For the bloodthirsty hypocrites:--more for your palate of outrage

[Aidoneus]

American invaders kill four civilians, wound six others, including women and children.

US aggressor forces shelled and raided the village of al-Mulahimah, south of ar-Ramadi, killing four Iraqi civilians, including two women and child, and wounding six others. Al- Jazeera TV reported eyewitnesses as saying that the indiscriminate shooting by the American invaders destroyed several homes. In addition, the US occupation troops took 14 Iraqis prisoner before sealing off the area.

The witnesses reported that the four Iraqi civilians who were killed included one man, two women, and a two-year-old child. All died in an American operation during the night of Wednesday to Thursday. One witness said that four other children were also wounded in the operation during which US aggressor forces invaded the village in search of “suspects” and arrested 14 persons.

--snip--

US invaders desecrate Muslim cemetery “searching for hidden weapons.”

US occupation forces have raided a cemetery in al-Karakh district of Baghdad on the pretext that there might be arms hidden there, according to the Qatari News Agency Qana. Eyewitnesses said on Friday that American occupation forces cordoned off the cemetery and the Mosque of Shaykh Ma‘ruf al-Karakhi on Thursday – Friday night and dug up the graves of the dead, claiming that weapons might have been hidden there.

US aggressor forces also used tanks to seal off al-‘Amiriyah district south west of Baghdad on Thursday – Friday night where they carried out an extensive wave of arrests, cutting the main highway in the area.

--snip--

US invaders shoot up private car, kill 3-year-old, wound seven other people.

US aggressor forces killed a three-year-old child when they opened fire on a private car in which eight people were riding in Tikrit, 175km north of Baghdad, according to puppet police sources. A major in the Iraqi puppet police said that the eight persons – four children, three women, and the male driver – were in the car when the US invaders opened fire on the vehicle, killing the child and wounding everyone else inside.

A Reuters photographer reported seeing a red car riddled with bullet holes, its seats soaked in pools of blood and covered with splinters of glass and from the shattered windows of the vehicle. Doctors reported that the three-year-old child died in the hospital from a severe wound in the abdomen. The child's mother, May Qahtan, said from her hospital bed “The Americans are criminals. . . They're the ones who kill all the people, and all the children. Isn't that terrorism?” An Iraqi rescue worker said that an American convoy opened fire on the car. A US officer in Tikrit acknowledged that it was possible that US forces were responsible for the shooting because a large-caliber automatic weapon appeared to have been used.

--snip--

http://www.albasrah.net/moqawama/english/0304/iraqiresistancereport_25-270304.htm

US aggressors murder Iraqi civilians, damage hospital. Two invaders wounded.

Two US aggressor troops were wounded and three Iraqi civilians were killed in clashes that erupted on the streets of occupied al-Fallujah, west of Baghdad on Wednesday. Al-Jazeera TV reported eyewitnesses as saying that the battles broke out after a US occupation patrol came under mortar attack that wounded two invader troops and destroyed a military vehicle. The aggressors immediately responded by firing indiscriminately at Iraqi civilians in the area, killing three of them. According to al-Jazeera, a US helicopter gunship took part in the operation, firing rockets at civilians and at al-Fallujah Hospital which sustained damage as a result.

--snip--

US troops run over and kill little Iraqi girl.

US occupation troops driving a military vehicle ran over and killed a little Iraqi girl in northern Baghdad on Wednesday. Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that the US military occupation had issued a communqué on the crime. According to that statement the girl died instantly and her body was turned over to the local puppet authorities 75km north of Baghdad.

--snip--

http://www.albasrah.net/moqawama/english/0304/iraqiresistancereport_21-240304.htm

This but the tip of the iceberg and from only the last week.

[xchrom]

1. this will never go well

it just has me shaking my head.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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

[Aidoneus]

3. I have a feeling you're kidding

This being April Fool's Day and all..

[salin]

4. Don't think that was the point of the post

in terms of "providing wealth of news..."

but rather providing us with how the occupation is being portrayed and perceived in the Middle East (and by the Iraqis).

Perception is important to understand - be it based on fact or not - as it becomes the reality of the person holding the perception.

Thus this insight (e.g., how this is being covered/and perceived) helps explain the dangerous, murderous (and horrifying) rage demonstrated by the atrocities of yesterday.

[Aidoneus]

6. Much of this is true, thanks.

There were several other points I had in mind:--

1)--work the term "hypocrite" into a beration of the genocide junkies, getting their attention
2)--point out exponentially greater crimes that dwarf their hysteria
3)--spark a new discussion where I could explore their concept that mass murder is 'ok', depending on the flag of the aggressor..

