that someone has turned an American armored task force loose in a city with no restrictions," Newell said. ''Let's hope we don't see it again any time soon."

Also here is the "Falluja Report" issued by the US Marines after the invasion.

Kevin Site: Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1

This was written by Kevin Sites, the NBC cameraman that recorded a US marine killing a wounded Iraqi man in a mosque in Falluja. This is part of his recollection of that day and is written as an open letter to the unit he was embedded in.

To Devil Dogs of the 3.1:

Since the shooting in the Mosque, I've been haunted that I have not been able to tell you directly what I saw or explain the process by which the world came to see it as well. As you know, I'm not some war zone tourist with a camera who doesn't understand that ugly things happen in combat. I've spent most of the last five years covering global conflict. But I have never in my career been a 'gotcha' reporter -- hoping for people to commit wrongdoings so I can catch them at it.

This week I've even been shocked to see myself painted as some kind of anti-war activist. Anyone who has seen my reporting on television or has read the dispatches on this website is fully aware of the lengths I've gone to play it straight down the middle -- not to become a tool of propaganda for the left or the right.

But I find myself a lightning rod for controversy in reporting what I saw occur in front of me, camera rolling.

It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.

Here it goes.

...

Immediately after going in, I see the same black plastic body bags spread around the mosque. The dead from the day before. But more surprising, I see the same five men that were wounded from Friday as well. It appears that one of them is now dead and three are bleeding to death from new gunshot wounds. The fifth is partially covered by a blanket and is in the same place and condition he was in on Friday, near a column. He has not been shot again. I look closely at both the dead and the wounded. There don't appear to be any weapons anywhere.

"These were the same wounded from yesterday," I say to the lieutenant. He takes a look around and goes outside the mosque with his radio operator to call in the situation to Battalion Forward HQ.

I see an old man in a red kaffiyeh lying against the back wall. Another is face down next to him, his hand on the old man's lap -- as if he were trying to take cover. I squat beside them, inches away and begin to videotape them. Then I notice that the blood coming from the old man's nose is bubbling. A sign he is still breathing. So is the man next to him.

While I continue to tape, a Marine walks up to the other two bodies about fifteen feet away, but also lying against the same back wall.

Then I hear him say this about one of the men:

"He's fucking faking he's dead -- he's faking he's fucking dead."

Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.

However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons.

Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.

"Well he's dead now," says another Marine in the background.

I am still rolling. I feel the deep pit of my stomach. The Marine then abruptly turns away and strides away, right past the fifth wounded insurgent lying next to a column. He is very much alive and peering from his blanket. He is moving, even trying to talk. But for some reason, it seems he did not pose the same apparent "danger" as the other man -- though he may have been more capable of hiding a weapon or explosive beneath his blanket.

But then two other marines in the room raise their weapons as the man tries to talk.

For a moment, I'm paralyzed still taping with the old man in the foreground. I get up after a beat and tell the Marines again, what I had told the lieutenant -- that this man -- all of these wounded men -- were the same ones from yesterday. That they had been disarmed treated and left here.

At that point the Marine who fired the shot became aware that I was in the room. He came up to me and said, "I didn't know sir-I didn't know." The anger that seemed present just moments before turned to fear and dread.

The wounded man then tries again to talk to me in Arabic.

He says, "Yesterday I was shot... please... yesterday I was shot over there -- and talked to all of you on camera -- I am one of the guys from this whole group. I gave you information. Do you speak Arabic? I want to give you information." (This man has since reportedly been located by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service which is handling the case.)

In the aftermath, the first question that came to mind was why had these wounded men been left in the mosque?

It was answered by staff judge advocate Lieutenant Colonel Bob Miller -- who interviewed the Marines involved following the incident. After being treated for their wounds on Friday by Navy Corpsman (I personally saw their bandages) the insurgents were going to be transported to the rear when time and circumstances allowed.

The area, however, was still hot. And there were American casualties to be moved first.

