Robert Fisk: A lesson in how to create Iraqi orphans.

[laststeamtrain]

Robert Fisk: A lesson in how to create Iraqi orphans. And then how to make life worse for them

Alas, the milk of human kindness does not necessarily extend to orphans from Iraq – the country we invaded for supposedly humanitarian reasons, not to mention weapons of mass destruction. For as their British uncle waited for them at Queen Alia airport, Jordanian security men – refusing him even a five-minute conversation with the girls – hustled the sisters back on to the plane for Iraq.

"How could they do this?" their uncle, Paul Manouk, asks. "Their mum has been killed. Their father had already died. I was waiting for them. The British embassy in Jordan said they might issue visas for the three – but that they had to reach Amman first." Mr Manouk lives in Northern Ireland and is a British citizen. Explaining this to the Jordanian muhabarrat at the airport was useless.

Western mercenaries killed their 48-year-old Iraqi Armenian mother, Marou Awanis, and her best friend – firing 40 bullets into her body as she drove her taxi near their four-vehicle convoy in Baghdad – but tragedy has haunted the family for almost a century; the three sisters' great-grandmother was forced to leave her two daughters to die on their own by the roadside during the 1915 Armenian genocide. Mrs Awanis' friend, Jeneva Jalal, was killed instantly alongside her in the passenger seat.

<more>

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-a-lesson-in-how-to-create-iraqi-orphans-and-then-how-to-make-life-worse-for-them-773166.html

[truedelphi]

1. This man Fisk is not merely a journalist, he goes to

The msot dangerous places on earth and lives there.

No Green Zone for him.

[Amonester]

2. "riddled with bullets from the chest upwards"

Is howard en route for his war crimes' trial at The Hague yet?

There won't be anything like true justice in this world until then.

:grr:

[Briar]

3. I daresay

Bush will make sure immunity will extend to Aussie mercenaries once he browbeats the Iraqi puppet government into passing laws protecting US troops and hired killers from any legal consequences for their acts.

I hope people read the whole article, whatever their feelings about attacks on the conduct of heroes in uniform etc etc. It has a stunning last line.