[Peace-discuss] Champaign to Washington to Baghdad, Freedom Denied

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I think Ricky's quite right that "we desperately need some volunteers to
write letters to the editor exposing the truth behind the myth of broad
'freedom' in the US and 'liberated' Iraq," particularly in light of the
evidence adduced.
	I'm appending a note I sent privately to Phil Bloomer, who writes
for the News-Gazette, regarding a column of his that appeared Dec. 8.  
Perhaps surprisingly, the N-G doesn't seem to archive his columns on their
web-site.  This one took the occasion of the Pearl Harbor anniversary (and
a parallel drawn to guess what?) -- and of an abortive conference about
the Robinson, Illinois, novelist James Jones -- to draw a distinction
between questioning the morality of the war and "question[ing] the
integrity and sacrifice of the common soldier."  (Strange how infrequently
the distinction is drawn about, say, German and Japanese soldiers in
WWII.)  Bloomer writes about a Champaign resident, "Capt. Andrew Deponai
... commander of a tank company that was in the eye of the orchestrated
guerrilla attacks on the U.S. military in the town of Samarra ... U.S.
forces used tanks and cannons to fight their way out of the two-pronged
ambush, killing 54 Iraqis, according to military accounts..." It has been
suggested that the "military accounts" of what happened there somewhat
shaded the truth, mirabile dictu.
	I'll try to squeeze this note into 250 words for the editor at the
N-G, or elsewhere.  I'd appreciate comments.  --CGE]


Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 23:28:53 -0600 (CST)
From: Carl Estabrook <cge at shout.net>
To: Phil Bloomer <bloomer at news-gazette.com>
Subject: Appointment in Samarra

Dear Phil--

I read with particular interest your Pearl Harbor column ("Distinction
that's worth remembering"), for several reasons.  First, the place
interests me: my grandfather was commandant of the Navy Yard there during
the 1930s.  Second, I've been a fan of James Jones for a long time: when I
was young I was moved by From Here to Eternity (and thought the novel much
better than the film). Third, Andrew Deponai, whom you feature in the
column, went to school with my daughter.  Fourth and most important by
far, I think the story that the US military has put out about its
activities in Samarra is quite false, and not by accident.

The press outside the US has given a very different account of what
happened in the "bloodiest engagement since April."  I append an article
from the most distinguished British reporter in the area, Robert Fisk, who
went to Samarra and reported on what the American army is doing there.

There is a serious problem of truth here.  Is it the case, as you quote
Andrew Deponai's father as saying, that "it's not that bad"? Is it true
that "Progress is being made, even in Samarra, where good things are
happening but they're not getting reported"?  Or is Fisk right?  Mr.
Deponai repeats the US government's account, and it's becoming clear that
the government has lied repeatedly about the reasons for and the conduct
of the invasion.  The administration certainly has reason to lie; it's not
clear that Fisk and a good number of other independent journalists on the
ground do.

It is hard to remember "the integrity and sacrifice of the common soldier"
when one begins to see what the US government and military are having that
common soldier do.  The solution in the US press has been to accept the
government's account of what's being done.  It would be better to tell the
real story and try to insist on the distinction that you describe (and
that I assume you would apply to soldiers of all nationalities).  Then
perhaps more of us would work harder to put a stop to the crimes the US is
committing in southwest Asia.

Best regards, Carl

==================

December 19, 2003

Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back

Phantam Insurgents in Fantasyville

By ROBERT FISK

Schoolboy Issam Naim Hamid is the latest of America's famous "insurgents".
In Samarra -- for which read Fantasyville -- he was shot in the back as he
tried to protect himself with his parents in his home in the Al-Jeheriya
district of the ancient Abbasid city.

It was three in the morning, according to his mother, Manal, when soldiers
of the 4th Infantry Division came to the house, firing bullets through the
gate. One of the rounds pierced the door, punched through a window and
entered Issam's back, speeding on through an outer wall. His father was
hit in the ankle and was taken to Tikrit hospital yesterday in serious
condition. Issam cries in pain in the Samarra emergency hospital ward, a
drip-tube sticking into his stomach through a wad of bloody bandages.

The Americans claimed to have killed 54 "insurgents" after a series of
guerrilla ambushes in the city last month, and the only dead to be found
in the mortuaries were nine civilians, including an Iranian pilgrim to the
great golden-cupolaed Shia shrine that looms over Samarra. Four days ago,
they boasted of a further 11 "insurgents", but the only dead man who could
be found was a vegetable seller. At the Samarra hospital, doctors also
have the names of a taxi driver called Amer Baghdadi, shot dead by the
Americans on Wednesday night.

