[Peace-discuss] American occupation

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Here's more about the raid mentioned at the meeting on Sunday.  It
displays the spirit of the occupation.  --CGE]

Us Troops Turn Botched Saddam Raid Into A Massacre
by Robert Fisk ; The Independent; July 28, 2003

    Baghdad. Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers
turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad
yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a
crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children, their mother
and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught fire, cremating its
occupants.

    The vehicle carrying the two children and their mother and father was
riddled by bullets as it approached a razor-wired checkpoint outside the
house.

    Amid the fury generated among the largely middle-class residents of
Mansur - by ghastly coincidence, the killings were scarcely 40 metres from
the houses in which 16 civilians died when the Americans tried to kill
Saddam towards the end of the war in April - whatever political advantages
were gained by the killing of Saddam's sons have been squandered. A doctor
at the Yarmouk hospital, which received four of the dead, turned on me
angrily last night, shouting: "If an American came to my emergency room,
maybe I would kill him."

    Two civilians, both believed to have been driving with their families,
were brought to the Yarmouk, one with abdominal wounds and the other with
"his brain outside of his head", according to another doctor.

    At the scene of the killings, there was pandemonium. While US troops
were loading the bullet-shattered cars on trucks - and trying to stop
cameramen filming the carnage - crowds screamed abuse at them.

    One American soldier a few feet from me climbed into the seat of his
Humvee, threw his helmet on the floor of the vehicle and shouted: "Shit!
Shit!"

    There was no doubt about the target: the home of Sheikh Rabia Mohamed
Habib, a prominent tribal leader who had met Saddam but who was not even
in his house when the Americans stormed it. One report says they killed a
guard as they entered.

    "The Americans searched the house completely, very roughly," Sheikh
Habib said. "It seems they thought Saddam Hussein was inside."

    It appears the killings started as the troops were searching the
building and as motorists approached the barbed wire which the soldiers
had placed without warning across the road. Witnesses said the first car
contained at least two men. "The second contained two children about 10,
their mother and their father who had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war -
he was a cripple," a local shopkeeper told me. "They all died. The man's
legs were cut in half by the bullets," he added. A third car then
approached the Americans, who opened fire again. One of the occupants
fled, but the other two remained in the vehicle and were killed.

    When another car arrived US troops riddled it with more bullets and it
burst into flames. It is believed that two people were inside and both
were burnt to death. "The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they
had shot, not once," a witness said. "They let the car burn and left the
bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them
to the hospitals."

    Yet again, false informers, ill-trained American soldiers who appeared
to exercise no fire control and a lack of military planning has created a
tragedy among the people the Americans claimed to be 'liberating' from
Saddam Hussein only 15 weeks ago. Last night, there were reports from the
southern city of Karbala that three men had been shot dead by American
troops during a demonstration.

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