Also, the squad that entered the mosque on Saturday was different than the one that had led the attack on Friday.

It's reasonable to presume they may not have known that these insurgents had already been engaged and subdued a day earlier.
Yet when this new squad engaged the wounded insurgents on Saturday, perhaps really believing they had been fighting or somehow posed a threat -- those Marines inside knew from their training to check the insurgents for weapons and explosives after disabling them, instead of leaving them where they were and waiting outside the mosque for the squad I was following to arrive.

During the course of these events, there was plenty of mitigating circumstances like the ones just mentioned and which I reported in my story. The Marine who fired the shot had reportedly been shot in the face himself the day before.

I'm also well aware from many years as a war reporter that there have been times, especially in this conflict, when dead and wounded insurgents have been booby-trapped, even supposedly including an incident that happened just a block away from the mosque in which one Marine was killed and five others wounded. Again, a detail that was clearly stated in my television report.

No one, especially someone like me who has lived in a war zone with you, would deny that a solider or Marine could legitimately err on the side of caution under those circumstances. War is about killing your enemy before he kills you.

In the particular circumstance I was reporting, it bothered me that the Marine didn't seem to consider the other insurgents a threat -- the one very obviously moving under the blanket, or even the two next to me that were still breathing.

I can't know what was in the mind of that Marine. He is the only one who does.

But observing all of this as an experienced war reporter who always bore in mind the dark perils of this conflict, even knowing the possibilities of mitigating circumstances -- it appeared to me very plainly that something was not right. According to Lt. Col Bob Miller, the rules of engagement in Falluja required soldiers or Marines to determine hostile intent before using deadly force. I was not watching from a hundred feet away. I was in the same room. Aside from breathing, I did not observe any movement at all.

Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.

We all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.

For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole.

The answer is not an easy one.

In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both -- though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we're reporting. For example, acts of selfless heroism are likely to be as unique to a group as the darker deeds. But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective - will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn't make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonizing struggle -- the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.

I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Falluja, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it.

When NBC aired the story 48-hours later, we did so in a way that attempted to highlight every possible mitigating issue for that Marine's actions. We wanted viewers to have a very clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the fighting on that frontline. Many of our colleagues were just as responsible. Other foreign networks made different decisions, and because of that, I have become the conflicted conduit who has brought this to the world.

The Marines have built their proud reputation on fighting for freedoms like the one that allows me to do my job, a job that in some cases may appear to discredit them. But both the leaders and the grunts in the field like you understand that if you lower your standards, if you accept less, than less is what you'll become.

There are people in our own country that would weaken your institution and our nation –by telling you it's okay to betray our guiding principles by not making the tough decisions, by letting difficult circumstances turns us into victims or worse…villains.

I interviewed your Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Falluja began. He said something very powerful at the time-something that now seems prophetic. It was this:

"We're the good guys. We are Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here -- because we don't behead people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating. That's a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old Marine who's been trained to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That's a very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time, and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor -- and ensure we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground."

I listened carefully when he said those words. I believed them.

So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.

The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.

I pray for your soon and safe return.

A Flame of Humanism Has Been Extinguished - Who and What Killed Margaret Hassan?

By CHRISTIAN HARLEMAN and JAN OBERG

Christian Harleman is an associate at the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research and Jan Oberg is director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research.

Margaret Hassan has been murdered. That is the most probable conclusion from a video given to Al Jazeera yesterday. For one who met her and got to know her, even if just a little, it is hard to write and read that sentence. But Margaret Hassan--Umm Margaret--in Baghdad has been murdered.

Who killed her?

Desperate, fanatic people who thereby cast a dark shadow over their nationality, organisation, religion and philosophy. People who mistakenly believe that a better Iraq will emerge from such a crime and who cares nil for the welfare of the Iraqi people to whom she devoted most of her life and work. Or someone related to the occupation forces seeking to discredit the image of all Iraqi resistance.

Why she of all?