Then there is the case of 31-year-old farmer Maouloud Hussein who was
trying to push his five young daughters and son into the back room of his
two-room slum home a few hours earlier when yet another bullet came
whizzing through the gate and the outer wall of the house, and smashed
into Maouloud's back. His son Mustafa, bleary-eyed with tears beside his
father's bed yesterday, and his daughters Bushra, Hoda, Issra and Hassa,
were untouched. But the bullet tore into Maouloud's body and exited
through his chest. Doctors have just taken out his spleen.

His 41-year-old brother, Hamed winces as he sees Maouloud cringing in
agony -- the wounded man tries to wave a hand at me and lapses into
unconsciousness -- and says 23 bullets hit the house in their Al-Muthanna
quarter of the city. Like Issam Hamid, he lay bleeding for several hours
before help came. Manal, Issam's mother, tells a terrible story. "The
Americans had an Iraqi interpreter and he told us to stay in our home,"
she says. "But we had no telephone, we couldn't call an ambulance and both
my husband and son were bleeding. The interpreter for the Americans just
told us we were not allowed to leave the house."

Hamed Hussein stands by his brother's bed in a state of suppressed fury.
"You said you would bring us freedom and democracy but what are we
supposed to think?" he asks. "My neighbour, the Americans took him in
front of his wife and two children and tied his hands behind his back and
then, a few hours later, after all this humiliation, they came and said
his wife should take all her most expensive things and they put explosives
in their house and blew it up. He is a farmer. He is innocent. What have
we done to deserve this?"

The city of Samarra is a centre of resistance to the American 4th Infantry
Division. Yesterday, US forces deployed a company of soldiers and 20
Bradley tracked fighting vehicles throughout the city and admitted to me
that they were blowing down the front doors of "suspected terrorists".

A Mississippi private said: "That's us", when I asked who was blowing down
doors. "And you know what?" he asked. "After we do that, they go to the
American authorities and ask for compensation." Which is true.

Mohamed Saleh, for example, the 36-year-old owner of a mechanics shop,
described how the Americans attached explosives to the iron gate of his
home as his wife and four children hid in the back of the house after
hearing shooting in the street. He had found the American wire that had
connected the explosives to the detonator; behind his back was his new
Mazda car, destroyed by the blast and bits of his metal gate. There are
dozens of houses in the same street, all their gates blown to pieces, all
their interior house doors bashed from their hinges with boot-marks on the
paintwork.

"We wanted the Americans to help us," he said. "This was Saddam's Sunni
area but many of us disliked Saddam. But the Americans are doing this to
humiliate us, to take their revenge on the attacks against them by the
resistance."

Three times, I am taken into broken homes where young men tell me that
they intend to join the mukawama -- the resistance -- after the
humiliation and shame visited upon their homes. "We are a tribal people
and I am from the al-Said family," one says to me. "I have a university
degree and I am a peaceful man, so why are the Americans attacking my home
and filling my wife and children with fear?"

The American military still talk about their battle against "terrorism" in
Samarra, a story that might be more convincing if their troops were not
accompanied in the city by hooded men in plain clothes carrying
Kalashnikov rifles. The 4th Infantry Division claim these are members of
the "Iraqi Civil Defence Corps" -- who are now also appearing in hoods in
the centre of Baghdad -- but there is no way of knowing. The hooded gunmen
who demanded my identity in front of American troops on the edge of
Samarra yesterday were wearing jeans and sneakers and brown combat jackets
and woollen balaclavas, and, several times, they shouted abuse at each
other like children.

Thus has "liberation" and "democracy" arrived in Samarra. And the fantasy
continues. Just a day earlier, the Americans announced that after an
"investigation" -- the oddest in recent history, one has to say -- they
had concluded that the truck bombing in Baghdad which killed 16 innocent
civilians on Wednesday morning, was a "traffic accident".

They said a petrol tanker had exploded during a collision with a car, even
though the lorry was pulling no tanker, even though the explosion blasted
pieces of metal almost 600ft from the scene and that the American troops
who first arrived there had discovered part of the detonating device: a
grenade which they showed to me themselves.

So in the land of innocent "insurgents" and "traffic accidents", the war
continues to be spun. Just don't mention the hooded policemen.

Or schoolboy Issam Hamid.

[Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
Nation.]