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

[Ricky Baldwin]

Thanks, Carl-

I think this is exactly what readers of the N-G need
to see.  I don't envy  you the task of squeezing it
into 250 words, though.  Good luck.

Ricky
--- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
wrote:
> [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.]
> 
> 
> 
> 
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