Because she was a courageous, principled and determined humanist who defied danger and could not be intimidated. She represented the best of the Western and the Arab world in one person and, thus, was a threat to the worst elements in both. For, alive she would remind everyone about the essential difference between genuine goodness and the grim reality of the self-proclaimed "good" policies of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Ayad Allawi.

What caused her death?

The occupation itself and the governments responsible for it. Margaret Hassan was married to an Iraqi, lived for more than 30 years in Iraq, by and large simultaneously with Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. She could live and work there, both with the British Council in the 1980s and with CARE. She considered herself an Iraqi and never thought of leaving the country during the various wars and constant human rights violations. Time and again, she voiced her deep concern to everyone she met--including us--about the inhuman consequences of the economic sanctions and the further suffering of the citizens in case the country would be attacked and occupied.

Margaret Hassan was not killed in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, she was murdered in the Iraq that has been created by Messrs Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Fogh Rasmussen and other Western leaders and by U.S. ambassador John Negroponte as well as by the former exile CIA hand and hand-picked prime minister Ayad Allawi.

In their Iraq people are angry, very very angry. They are hateful of the West that has promised them a better life and delivered them one that is, in all ways but one--that Saddam dictatorship is gone--much worse than under Saddam.

Bush recently asked Blair to move British troops from the south to the troubled central Iraq including Baghdad. We heard Margaret Hassan on video, "Please help me. The British people, tell Mr Blair to take the troops out of Iraq and not bring them here to Baghdad. That's why people like myself and Mr Bigley are abducted, and we might die."

BBC put it all in perspective: "Her plea follows UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon's announcement that 500 Black Watch soldiers and 350 support personnel will move from Basra to the US sector in central Iraq."

That is the what--not who--that murdered Margaret Hassan.

Could Bush and Blair have saved her life? In principle, they could. But the logic of war prevented them: don't give in, continue to the bitter end and let others pay the price. How much longer can this continue? How many more of these awful abductions will the world witness before we see a change in this policy which has caused such a trauma for the Iraqi people in general and for the families and loved ones of the wounded, the murdered and other dead? How much longer can Messrs Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Fogh Rasmussen and fellow war-makers continue to let others pay for their own immoral and anti-intellectual policies?

The larger perspective

Just extend the space and the time around this tragedy, and you will see that is a history that leads up to the murder, there is a global political space in which it takes place. Margaret Hassan was killed by a completely misguided policy and formidable structure of male power, of hubris and ignorance, of playing it cool when knowing one is guilty, of cultural contempt together with a war machine that no one seems to control anymore, with no mercy--only formidable, brutal power.

Said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

Tony Blair said "I think it shows you the type of people we are up against, that they are prepared to kidnap somebody like this." Who is this moralizing Blair? A man of Christian faith whose troops brought nuclear weapons to the region last year, to be used "if necessary" in a country in which half the people are below 16 years of age.

That shows you which type of people the Iraqis are up against.

He who does not care for one cares for none, that's the philosophy shared by state terrorists and the small group terrorist. It casts a long dark shadow over Western civilization.

We mourn the loss of our friend Margaret. She was the victim of her direct murderers and of several others. She was the victim of the war system and the brutalisation of the human mind it invariably causes. A flame of humanism and hope for the Iraqi people and the rest of us has been extinguished.

Baghdad Burning: American Heroes

I'm feeling sick- literally. I can't get the video Al-Jazeera played out of my head:

The mosque strewn with bodies of Iraqis- not still with prayer or meditation, but prostrate with death- Some seemingly bloated… an old man with a younger one leaning upon him… legs, feet, hands, blood everywhere… The dusty sun filtering in through the windows… the stillness of the horrid place. Then the stillness is broken- in walk some marines, guns pointed at the bodies... the mosque resonates with harsh American voices arguing over a body- was he dead, was he alive? I watched, tense, wondering what they would do- I expected the usual Marines treatment- that a heavy, booted foot would kick the man perhaps to see if he groaned. But it didn't work that way- the crack of gunfire suddenly explodes in the mosque as the Marine fires at the seemingly dead man and then come the words, "He's dead now."

