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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGHW Bush and "The Highway of Death"
by Joyce Chediac
I want to give testimony on what are called the "highways of death." These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.
U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see.
On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description - tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it's impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.
"Even in Vietnam I didn't see anything like this. It's pathetic," said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.
--much more--
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-death.htm
From the article:
In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the field of battle, Bush and the U.S. military strategists decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as they possibly could while the chance lasted.
msongs
(67,199 posts)Jim Warren
(2,736 posts)and not the DU member with that handle.
malaise
(267,847 posts)'Them was only Iraqis'. He was a good man blah blah blah!!!
patrice
(47,992 posts)other countries don't trust us and our other OIL WAR functionaries around the globe.
shintao
(487 posts)Kerry would be in trouble for saying that.
Abnredleg
(663 posts)In 2003 the Project on Defense Alternatives released a study that estimated the death toll was in the range of 300-400, with the vast majority of Iraqis abandoning their vehicles and running into the desert. The PDA also estimated that the total number of troops in the convoy was less than 10,000. Given that the attack lasted for several hours, a death toll in the thousands would have meant that thousands of Iraqis just sat in their stationary vehicles and waited for certain death.
Would you have just sat there? I wouldn't have.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Why cut off their retreat?
Oh, and Welcome to DU!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)A participant, an Army helicopter gunner. He said the carnage went on for 60 miles.
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/war-conflict/1991-gulf-war/the-1991-gulf-war/the-highway-of-death.html
When he got home, he couldn't believe it wasn't in the papers.
Abnredleg
(663 posts)To clarify my post, I'm not agreeing with the act, just commenting on the death toll.
NeoConsSuck
(2,544 posts)stream 'The Panama Deception'.
From Wikipedia:
The Panama Deception is a 1992 documentary film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
...
The film also includes footage of mass graves uncovered after the US troops had withdrawn, carpet-bombed civilian neighborhoods, as well as the depiction of some of the 20,000 refugees who fled the invasion.
The old man Bush was a flat out war criminal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Panama_Deception
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Like many others I was unaware, having only seen the media coverup, of how bad it was. I'm sure it affected him to know what he knew, but no one would have believed him then. Thanks for the link, perhaps I understand better now.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)And didn't Bush withdraw air protection when the anti-Saddam groups the US had encouraged to rebel were slaughtered from the air by Saddam?
FWIW, here is the Wikipedia page with all of the controversies mentioned, probably:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death
There is also this, really disturbing, but not what was on CNN at the time. They had film of Iraqis running to Americans to save them, not this:
http://www.countercurrents.org/print.html
Apparently, this is a text book version:
http://reviewessays.com/print/Desert-Storm/42506.html
I can't find video of what I saw on television at the time of Iraqis begging for help from American soldiers, afraid of being sent back to Saddam where they expected to be killed.
I didn't approve of the invasion and felt Bush's actions when he tore apart military families, was an abomination. But that doesn't even begin to describe this story.