Film reveals true destruction to ghost city Falluja

[True_Blue]

Fresh evidence has emerged of the extent of destruction and appalling conditions in Falluja, still deserted two months after a major US offensive against the insurgent stronghold.

Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi journalist working with the Guardian's film unit and one of the few reporters to travel independently to Falluja, describes in a Channel 4 News film tonight a "city of ghosts" where dogs feed on uncollected corpses.

In interviews, insurgents challenge official US accounts of a decisive victory and claim many of the rebels left the city in a pre-planned withdrawal.

"It is completely devastated," Fadhil writes in the Guardian today. "Falluja used to be a modern city; now there is nothing. We spend that first day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I don't see a single building that is functioning."
more....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387502,00.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ironpost]

2. And to the "Hague" me must march these criminals

[ornotna]

3. Try this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387460,00.html



edit
This is the one here http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-video/Guardian/video/2005/01/10/fallujah_guardianfilms.mov

[Bhaisahab]

6. hey what player plays "*.mov" files??

real or windows media??
i have windows. nor real.
thanks for the link!

[nine23]

7. http://www.quicktime.com

http://www.quicktime.com

[LiberalUprising]

14. Media Player Classic

Will play all files, quicktime, real player, windows media.....

Free download here (No spyware /Adware)
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/media_player_classic.html

[Eloriel]

4. I'm not surprised -- they had to destroy the city in order to save it

Didn't they? Don't we always?

[Just Me]

5. Will it be "released" to the American people?

*sigh*

Our government screens our soldiers' flag-draped coffins.

Hence, you KNOW it will prohibit the real-life horrors associated with a man-made devastation (tsunami destruction is far more acceptable a reality to obssess over the media coals).

[nine23]

8. Fucking disgraceful. It looks like SE Asia.

I'm not being crass. I think it's a fair analogy in terms of sheer destruction, only the fault here lies squarely in the hands of the US government.

IT'S IMPORTANT WE SEE MORE OF THIS STUFF. THE 'EMBED' SYSTEM IS DESIGNED TO HIDE THIS ATROCITY.

[rodeodance]

16. Bet the US press does not show this film!!

[Wilms]

9. Anyone have a tally on the Iraqi hearts and minds we've won? n/t

[Synnical]

10. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there is nothing.

Too sad for words.

Didn't the former residents initially have to go thru retinal scans? I re-call reading that here on DU, most likely via a link from a European newspaper . . .

[KTM]

11. Kick

:kick:

[saigon68]

27. A Modern Day Guernica

Oh well at least there are a few of us left in this country, who don't subscribe to the WAR CRIMES the "TROOPS" are committing.

[tblue37]

12. Okay, let's make this real for Americans.

The population of Buffalo, New York, is just under 300,000. Imagine if a foreign power came in and bombed Buffalo, New York, into rubble.

The population of Kansas City, Kansas, is 440,000. Pretty close. Now imagine a foreign power bombing Kansas City, Kansas, into rubble.

I live in Lawrence, Kansas, the home of Kansas University and the famous Kansas Jayhawks basketball team. Our city's population is around 100,000. Imgine if a foreign power came in and bombed three unviversity towns the size of ours into rubble.

"Oh," they say, "don't worry. We let the civilians leave before we bombed the city into rubble."

Hmph. Would you leave if you knew that all males between the ages of 15 and 50 were required to stay as they bombed the city into rubble and then came in in tanks and on foot and shot up what was left? That would be your sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, husbands. Would you leave them behind?

Can you even imagine the logistics of getting everyone in Buffalo, Kansas City, or three university towns like Lawrence, Kansas, out of town in a hurry--so some foreign power could come in and bomb those cities into rubble?

Americans don't see what it means to bomb a city the size of Buffalo or Kansas City to the point where the whole place is flattened. Fallujah is just a foreign name to them, not a real city, and 300,000 is just a number, not the population of a real city.

See it, damn it!

Buffalo, New York. Flattened.

Kansas City, Kansas. Flattened.

Three university towns. Flattened.

A whole city's population with no place to go, no homes to return to.

Winning hearts and minds. It's the American Way.

[Buns_of_Fire]

20. Or Tampa, or Newark, or Louisville, or...

http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm

To many people in the U.S., "Fallujah" conjures up an image of mud huts, gravel streets, and colorful exotic bazaars. They have to be given a frame of reference.

Unfortunately, will the MSM ever say, "Fallujah, a city roughly the size of _____?" I think not. Or "Fallujah, a city larger than _____...?" Less likely.

It behooves us, then, to point this out to people -- after all, Fallujah is (was) roughly 3/4 the size of Fweep Centwal (Fresno (#37))!

[Supersedeas]

28. the compliant American MSM is supposed to do the hearts and minds thing

Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Panama City...and now Fallujah will become a distant memory in the celebration of infotainment and infomercials on display nightly for the 'Merican public.

Bush may be right about that one thing: the 'Merican media has become irrelevant.

Rove smiles.

[daleo]

13. No wonder there is a blackout on satellite imagery. n/t

On edit - It is quite a story. Well worth reading. If it is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, the assault was a worse crime and fiasco than I first thought.

[ze_dscherman]

15. Kick

The report needs to be read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387460,00.html

[dutchdoctor]

17. kick n/t

[neweurope]

18. The worst war crimes in this war so far have been committed in

Fallujah. It's no wonder the US don't let independent journalists in. I was sitting glued to my computer trying to get news since they announced they would attack that poor city. The very first thing they did was attack the main hospital which is in the river bend in the West AWAY from the city - not possibly could that have been a mistake. My heart bleeds.