"He's dead now." He said it calmly, matter-of-factly, in a sort of sing-song voice that made my blood run cold… and the Marines around him didn't care. They just roamed around the mosque and began to drag around the corpses because, apparently, this was nothing to them. This was probably a commonplace incident.

We sat, horrified, stunned with the horror of the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes. It's the third day of Eid and we were finally able to gather as a family- a cousin, his wife and their two daughters, two aunts, and an elderly uncle. E. and my cousin had been standing in line for two days to get fuel so we could go visit the elderly uncle on the final day of a very desolate Eid. The room was silent at the end of the scene, with only the voice of the news anchor and the sobs of my aunt. My little cousin flinched and dropped her spoon, face frozen with shock, eyes wide with disbelief, glued to the television screen, "Is he dead? Did they kill him?" I swallowed hard, trying to gulp away the lump lodged in my throat and watched as my cousin buried his face in his hands, ashamed to look at his daughter.

"What was I supposed to tell them?" He asked, an hour later, after we had sent his two daughters to help their grandmother in the kitchen. "What am I supposed to tell them- 'Yes darling, they killed him- the Americans killed a wounded man; they are occupying our country, killing people and we are sitting here eating, drinking and watching tv'?" He shook his head, "How much more do they have to see? What is left for them to see?"

They killed a wounded man. It's hard to believe. They killed a man who was completely helpless- like he was some sort of diseased animal. I had read the articles and heard the stories of this happening before- wounded civilians being thrown on the side of the road or shot in cold blood- but to see it happening on television is something else- it makes me crazy with anger.

Mother Jones: Breaking Ranks

MIKE HOFFMAN would not be the guy his buddies would expect to see leading a protest movement. The son of a steelworker and a high school janitor from Allentown, Pennsylvania, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1999 as an artilleryman to “blow things up.” His transformation into an activist came the hard way—on the streets of Baghdad.

When Hoffman arrived in Kuwait in February 2003, his unit’s highest-ranking enlisted man laid out the mission in stark terms. “You’re not going to make Iraq safe for democracy,” the sergeant said. “You are going for one reason alone: oil. But you’re still going to go, because you signed a contract. And you’re going to go to bring your friends home.” Hoffman, who had his own doubts about the war, was relieved—he’d never expected to hear such a candid assessment from a superior. But it was only when he had been in Iraq for several months that the full meaning of the sergeant’s words began to sink in.

“The reasons for war were wrong,” he says. “They were lies. There were no WMDs. Al Qaeda was not there. And it was evident we couldn’t force democracy on people by force of arms.”

When he returned home and got his honorable discharge in August 2003, Hoffman says, he knew what he had to do next. “After being in Iraq and seeing what this war is, I realized that the only way to support our troops is to demand the withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq.” He cofounded a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and soon found himself emerging as one of the most visible members of a small but growing movement of soldiers who openly oppose the war in Iraq.

Also see - LA Times: These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep

Matt LaBranche got the tattoos at a seedy place down the street from the Army hospital here where he was a patient in the psychiatric ward.

The pain of the needle felt good to the 40-year-old former Army sergeant, whose memories of his nine months as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he said, "feeling dead inside." LaBranche's back is now covered in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword. Drawn from his neck to the small of his back, it is emblazoned with the words LaBranche says encapsulate the war's effect on him: "I've come to bring you hell."

In soldiers like LaBranche — their bodies whole but their psyches deeply wounded — a crisis is unfolding, mental health experts say. One out of six soldiers returning from Iraq is suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress — and as more come home, that number is widely expected to grow.

The Pentagon, which did not anticipate the extent of the problem, is scrambling to find resources to address it.

A study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers surveyed after they returned from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder — a debilitating, sometimes lifelong change in the brain's chemistry that can include flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, violent outbursts, acute anxiety and emotional numbness.

