Fwd: [Peace-discuss] What we're doing

[Al Kagan]

> You Asked for my Evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here It Is
> In Iraq, the US Does Eliminate Those Who Dare to Count the Dead
> by Naomi Klein
>
> David T Johnson,
> Acting ambassador,
> US Embassy, London
>
> Dear Mr Johnson,
>
> On November 26, your press counselor sent a letter to the Guardian 
> taking
> strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The 
> sentence
> read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer
> bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly
> eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count
> the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".
>
> The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the 
> Guardian
> either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave
> accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly 
> involve
> themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter
> extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I
> have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you
> requested.
>
> In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the 
> gruesome
> killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, 
> with
> US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The
> reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings 
> across
> the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been
> killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA
> Today reported on April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were
> gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Falluja 
> general
> hospital". 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers 
> of
> dead, it was al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those
> statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Falluja, both networks 
> beamed
> footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the
> Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian 
> casualties
> coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent 
> clerics
> in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning 
> their
> congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US
> troops to withdraw.
>
> US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed 
> during
> last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these 
> reports.
> For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New
> York Times last month, labeled Falluja general hospital "a center of
> propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV 
> networks.
> When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of
> civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US 
> secretary of
> defense, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate 
> and
> inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to 
> Falluja -
> but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the 
> doctors,
> journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian
> casualties last time around.
>
> Eliminating doctors The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi
> soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and
> placing the facility under military control. The New York Times 
> reported
> that "the hospital was selected as an early target because the American
> military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casual
> ties", noting that "this time around, the American military intends to
> fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been 
> one
> of the insurgents' most potent weapons". The Los Angeles Times quoted a
> doctor as saying that the soldiers "stole the mobile phones" at the
> hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside 
> world.
>
> But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days
> earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as 
> well
> as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was
> working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four
> nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the 
> manager of
> Falluja general hospital "had told a US general the location of the
> downtown makeshift medical center" before it was hit.
>
> Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect 
> was
> the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As 
> Dr
> Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single
> surgeon in Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was
> used: on entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized 
> control
> of the al-Zaharawi hospital.
>
> Eliminating journalists:
>
> The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively 
> from
> reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who
> had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively
> been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has
> been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an
> unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 
> 11
> US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege.
> Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders 
> and
> the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the
> possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his 
> job,"
> the IFJ stated.
>
> It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of
> intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central
> Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some 
> insisted
> on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US
> aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq
> Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of
> its location to US forces.
>
> On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José
> Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of 
> Reuters.
> Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, 
> which
> alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the
> Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.
>
> Eliminating clerics:
>
> Just as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of
> the clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in
> Falluja. On November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the 
> Supreme
> Association for Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to 
> Associated
> Press, "Al-Sumaidaei has called on the country's Sunni minority to 
> launch
> a civil disobedience campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the
> attack on Falluja". On November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi 
> forces
> stormed a prominent Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing
> three people and arresting 40, including the chief cleric - another
> opponent of the Falluja siege. On the same day, Fox News reported that 
> "US
> troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border". The
> report described the arrests as "retaliation for opposing the Falluja
> offensive". Two Shia clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr have also
> been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, "both had spoken out
> against the Falluja attack".
>
> "We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central
> Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on
> counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients 
> dead,
> the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce 
> them?
> In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being 
> systematically
> silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on
> hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.
>
> Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates 
> are
> waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it 
> has
> claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.
>
> Additional research by Aaron Maté
>
> Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
> (Picador) and, most recently, Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the
> Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (Picador).
>
> © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
>
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>
>

Al Kagan
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61820
USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax 217-333-2214
akagan at uiuc.edu
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