------------------

Remember Fallujah!

Bush to The Hague

[bunkerbuster1]

29. No mistake. This one's for us Americans who remember the burned bodies.

It's about exacting revenge. The disgusting thing is, the Administration goons know damn well that those of us on the left who are horrified by this will be met with "they're lucky we didn't just nuke the joint" by the hate-radio/Freeper crowd.

A uniter, not a divider. Right.

[leftchick]

19. A Physician's account from Fallujah....Cluster bombs and death

This was from th first assault in April 2004. These people were being punished back then for the deaths of the 4 mercenaries...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0107-34.htm


~snip~

When the wind blew in from the nearby Julan quarter of the city, the putrid stench of decaying bodies (a smell evidently once again typical of the city) only confirmed his statement. Even then, Dr. Jabbar was insisting that American planes had dropped cluster bombs on the city. "Many people were injured and killed by cluster bombs. Of course they used cluster bombs. We heard them as well as treated people who had been hit by them!"

Dr. Rashid, another orthopedic surgeon, said, "Not less than sixty percent of the dead were women and children. You can go see the graves for yourself." I had already visited the Martyr Cemetery and had indeed observed the numerous tiny graves that had clearly been dug for children. He agreed with Dr. Jabbar about the use of cluster bombs, and added, "I saw the cluster bombs with my own eyes. We don't need any evidence. Most of these bombs fell on those we then treated."

Speaking of the medical crisis that his hospital had to deal with, he pointed out that during the first 10 days of fighting the U.S. military did not allow any evacuations from Fallujah to Baghdad at all. He said, "Even transferring patients in the city was impossible. You can see our ambulances outside. Their snipers also shot into the main doors of one of our centers." Several ambulances were indeed in the hospital's parking lot, two of them with bullet holes in their windshields.

Both doctors said they had not been contacted by the U.S. military, nor had any aid been delivered to them by the military. Dr. Rashid summed the situation up this way: "They send only bombs, not medicine."

As I walked to our car at one point amid what was already the desolation of Fallujah, a man tugged on my arm and yelled, "The Americans are cowboys! This is their history! Look at what they did to the Indians! Vietnam! Afghanistan! And now Iraq! This does not surprise us."

... Please read the whole article and pass it on. The US is indeed the new Nazi regime! :(

[0007]

21. Thanks for the link, leftchick. I've added a story that did indeed touch

the heart.

Last summer I interviewed a kind, 55 year-old woman who used to work as an English teacher. She had been detained for four months in as many prisons…in Samarra, Tikrit, Baghdad and, of course, at Abu Ghraib. She was never, she told me, allowed to sleep through a night. She was interrogated many times each day, not given enough food or water, or access to a lawyer or to her family. She was verbally and psychologically abused.

But that, she assured me, wasn't the worst part. Not by far. Her 70 year-old husband was also detained and he was beaten. After seven months of beatings and interrogations, he died in U.S. military custody in prison.

She was crying as she spoke of him. "I miss my husband," she sobbed and stood up, speaking not to us but to the room, "I miss him so much." She shook her hands as if to fling water off them…then she held her chest and cried some more.

"Why are they doing this to us?" she asked. She simply couldn't understand, she said, what was happening because two of her sons were also detained, and her family had been completely shattered. "We didn't do anything wrong," she whimpered.

With the interview over, we were walking towards our car to leave when all of us realized that it was 10 pm, already too late at night to be out in dangerous Baghdad. So she asked us instead if we wouldn't please stay for dinner, all the while thanking me for listening to her horrendous story, for my time, for writing about it. I found myself speechless.

"No, thank you, we must get home now," said Abu Talat. By this time, we were all crying.

In the car, as we drove quickly along a Baghdad highway directly into a full moon, Abu Talat and I were silent. Finally, he asked, "Can you say any words? Do you have any words?"

I had none. None at all.

Tis hard to believe that America is traveling down this road!

[SweetLeftFoot]

22. Glad I live in the free world

I will be watching this with interest tonight.

[DoYouEverWonder]

23. Here's a couple of pics I found of the devastation

that we have wrought upon Fallujah. I am appalled and ashamed at what has been done in our name.

[bunkerbuster1]

24. In the BBC4 documentary, Fadhil says something slightly different

The Guardian story quotes him as saying "Falluja used to be a modern city; now there is nothing."

In the BBC4 doc, he says: "Falluja used to be one of THE FEW modern IRAQI CITIES; and now, there is nothing." (my emphasis.)

Which makes it all the more tragic.

My own personal point of reference: I'm imagining Wichita, KS, destroyed. I'm imagining all of its residents being required to be fingerprinted and carded before they can return.

[NNN0LHI]

25. kick

[jman0]

26. i watched it

It was good.
I was shocked by the total destruction of the place.
There are definite war crimes there.
In one case the cameraman is taken into a house where in the sitting room are 4 bodies that look like a family that was sleeping in the most sheltered spot within their house, when someone busted thru the door and just sprayed automatic fire into the room, killing them all where they lie.

In another house a returning woman was freaking out over the destruction in every room of her house. There was writing on one of the mirrors in the bedroom, it was in english. She didn't know what the letters spelled and wanted it explained. It read "Fuck Iraq and all Iraq's in it"

[w4rma]

30. Neo-cons = Satan's minions (nt)