Army and Veterans Administration mental health experts say there is reason to believe the war's ultimate psychological fallout will worsen. The Army survey of 6,200 soldiers and Marines included only troops willing to report their problems. The study did not look at reservists, who tend to suffer a higher rate of psychological injury than career Marines and soldiers. And the soldiers in the study served in the early months of the war, when tours were shorter and before the Iraqi insurgency took shape.

Freedom is on the march! (part two): Iraq Tells Media to Toe the Line

Iraq's media regulator warned news organizations Thursday to stick to the government line on the U.S.-led offensive in Fallouja or face legal action.

Invoking a 60-day state of emergency declared by Iraq's interim government ahead of the assault that began Monday, Iraq's Media High Commission said media should distinguish between insurgents and ordinary residents of the Sunni Muslim city.

The commission, set up by the former U.S. governor of Iraq, was intended to be independent of the government and to encourage investment in the media and deter state meddling after decades of strict control under President Saddam Hussein.

The commission statement bore the letterhead of the Iraqi prime minister's office.

It said all media organizations operating in Iraq should "differentiate between the innocent Fallouja residents who are not targeted by military operations and terrorist groups that infiltrated the city and held its people hostage under the pretext of resistance and jihad."

It said news organizations should "guide correspondents in Fallouja … not to promote unrealistic positions or project nationalist tags on terrorist gangs of criminals and killers."

It also asked media to "set aside space in your news coverage to make the position of the Iraqi government, which expresses the aspirations of most Iraqis, clear."

"We hope you comply … otherwise we regret we will be forced to take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national interests," the statement said. It did not elaborate.

The state of emergency, which covers all of Iraq except the Kurdish north, gives the prime minister extra powers to try to crush the insurgency before elections set for January.

The media commission has not previously issued a call for media to take a certain line, and it was not clear what provoked Thursday's statement.

In August, satellite television channel Al Jazeera said it had been asked to close its Baghdad office for one month for backing "criminals and gangsters" by airing parts of videotapes from groups claiming to have seized or killed foreign hostages.

A month later it said the ban had been extended indefinitely.

Asia Times: Resistance blueprint

When major combat operations ended in Iraq last year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, subsequent sporadic attacks on US troops were largely dubbed as typical post-war insurgency. However, the sustained strengthening of the insurgency has seen it grow into a widespread, organized resistance.

Sources in the Afghan resistance movement informed Asia Times Online in written material sent through ordinary mail that the mujahideen decided before the US invasion of Iraq to make that country a hub of their activities. An organization called the Jaishul al-Qiba al-Jihadi al-Siri al-Alami had already been formed to send groups of jihadis to Iraq from time to time. These included Afghans and Arab-Afghans.

Well before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ends this weekend, the resistance held a meeting in southern Baghdad. It was attended by representatives of many different Iraqi groups, which decided to launch "Operation Ramadan" all over Iraq. Therefore, by the time the US finally began its all-out offensive on Fallujah earlier this week, the resistance was prepared to hit back throughout Iraq - as has happened, with some of the bloodiest few days the country has seen in many months.

This poses a difficult problem for the US, which needs to crush all resistance before the scheduled elections in Iraq in January.

For an insight into the dynamics of the resistance, Asia Times Online spoke to Pakistan's retired former director general of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul. He was one of the masterminds of the International Muslim Brigade, a force raised in Afghanistan to fuel the independence movements of Muslim-occupied territories. This later evolved into Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front. Gul spoke to Asia Times Online by telephone from Rawalpindi.

ATol: It is inevitable that US-led forces will ultimately prevail in Fallujah. What will the resistance do next?

Gul: Yes you are right, the present resistance in Fallujah obviously cannot last long in front of US military might. At present, the resistance is [only] up to a [certain] level thanks to [Shi'ite leader] Ayatollah [Ali al-]Sistani, who has kept Shi'ites away from the resistance as Shi'ites are interested in participating in the elections. Had Shi'ites been a part of the resistance movement at this stage, the US would have had a difficult time in keeping its presence in Iraq.

