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Partridge
03-23-2006, 03:34 PM
US troops investigated over Iraqi massacres
Patrick Cockburn - The Independent (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article352819.ece)


The US military is investigating two incidents in which American soldiers killed at least 26 Iraqi civilians and then claimed that they were either guerrillas or had died in cross fire.

The growing evidence of retaliatory killings of unarmed Iraqi families, often including children, by US soldiers seemingly bent on punishing Iraqis after an attack, will spark comparisons with the massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968. [Partridge: Hey, too bad Colin 'Corpses, what corpses?' Powell is no longer around!]


US troops have been notorious among Iraqis for their willingness to shoot any Iraqi they see in the aftermath of an insurgent attack. But it is only now that convincing and detailed information is becoming available about the killings.

In the most recent incident, in the town of Ishaqi north of Baghdad last week, Iraqi police said that US troops had shot 11 people, including five children, in their home. The local police chief, Colonel Farouq Hussein, said that all the dead had been shot in the head, according to autopsies. "It's a clear and perfect crime," he said. In an incident in the town of Haditha in western Iraq on 19 November last year, US soldiers went on a rampage in a village after a bomb attack and killed at least 15 civilians, according to witnesses and local officials cited by Time magazine in an investigation.

The US military first claimed a roadside bomb had killed a US Marine, Miguel Tarrazas, along with 15 Iraqi civilians caught in the blast. Later, a military statement said "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire" and in returning fire the Marines killed eight insurgents.

But after Time presented the US military with what Iraqis said had happened, an official investigation found that 15 of the civilians had been deliberately killed by US soldiers.

The bomb attack on the US Humvee took place at 7.15am. Eman Waleed, a nine-year-old child, lived in a house 150 yards from the explosion. "We heard a big noise that woke us all up," she recalled later. "Then we did what we always do when there's an explosion: my father goes in to his room with the Koran and prays the family will be spared harm."


The Marines claim they heard shots coming from the direction of Waleed's house. They burst in to the house and Eman heard shots from her father's room. They then entered the living room, where the rest of the family was gathered. She said: "I couldn't see their faces very well - only their guns sticking in to the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

The US soldiers started shooting in to the corner of the room where Eman and her eight-year-old brother, Abdul Rahman, were cowering. The other adults in the room tried to protect the two children with their bodies and were all shot dead. Eman and her brother were both wounded.

"We were lying there, bleeding and it hurt so much. Afterwards some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried us in their arms. I was crying, shouting, 'why did you do this to our family?' And one Iraqi soldier tells me, 'we didn't do it. The Americans did it'."

The Marines' explanation is that they heard the sound of a Kalashnikov being readied to shoot and had then fired their weapons. The Marines say they were fired at from a second house, where they broke down a door, threw in a grenade and opened fire. The eight who died in the second house included the owner, his wife, the owner's sister, a two-year-old son and three young daughters.

In a third house the Marines searched four young men were shot dead. A military investigation decided these were insurgent fighters, along with four others killed in the street.

The Marines later delivered 24 bodies to a hospital in Haditha, claiming they had been killed by shrapnel from a bomb. Dr Wahid, the director of the hospital, said: "It was obvious to us there were no organs slashed by shrapnel. The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the head and chest - from close range."

An US military investigation decided the deaths were "collateral damage". Relatives were paid $2,500 (£1,400) for each of the dead.

Partridge
03-23-2006, 03:37 PM
Cockburn report from today's Independent (http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick03232006.html)

"The Most Devastated City in All of Iraq"
Kirkuk's Dr. Death

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Kirkuk, Iraq.

When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as doctors tended their wounds.

In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.

"He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told me. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."

Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.

He was particularly willing to assist in the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and 1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic young colleague.

Dr Louay was finally arrested only after the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated men should do such a thing," said Col Jaff.

The murderous work of Dr Louay is symbolic of the ferocity of the struggle for the oil province of Kirkuk. The dispute over its fate is the most important reason why the political parties in Baghdad have failed to create a new government three months after the election on 15 December. The Kurds, expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with Arab settlers by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on 10 April 2003. They have no intention of giving it up. "We will never leave Kirkuk," said Rizgar Ali Hamajan, the former Kurdish peshmerga (soldier) who heads the provincial He recalls that when he was 18 months old, his parents fled with him from his village north of Kirkuk moments before the Iraqi army destroyed it.

But Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, has frustrated Kurdish demands, enshrined in the new constitution, for Kurds to be allowed to return to Kirkuk and Arabs settlers to be removed to their original homes. The Kurds expect a referendum in Kirkuk that would lead to the province joining the highly autonomous Kurdish region ruled by the Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq.

For the 1.9 million Kurds, Turkomens and Arabs of Kirkuk province, oil has brought few benefits. They live on top of at least 10 billion barrels of oil which was first exploited in 1927. Despite that, people wanting to buy petrol in Kirkuk wait all day in queues of battered vehicles. "It is the most devastated city in all Iraq," said Mohammed Othman, deputy head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the most powerful Kurdish party in Kirkuk.

All Iraqi provinces were seriously damaged under Saddam Hussein but few on the scale of Kirkuk. Sinister mounds in the fields mark where Kurdish villages once stood before they were destroyed. Often the Iraqi army poured concrete into the village wells to prevent people returning. Saddam Hussein also bulldozed four districts in Kirkuk after the failed Kurdish uprising in 1991. Between then and 2003 at least 120,000 Kurds and Turkomens were expelled, in addition to those forced out in the previous 40 years.

Some Kurds have returned, but not to a land of plenty. In the old sports stadium in Kirkuk, hundreds of families are squatting amid the garbage and sewage. The guerrilla war continues at a low but persistent level and the Arabs are not going to leave or be marginalised without a fight.

Smoke was rising over Kirkuk this week as children set ablaze tyres to celebrate the Nowruz, the Kurdish spring festival.

Kirkuk is not a place where many people would like to live--but the battle to control it may yet destroy Iraq.

PhilosophyGenius
03-23-2006, 06:23 PM
Cockburn seems like a real angy guy for whatever reason.

Partridge
03-23-2006, 06:29 PM
Well unlike 99% of the Western press corps, he actually goes out and investigates, and I guess sees thing to be angry about. I guess it's hard to be angry when you're sipping martini's in the green zone (maybe angry about the occassional bomb in the background making you shit yourself!).

Patrick is the brother of Alexander Cockburn, from Counterpunch.

PhilosophyGenius
03-23-2006, 06:37 PM
Well unlike 99% of the Western press corps, he actually goes out and investigates, and I guess sees thing to be angry about. I guess it's hard to be angry when you're sipping martini's in the green zone (maybe angry about the occassional bomb in the background making you shit yourself!).

Patrick is the brother of Alexander Cockburn, from Counterpunch.

Actually I was making fun of his name.

Partridge
03-24-2006, 11:13 AM
Oh! Well, it's pronounced Coburn (for very obvious reasons!)

PhilosophyGenius
03-24-2006, 05:11 PM
Coburn!? Ha! That's like people pronouncing Target, Targe....make it sound French.