[Peace-discuss] Fwd:[ANSWER]: Iraqis can't turn off the TV to make (1 of 2

[jencart]

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"The whole world is watching us die"

APRIL 12:
The World Stands Together Against War

In the face of Iraqi resistance to the invasion, the U.S. 
military strategy has abruptly shifted in the last few 
days. Instead of posing as liberators, the U.S. high 
command has called for open warfare against the Iraqi 
civilian population. In the last 48 hours, hundreds of 
civilians have been shot down on the roadways, in their 
homes, on their farms. The aerial bombings are becoming  more indiscriminate as missiles land in markets and 
residential neighborhoods.

The Iraq war has suddenly taken on the worst features of  the U.S. war in Vietnam. Facing a defiant and resisting 
population, U.S. troops, under the direction of their 
officers, treat all members of the population as suspect  and decide to shoot first and ask questions later. The 
U.S. soldiers have been lied to about their mission. They 
have been sent to kill and be killed in a war for empire 
and conquest, not liberation. U.S. casualties are mounting  in this war that need not have happened.

On March 31, there was a massacre of civilians, mainly 
women and their children, whose crime was that they were  driving on a roadway in their own country. As their van  approached a checkpoint, U.S. soldiers destroyed their 
vehicle with a barrage of 25mm cannon fire from one or  more of their M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The Washington  Post quoted Capt. Ronny Johnson of the Army's 3rd Infantry  Division in his series of orders to the troops present:
- "Fire a warning shot"
- "Stop [messing] around!"
- "Stop him, Red 1, stop him!"
- "Cease fire!"
- "You just [expletive] killed a family because you didn't  fire a warning shot soon enough!"

The "shoot first ­ ask questions later" strategy is not 
the result of spontaneous actions by scared and edgy 
troops. These are orders given the troops from the 
Pentagon high command.

"Everyone is now seen as a combatant until proven 
otherwise," a Pentagon official is quoted in the 
Washington Post of April 1, 2003. The Pentagon recognizes  that the shift in tactics will be understood as a brutal 
escalation of force against the civilian population and 
that their earlier posture as "liberators" will be 
exposed. "You'll see acts of kindness, medical care and 
the like, but the large scale aid effort will have to 
wait," a Pentagon official told the Washington Post. In 
fact the new U.S. strategy now is deliberately preventing  Iraqi civilians in Nassiriya and other towns from 
receiving food and water unless they cooperate with the  occupation forces.

U.S. Marine Operations Commander Lt. Colonel Paul Roche  told reporters on March 31 that the U.S. strategy towards  the people of the city of Nassiriya included the use of 
food and water as a weapon to terrorize and break the will  of the civilian population.

In the April 1 front page of the Washington Post, the 
Pentagon's new strategy is euphemistically referred to in  the headline "U.S. troops instructed to use tougher 
tactics."

The assault against civilians is being reported in greater  detail and honesty by the world media outside the United  States. This change in U.S. tactics is, as the following 
report shows, encouraging the most racist and homicidal  tendencies among U.S. soldiers at the front.

It is important to read the following passage from the UK  Times of Sunday, March 30. It reports of a gruesome scene  outside of Nassiriya. Some fifteen vehicles, including a 
minivan and a couple of trucks, were found destroyed and  riddled with bullets by the Times UK reporter Mark 
Franchetti:

"Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in