However, this situation apart, the way resistance groups have driven the US nuts in Iraq could set a new dynamic in the world and give new life to liberation movements. The death of Yasser Arafat has also left no leader who can convince Muslim youths that politicking is a solution. Now nobody will be ready to listen to Muslim intellectuals who believe in negotiations rather than military struggle.

Muslim youths will see their success in military struggles and I see an emergence of a "Muslim International" in which Iraq will be the center. I think 7,000 to 8,000 foreign fighters have already joined hands with the resistance. They are not alien to Iraqi culture. They are youths who share the same culture, speak the same language and wear the same dress. In the coming days, I believe thousands more will join. This is a trend which cannot be suppressed by the state apparatus issuing verdicts that suicide attacks are prohibited in Islam. Arab youths can flock through Iraq's largely unguarded borders to reinforce the resistance movement.

In the coming phase, in my opinion, the resistance will make Baghdad the center of the resistance, where all resources will be pooled to blow away US interests.

ATol: Can the resistance survive without external help?

Gul: Support comes with the passage of time when a movement proves its credibility. For one-and-a-half years there was no support for the Afghan resistance movement [against the Soviets in the early 1980s]. Whatever Pakistan support there was was less than a peanut. However, when the resistance proved its credibility, support came from the West. After [President George W] Bush's re-election, there is visible annoyance in countries like Russia and China, even in Europe, against US policies, and it will be a matter of time before they trust the guts [bravery] of the resistance movement and extend their support.

ATol: You mentioned a "Muslim International". Do you see a role for al-Qaeda in Iraq?

Gul: Yes. This is true. Most of the al-Qaeda figures have already left Afghanistan. They cannot live in Pakistan as there is the threat of their arrest. They all went to Iran. Iran has not arrested any al-Qaeda figures. Then where do they go? Obviously, Iraq is the next destination. Now the entire focus is on Iraq, where all [resistance] groups are investing their resources to make the resistance a success.

ATol: I was in Iraq after the war and I asked a US commander in northern Iraq who was behind the attacks on US forces. His immediate reply was Iraqi military and para-military troops. My question is, how can a conventional army become a successful guerrilla force?

Gul: If they have support in villages and among tribes these soldiers can unleash a guerrilla fight. Saddam had a force called Fidayeen-i-Saddam, which was trained specifically for guerrilla operations. It numbered about 35,000. Suppose today this is even 25% of its original strength, it is a big number when local support is available. At the same time, there is no dearth of new recruits. I think a flood of fighters will be coming to Iraq.

ATol: How big could the resistance be?

Gul: About 40,000 to 50,000, including former Ba'ath Party members, Fidayeens, other military and para-military forces, and foreign fighters. In addition, the number of foreign fighters will grow immensely and Iraq will be the hub of an anti-US movement. You know, there is a new phenomena emerging in which a man is himself a weapon. No military can withstand this.

You have to keep in mind the nature of Arab fighters. They do not surrender or retreat easily. Afghanistan is a case in this regard. At Qila Changi and other places the Taliban decided to retreat, but Arab fighters refused to do so and they fought till their last. So, I think, the resistance movement will increase multifold in the coming weeks.

The invasion of Falluja continues: “Iraq is burning with wrath, anger and sadness…”

From Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches:

Leaving the hotel is always an adventure. Last night, with a full beard and a kefir draped around my shoulders, Abut Talat wisks me out into the chaotic streets of occupied Baghdad.

As we traveled around the capital, we took side roads, winding varying routes towards our destination, never daring to take the direct, most obvious path. Aside from the obvious threat of kidnapping which is my greatest concern, we travel accepting the fact that anywhere, anytime, we could be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether that take the form of a car bomb like the one yesterday which detonated near a US patrol on Sa’adoun street, killing 17 people and engulfing 20 cars in flames, or a full scale battle between occupation forces and resistance fighters like that which occurred in al-Adhamiya today.

