[Peace-discuss] Winning hearts and minds

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Three brief descriptions of what we're responsible for.  --CGE]

[1]	The Australian
	Iraqi 'beaten to death' by US troops
	14apr04

AN Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons
because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader
Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search
operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut,
Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.

After the man refused to remove Sadr's picture from his car, the soldiers
forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he
said...

Qassem Hassan, the director of Kut general hospital, identified the man as
Salem Hassan, a resident of a Kut suburb.

He said the man had died of wounds sustained in the beating.

[2]	Pacifica Reports From Iraq > Tue., Apr. 13, 2004
	US Marines Shoot Ambulances in Fallujah

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas the President
the United States, George W. Bush told reporters American soldiers have
acted against, quote: "lawlessness and gangs" in Iraq in the past week.
The American theater commander in Fallujah told Britain's Guardian
newspaper 95 percent of those killed in the assault on the city are armed
militants. But that's not the story coming from Fallujah's temporary
emergency clinics. This Baghdad doctor has spent most of the last week in
Fallujah. His name is being with-held for his own safety.

"When you see a child five years old with no head what can you say?" asks
one doctor in Fallujah, whose name is being with-held for his own safety.
"When you see a child with no brain just an open cavity what can you say?
When you see a mother just hold her infant with no head and the shells are
all over her body."

So many Fallujahans have been killed by the US Marines that residents have
resorted to digging mass graves. The City's foot-ball stadium now holds
more than 200 dead bodies:

"We buried many in the stadium for football until it became full. When you
are burying you cannot stay long because they (US Marines) will just shoot
you. So we use the shovel. Just dig a big hole and put a whole family in
the hole and leave as soon as possible so we are not shot."

The official number killed in Fallujah is 600, but the total number of
civilian casualties is likely much higher. The official tally only
reflects those deaths reported by the cities mosques and clinics. But
American snipers and bombers have killed many people while they are inside
their homes.

The doctor says his ambulance was attacked multiple times as it sought to
bring aid to residents stranded in their homes. Once when it was trying to
retrieve dead bodies for burial and a second time when it was attempting
to bring food aid to homes cut off by American snipers

"I see people carrying a white flag and yelling for us saying 'We are
here' just try to save us but we cannot save them because whenever we open
the ambulance they will shoot us. We try to carry food or water by
constrainers. As soon as you carry food or water, the snipers shot the
containers of food.


[3]	SOME TROOPS EXPECT ALL-OUT FALLUJAH FIGHT
	By Jason Keyser
	Newsday
	April 13, 2004


FALLUJAH -- Digging in around Fallujah, their three-day-old truce
punctured by shelling, gunfire and well-orchestrated ambushes, U.S.
Marines gave vent to their frustrations Tuesday, saying they saw no
alternative to an all-out battle for the city.

With U.S.-backed Iraqi officials still talking with city leaders about
ending the standoff, it's not for the troops to decide how this tangle of
conflicting forces will unravel.

But as Marines traded gun and mortar fire with rooftop snipers and
fighters on the northern edge of Fallujah, some of them anticipated a
bloody push to take the city of 200,000 people, a stronghold of Sunni
Muslim insurgents.

"If they're trying to find a peaceful way out of this, great. But at this
point, there seem to be few options other than to get innocents out and
level it, wipe it clear off the map," said 1st Lt. Frank Dillbeck,
scanning the city's outskirts with binoculars during a relative lull in
fighting.

Insurgents fired mortars at bulldozers digging earthen defenses but hit
none. Marines responded with mortars and machine guns in sporadic volleys.
A Marine with an M-16 shot dead a man on a balcony shouting orders to
black-clad men below, Dillbeck said. He was thought to be directing
snipers and mortar fire.

Dillbeck, 29, from McCormick, S.C., commands a platoon from the 3rd
Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, trying to seal the northern edge of
Fallujah. Insurgents used the shaky cease-fire to edge closer to
Dillbeck's troops on Tuesday, taking up positions in buildings and firing
rifles and rocket-propelled grenades over the earth barriers and foxholes.

At one point, two rockets were fired from behind the troops -- perhaps
from an unguarded highway -- and landed about 200 yards short, sending up
plumes of black smoke.

A heavy exchange of gunfire was heard Tuesday in Fallujah's southern
neighborhood of Nazal, smoke billowing into the sky. Soon afterward, two
F-15s circled the city, firing into the area. Commanders said two Marine
armored vehicles were under attack and the warplanes were providing them
cover.

Dillbeck's battalion of some 1,000 troops controls about five city blocks
of sand-colored brick houses on the Euphrates River. Many families have
left.

Insurgents have organized complex ambushes, launching ambushes that
combine roadside bombs, machine gun fire and rockets, officers say.

"This is a dynamic enemy," said Lt. Col. Brian Baggot, a senior watch
officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force's command center, which
directs a force of 25,000 Marines in Fallujah and around the entire Al
Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

One complex ambush began when a small girl led a herd of cattle across the
highway in front of a seven-vehicle convoy, said Lance Cpl. Ryan
Christiansen, 25, from the Chicago suburb of Huntley.

As the convoy slowed, dozens of gunmen hiding in tall grass and buildings
along both sides of the zigzagging highway let loose with machine guns and
small arms fire.

"It was raining bullets sideways," Christiansen said.

The commander of the convoy was shot in the leg and radioed to the others,
"Hurry up; we got to get out of here," Christiansen recalled. The
commander was then fatally shot in the head. The Pentagon identified him
as 34-year-old 1st Lt. Oscar Jimenez, of San Diego, Calif.

Lance Cpl. Christopher Laha, 22, was manning an automatic grenade launcher
when he was shot in the arm. He tied a belt around his arm to stem the
heavy bleeding before firing back, Christiansen said.

Gunmen rushed the convoy but it pushed ahead, leaving nine insurgents
dead, the troops said.

Christiansen said he was unfazed by concerns that the gunmen may be using
the cease-fire to regroup.

"I really don't care; they're all gonna die," he said.

Meanwhile, Marines were resupplying, running coils of barbed wire, food,
ammunition and fuel to troops dug into the city outskirts. Lt. Brian
McDonald, 25, of Ashburn, Va., who led out a supply convoy, also expected
things to get worse.

"Once the whole cease-fire is over, it's going to start getting a little
wilder out here," he said. "They're firing at us every night; sooner or
later enough is enough."

His battalion arrived in Fallujah on Friday from the Syrian border, where
it was guarding a hydroelectric dam. The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine
Regiment is well-known for its Marines who toppled a bronze statue of
Saddam Hussein.

The fighting in Fallujah is what they expected but didn't get when they
entered Baghdad a year ago, said Maj. Andrew Petrucci, 32, the battalion's
executive officer, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

At least 78 U.S. troops and 890 Iraqis have died in April.

	***