WP: In Fallujah, Confusion Spiked with Danger

[DeepModem Mom]

In Fallujah, Confusion Spiked With Danger
Marines, Iraqis Meet Cautiously In Besieged City
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page A21


FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 17 -- The snipers spotted them first, a line of figures beneath two white banners Saturday afternoon, moving tentatively toward the Marine base camp. Behind them was an old taxi, piled high with suitcases. Within moments, a patrol squad was en route to the site.

"I see about 30 or 40 people, three men standing and waving, women and children huddled on the ground. They seem peaceful," Sgt. Chris Driotez said into his radio.

"Any of them wearing vests?" another squad member asked tersely, vigilant for suicide bombers.

Cautiously the two groups approached each other, Marines with rifles raised, Iraqis with hands in the air. Driotez radioed for interpreters, and a psychological operations team arrived in two armored vehicles.

An hour of confusion and frustration followed. The group's leader, Jasim Hamid, a thin, agitated musician, kept saying they needed food, water and cigarettes, that the women and children were sick, that it was too dangerous to stay home and too difficult to leave....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20626-2004Apr17.html

[slinkerwink]

1. that's so sad that they weren't given safe passage

[izzie]

3. All this because of 4 mercenaries tooted around and get killed.

We should send these week-end killers back to their mountains and paint guns and let them play. I can not understand why our govt let these men in. They are more trouble than they are worth. It is also costing the tax payer a pretty penny. I am sure the people in Iraq hate the mercenaries even more than our army is hated. Then to aim a religious leader with weapons at them is just fools work.

[freetobegay]

2. Where were the flowers?

eom

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. It's damm criminal what the US is doing there!

.
.
.

There's a hospital a MILE away, but the people can't get to it for chrissakes!

From the article:

Less than a mile away, just beyond the U.S. military cordon that has sealed off Fallujah since April 5, a team of doctors and nurses waited in an isolated compound of white medical trailers. Most of the hospital's beds were empty, and the staff had little to do.

Everyone at the hospital, opened eight months ago by the government of Jordan as a goodwill gesture, knew that people in Fallujah were wounded and sick, that medical supplies were running out and that the city's central hospital had been shut down by the fighting between U.S. Marines and Iraqi guerrillas.

Occasionally, the hospital staff has gotten glimpses of the suffering. A 3-year-old boy with a bullet wound in his back, an old man with shrapnel wounds, a young man's corpse with the wrists and ankles showing marks of bondage.

/snip/

"We are here to help, and the people in Fallujah know there is a hospital here, but they can't come because the way is blocked," said Samir Smadi, a surgeon. "We expected to have a lot of injured patients, but we're not even at full load."
__________________________________________________________________

What the feck is the matter with the USA's Administration? -

Do they think these people have no memories?

They are spreading HATRED.

NOT democracy.

:grr: :grr:

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Rare Fallujah report, posted early a.m.