GU: Americans 'drop demand for handover of killers in Falluja atrocity'

[grytpype]

What Bush did to Falluja is a war crime.

Bush ordered an attack on Falluja to do what... to arrest or kill the people who burned the four security contractors.

In the assault, over 600 Iraqis were killed, most of them women, children, and old men. Doctors were operating on patients lying on the open ground. Their football field became a mass graveyard.

We did that! And we are responsible for security! We killed the people who are depending on us for their security!

It is an atrocity. There is no way that the slaughter was justified by the purpose of getting the killers.

And now, Bush is dropping the demand to turn over the killers! Bush is going to walk away from Falluja having done nothing more than kill over 600 women, children, and old men -- and scores of American soldiers!

Americans 'drop demand for handover of killers in Falluja atrocity'
Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Wednesday April 14, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1191295,00.html

When will he ever be held accountable?

[saigon68]

1. Ya Chimpy that was rare---He is really obsessed

with as he says "the Contractors"

Here you are Chimpy one more time

[cdeca]

10. As a long time lurker.....

I am so saddend by the current state of affairs. Please give me some hope!

[saigon68]

12. I guess we can only pray enough people wake up

Otherwise the dark side has won.

[daleo]

15. OK, that is a scary picture on so many levels

I see an eye staring out from the top left part of the fire. I guess it is just the human mind finding patterns in randoms, but it is freaky.

[markus]

2. The world will not be safe

until we see Bush in four point shackles and a black hood being led onto the plane to the Hague.

I think the article in the Telegraph (a politically Tory paper) in which unamed senior British officers on the ground compared our troops to Hitler's was the start of the collapse of the coalition.

The wheels were about to come off, and his press conference was cover for his retreat from Fallujah and the impending collapse of the coalition.

Yes, the anti-American Falluhjans and followerse of al-Sadr are not good people. Neither is George Bush. They are the two polar extremes seeking world domination through fear and intimidation, violence and death.

How the hell do the rational people of the middle regain control?

[Eye and Monkey]

3. I'm not sure that the followers of al-Sadr are "seeking world domination".

Can you document that?

[markus]

4. al-Quaeda and its heirs seek to dominate

the Islamic world from the west coast of Africa to the Phillipines and Indonesia. I am guitly not making a fine distinction between any particular group of Islamic radicals.

The important point is they and Bush are the two polar extremes of the same nasty axis.

You could argue that al-Sadr is a nationalist first and a radical Islamist second, but I suspect he would disagree.

[Eye and Monkey]

6. "I am guitly not making a fine distinction..." Indeed. So was BushCo.

[Dhalgren]

9. The followers of Al-Sadr are more aptly termed Iraqi partisans.

To equate fighters trying to liberate their country from foreign invaders with Al Qaida is so wrong on so many levels that it is hard to determine where to start.

[IndianaGreen]

17. Al-Qaeda opposes the Shias

Osama bin Laden, as all Wahabis, see the Shia faith as an abomination of Islam.

Al-Qaeda and the Shias are theological enemies!

[markus]

18. Yes, al-Qaeda & the Sunnis are opposed

However, the more radical Sunnis would not be opposed to the creation of a theocratic state like that of Iran which, while not as direct a danger to the U.S. as al-Qaeda, is something Americans should worry about.

We are wandering far off my point: there is a real Axis of evil. At its exterme ends are those who, believing they are under direct orders from god, would use fear, hate and violence to impose their own regilious/political world view. On that Axis as one extreme is al-Qaeda and at the other is the Bush Administration.

al-Sadr falls somewhere to the end of the axis capped by al-Qaeda, even though they do not share some fundamental beliefs. At the end of the day, I don't know that the Wahabis would not welcome--at least tatically--an extension of Iranian radical Shia political control. At the end of the day, it serves their interest.

[kera]

8. just so you wake up a little more

"Yes, the anti-American Falluhjans and followerse of al-Sadr are not good people. Neither is George Bush. They are the two polar extremes seeking world domination through fear and intimidation, violence and death".

here you got it all wrong

I believe you are the unwilling victim of cliches that flatters our selfrightiousness " bad Guy (two legs) good guys (4 legs)


WHO is seeking world domination ? cheney # and Cie with shock and awe or followers of al-sadr who you never heard of before we went there to kill them and invade them ?

[markus]

19. Please read my post above

Yes, there are probably purely nationalist (or Baathist) forces. I'm not sure that pre-war Iraq and Syria are good models for third world dovernance.

Don't fall into Bush-like, black-and-white realpolitic. The enemy of the war is not necessarily my friend. Forces that want peace, stablity and economic justice for the developing world are our friends. I don't know that the Baath-influenced Fallujans nor the theocratically inclined al-Sadriets represent those forces.

[saigon68]

14. Shackles/ Hood ----- He'd look good in that

In the Hague---- good place for a war criminal

[Aidoneus]

5. here's a new plan

Those responsible for the US atrocities in al-Fallujah--hand them over. Let them face justice for the massacres they have carried out.

[Zhade]

13. No, no, no! U.S. troops NEVER commit atrocities!

MSNBC/CNN/FOX/ABC/CBS/NBC told me so!

</sarcasm aimed at war and occupation apologists>

[madrchsod]

7. we had three options

and we lost. who runs Iraq? the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic party . they are the ones who are negotiating our retreat from falluja.....

[Dhalgren]

11. Al-Sadr said that the transition should be turned over to "good, wise men"

What's wrong with that? That sounds like a reasonable, workable structure. Of course, those two requirements preclude any US involvement.

[daleo]

16. Fallujah is the Iraq mis-adventure in a microcosm

No good reason to be there, other than to lash out at someone. No thought of consequences. Then, as the pointlessness and hopelessness of it all becomes more and more obvious, leave behind a devastation.

[Barrett808]

20. Pathetic. It was ridiculous to make the demand in the first place. n/t