The damp night air appeared as a haze which exaggerated the ever-present of smog in the capital. Driving around Baghdad always provides an assortment of smells-from beef kebobs cooking on the roadsides as vendors stoke their fires, or more commonly, as the stench of raw sewage as one passes through yet another un-reconstructed sewage infested area.

One of our stops is at the home of Dr. Wamid Omar Nathmi, a senior political scientist at Baghdad University. An older, articulate man who vehemently opposed the regime of Saddam Hussein, he is now critical of the US policy which is engulfing Iraq in violence, bloodshed and chaos.

He told me that during the buildup to the siege of Fallujah, he had sent John Negroponte, the current so-called ambassador of Iraq, a letter which, along with several other points, asked him, “Do you think that by occupying Fallujah you will stop the resistance?”

Of course his letter was ignored, and now we watch in fear as the resistance is spreading across Iraq like a wildfire, fanned by the pounding of Fallujah.

Dr. Nathmi added, “Certainly the US military can eventually suppress Fallujah, but for how long? Iraq is burning with wrath, anger and sadness…the people of Fallujah are dear to us. They are our brothers and sisters and we are so saddened by what is happening in that city.”

He asked what the difference was between what is occurring in Fallujah now to what Saddam Hussein did during his repression of the Shia Intifada which followed the ’91 Gulf War. “Saddam suppressed that uprising and used less awful methods than the Americans are in Fallujah today.”

Dr. Nathmi is a brilliant man and certainly a warehouse of informative analysis about the events in Iraq. He was quick to point out another flaw in the US policy here, of how the US disbanded the entire Iraqi Police force in Ramadi the day before the siege of Fallujah began.

He held up his hands and asked, “Who will provide security in Ramadi now, angels?”

“I can assure you, it is well over 75% of Iraqis who cannot even tolerate this occupation,” he said a little later when discussing the Bush administrations attempts to whitewash the situation in Iraq. “The right-wing Bush administration is blinded by its ideology, and we are all suffering from this, Iraqis and soldiers alike.”

After our interview, we stopped by Abu Talat’s home for a coffee and so I could say hello to his family. His son Hissan somberly asked me, “When will the Americans leave, Dahr?” I had no response. “I don’t know Hissan. I really don’t know.” He then said, “I don’t think they are ever going to leave Iraq.”

I snuck back into the car and we wound our way across Baghdad, noting that most of the city sat in darkness. “Baghdad is running on the generators Dahr,” said Abu Talat, “Even my home has been without electricity since 9am this morning.” It was after 8pm.

He insisted we stop for ice cream, which I most certainly did not refuse, then he dropped me back at my hotel.

Today dawned a grey, windy day, with fighter jets scorching the sky en route to Fallujah.

Of course the flames of resistance have now engulfed other parts of Baghdad and Iraq alike. Here in Baghdad, the Amiriyah, Abu Ghraib and al-Dora regions have fallen mostly under the control of the resistance.

A friend of mine who lives in al-Dora said, “The resistance is in control here now, they are controlling the streets.”

What few US patrols still roam the streets are attacked often. This fact underscored earlier as several large explosions nearby shook the walls of my hotel this afternoon.

Abu Talat was once again trapped in his neighborhood and we were unable to conduct an interview when fighting broke out nearby his home. He called me and said, “The Iraqi Police found a car bomb, and when they were warning people about it US troops showed up and were immediately attacked with RPG’s. The fighting raged for at least half an hour, and several soldiers were wounded and taken away. Now fighter jets are flying so low over our neighborhood, using their loud voices to terrorize people.”

Huge areas within the cities of Ramadi, Fallujah, Baquba and Mosul are now controlled by the resistance. Will the slash and burn tactics of the US military in Fallujah be applied to those areas next?

Meanwhile, over near the Imam Adham mosque a huge demonstration organized by the Islamic Party (which just withdrew from the so-called interim government and recently called for a boycott of the elections), broke out. It was comprised of well over 5,000 angry people denouncing Ayad Allawi and demanding his resignation.

