In Iraq, US Eliminating Those
Who Dare Count The Dead
By Naomi Klein
The Guardian - UK
12-4-4

David T Johnson, Acting ambassador, US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor 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, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre
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 defence, 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 rumours 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 centre" 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
JosČ 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.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1366349,00.html

Looks like their the victims of their ***OWN*** actions?

The locations where people that were captured beheaded or killed were
found in Falluja.


THEREFORE BY KILLING ALL THE FOREIGN REPORTERS (and also scaring away
new ones) WHICH WERE ACTUALLY THEIR PROTECTION, NOW THE REST OF THE
WORLD IS BLIND TO WHAT IS HAPPENING INSIDE IRAQ .....EXCEPT FOR
INDIRECT NEWS WHICH THE US CAN BLAME AS SPECULATIONS OR TERRORIST'S
OWN NEWS FORGERY.