http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK18Ak03.html"
Counterinsurgency run amok
By Pepe Escobar
Nov. 18, 2004
"The people who are doing the beheadings are extremists ... the people slaughtering Iraqis - torturing in prisons and shooting wounded prisoners - are 'American heroes'. Congratulations, you must be so proud of yourselves today."
- Iraqi girl blogger Riverbend
Whom are you going to trust: Fallujah civilians who risked their lives to escape, witnesses such as Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, hospital doctors, Amnesty International, top United Nations human-rights official Louise Arbour, the International Committee of the Red Cross; or the Pentagon and US-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi?
On the humanitarian front, Fallujah is a tragedy. The city has virtually been reduced to rubble. Remaining residents, the Red Cross confirms, are eating roots and burying the dead in their gardens. There's no medicine in the hospitals to help anybody. The wounded are left to die in the streets - their remains to be consumed by packs of stray dogs. As Iraqresistance.net, a Europe-wide collective, puts it, "World governments, international organizations, nobody raises a finger to stop the killing." The global reaction is apathy.
Civilians? What civilians?
Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad confirm the anger across the Sunni heartland - even among moderates - against the occupation and Allawi has reached incendiary proportions. His credibility - already low before the Fallujah massacre - is now completely gone.