They also demonstrated to show that they were unafraid of the US military.

And they called for jihad against Allawi.

More from Jamail:

- Residents of the areas of Al-Dora, Abu Ghraib, and Amiriyah areas of Baghdad are reporting that the resistance have taken over control of parts of those areas.

- Iraqi Police checkpoints are present in much greater number throughout the city in enforcement of the new curfew.

- Petrol lines are now, in some places, stretching for 2-3 miles long.

- Most of Baghdad, which I saw while driving through the city tonight, is without electricity and running on generators.

- In the Al-Aadhamiyah district, they have been without power today since 9am (It's nearly 10pm now) [NOTE: Aadhamiyah is a center of the resistance in Baghdad and residents frequently assert the power cuts in the area are due to deliberate policy rather than lack of power-generation capacity, a charge that I find plausible but unconfirmable].

- I'm in central Baghdad, one of the best areas for electricity, and since I've been here this past week, we are averaging 10 hours of electricity per 24 hours [NOTE: the Iraqi Minister of Electricity, Aiham al-Samarra'i, was on PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer yesterday and he claimed that the average provision of power was something like 16 hours per day, in a segment that was riddled with claims that are in sharp contrast with all other sources of information I've seen].

- Many shops are now staying closed, even in Baghdad as the fighting continues to spread.

- The "Green Zone" continues to be bombed by mortars every day, sometimes for extended periods of time.

- The US base in the old Saddam Palace in Aadhamiyah has been mortared every single night now for at least a week straight.

Iraq: The Unthinkable Becomes Normal

by John Pilger

Edward S. Herman's landmark essay, "The Banality of Evil," has never seemed more apposite. "Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on 'normalization,'" wrote Herman. "There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public."

On Radio 4's Today (Nov. 6), a BBC reporter in Baghdad referred to the coming attack on the city of Fallujah as "dangerous" and "very dangerous" for the Americans. When asked about civilians, he said, reassuringly, that the U.S. Marines were "going about with a Tannoy" telling people to get out. He omitted to say that tens of thousands of people would be left in the city. He mentioned in passing the "most intense bombing" of the city with no suggestion of what that meant for people beneath the bombs.

As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that heroically defied Saddam Hussein; they were merely "insurgents holed up in the city," as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life to be "flushed out" (the Guardian): a suitable quarry for "rat-catchers," which is the term another BBC reporter told us the Black Watch use. According to a senior British officer, the Americans view Iraqis as Untermenschen, a term that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to describe Jews, Romanies, and Slavs as subhumans. This is how the Nazi army laid siege to Russian cities, slaughtering combatants and non-combatants alike.

Normalizing colonial crimes like the attack on Fallujah requires such racism, linking our imagination to "the other." The thrust of the reporting is that the "insurgents" are led by sinister foreigners of the kind that behead people: for example, by Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian said to be al-Qaeda's "top operative" in Iraq. This is what the Americans say; it is also Blair's latest lie to parliament. Count the times it is parroted at a camera, at us. No irony is noted that the foreigners in Iraq are overwhelmingly American and, by all indications, loathed. These indications come from apparently credible polling organizations, one of which estimates that of 2,700 attacks every month by the resistance, six can be credited to the infamous al-Zarqawi.

In a letter sent on Oct. 14 to Kofi Annan, the Fallujah Shura Council, which administers the city, said: "In Fallujah, [the Americans] have created a new vague target: al-Zarqawi. Almost a year has elapsed since they created this new pretext, and whenever they destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women, they said: 'We have launched a successful operation against al-Zarqawi.' The people of Fallujah assure you that this person, if he exists, is not in Fallujah ... and we have no links to any groups supporting such inhuman behavior. We appeal to you to urge the UN [to prevent] the new massacre which the Americans and the puppet government are planning to start soon in Fallujah, as well as many parts of the country."

Not a word of this was reported in the mainstream media in Britain and America.