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Who will speak out?
US troops have carried out a massacre in Falluja, but MPs are silent
Ronan Bennett
Saturday April 17, 2004
The Guardian
What does it take to get a New Labour politician to speak out on Iraq? I'm not talking about the likes of Blair, Hoon and Straw - key players so deeply implicated in the cruel tragedy of conquest and occupation that they have no option but to stay the course, even as it spirals into slaughter and chaos. But there are ministers and backbenchers with a history of commitment to human rights. What does it take to shock them out of their baffling silence?
Not the 600 or 700 Iraqis killed over the last fortnight in Falluja, it seems. Perhaps they believe, like the prime minister, that those attacking coalition troops are Saddam loyalists, al-Qaida fighters or religious fanatics, and deserve everything they get. Perhaps they have been reassured by General John Abizaid, head of the US Army's central command, who spoke of the coalition's "judicious use of force". Maybe they accept the reassurance of the commander of the US marines besieging the city that his men are "trained to be precise in their firepower", and that "95% of those killed were legitimate targets".
Let's accept for the moment that the commander is right and accept that the AC-130 gunships and F16 fighter-bombers unleashed against the people of Falluja are precise, that the 500lb bombs falling on the city come under the definition of judicious. Let's look at just a handful of the 5% of civilian casualties the Americans concede they have inflicted.
These include the mother of six-year-old Haider Abdel-Wahab, shot and killed while hanging out laundry; his father, shot in the head; Haider himself, and his brothers, crushed but dug out alive after a US missile struck their house. They include children who died of head wounds. They include an old woman with a bullet wound - still clutching a white flag when aid workers found her. They include an elderly man lying face down at the gate to his house - while inside terrified girls screamed "Baba! Baba!" They include ambulance crews fired on by US troops - and four-year-old Ali Nasser Fadil, wounded during an air strike. The New York Times reporter who found the infant in a Baghdad hospital described him lying in bed, "his eyes wide and fixed on a spot in the ceiling". His left leg had been crudely amputated. The same reporter found 10-year-old Waed Joda by the bedside of his gravely wounded father. "American snipers shot at us as we were trying to flee Falluja," said Waed.
Every one of these incidents has been documented by journalists, aid workers or medical staff. And there are plenty more. Even allowing for casualties caused by the Iraqi resistance, the dread catalogue of American-inflicted suffering and death is long and undeniable. At this point it's worth reminding ourselves that 5% of 600 is 30. But the evidence of the bodies alone gives the lie to the American account: at least 350 of the dead in Falluja have been women and children.
The Americans say they are engaged in a mission to bring to justice the perpetrators of the four security contractors - or mercenaries - killed and mutilated in the city on March 31. Locals see it differently. They describe their occupation, initially by troops of the US 82nd Airborne, as oppressive from the start. Almost as soon as they arrived, in April 2003, US soldiers killed 18 protesters during a demonstration. After six months of occupation, the 82nd Airborne had killed at least 40 civilians and police in the city.
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