Nasr's collected reports make a convenient reference to put forth, and this page is one of those that carries them with regularity.

I'd agree that it's a wealth of news and facts about the war, though I seriously doubt Kerry would find it to his liking. Nor do I care.

I had hestitated to dive into the action on this matter when it was fresh in the minds of the brave warriors, so I need to make my own battlefield. Hopefully they are drawn to it, I'd hate to miss out..

[Aidoneus]

7. It does not seem to be catching on

:(

[Bridget Burke]

5. Nope.

You missed it.

[Aidoneus]

9. this always happens to me..

I start talking to somebody, then they're tombstoned..

[Stuckinthebush]

8. Are we allowed to call this barbaric?

It seems to me that this is as barbaric as the Fallujah attacks on four contractors - rightfully called barbaric.

Of course, we don't hear that word when it is the "good guys" killing innocents.

[Rabid]

10. Dont kid yourself

There are no good guys here. Our military are THUGS and bullys. Killers kill. Destroy. Thats all they know.

Disband military NOW.

[Stuckinthebush]

11. Well, I wouldn't go that far...

The military is useful as a tool to protect our citizens. It's when they are used as a tool to launch a war of agression and remain as an occupying force that we really don't have a leg to stand on when barbarism happens to us in response.

[IrateCitizen]

12. Agent Provocateur?

When I see someone come in and start making inflammatory statements like this, I can't help but think of the instances in which people would show up at peace groups and start advocating violent action -- only to turn out to actually be police infiltrators in the end.

Our military are not "thugs and bullys". They are people just like you and me -- many of whom are stuck in a situation that they don't believe is right nor just.

This kind of rhetoric by a careless group was what undermined much of the antiwar left at the time of Vietnam. Rather than putting our arms around the soldiers as they returned home, telling them that we would do whatever we could to help them get rid of the terrible memories of their experiences over there and ensure that nobody ever had to go through a similar thing again -- we largely alienated them. They didn't have to be spit on to be alienated. Just the fact that we didn't strive to help them was alientation enough.

The tone of your post makes me suspicious of your motives here. I'll just leave it at that.

[markus]

16. It's considered inappropriate to suggest some one is any sort of troll

You should alert the moderators when you think a message is outside the rules of the board.

Most of us have enough sense to ignoreprovocateurs, or to put up with our own when one of us loses our temper in ways that don't merit deletion by the moderators.

[Rabid]

19. Not attempting to provoke

I'm sorry you feel that way. My point is that these guys (unlike Viet Nam Vets who had little choice) volunteered to go kill people and break things.

They had a choice ..and they chose to be killers. I won't spit on them, but I won't embreace them either.

Disarm now!

[DerekG]

20. It's important to know, however...

That military service is one of the precious few ways for young people to escape poverty in this country. It's an ingenious system, really. The majority of our soldiers didn't foresee this war.

And for someone who won't embrace "killers," your choice of avatars is highly curious, Rabid.

[newyawker99]

13. Hi Rabid!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[markus]

15. Everyone in the war is a "stone cold killer"

if they're doing their job right.

Sometimes, it gets out of hand.

I don't think our own soldiers are thugs. They are doing they're job. And the whackos in Falujah think they are doing there, and just got carried away this time.

Guess I'm just one of those whacky, mulddled-thinking, relative moratity types who thinks this entire war is just stupid, f---ing wrong.

Our guys aren't the "good guys". They're just another set of victims living and dying on Corporate Empire time.

That includes the four mercenaries (becuase that's what they were) who were brutally killed. At least they were probably pulling down big bucks and knew what they were in for.

At some level, if somebody had to die, better them than some poor National Guardsmen trained to driver a bulldozer who's just been yanked out of his life for a year-and-a-half and put in Hell.

[Aidoneus]

14. did all of the brave warriors get tombstoned?

These are barbaric atrocities! Shouldn't there be talk of American cities disappearing from the map too? Escort away the innocents and "glass" CENTCOM? Isn't that the formula you guys use?

[NuttyFluffers]

17. military make poor police....

this is what happens when you have to depend on people who are trained to kill and are not trained to manage the peace.

closing down the american military college teaching how to police after military victory is already showing what we reap from what we sow.

military is used directly against military. and the sooner that 'weapon' is put away and the police one is drawn the better.

we are reaping from the stupidity of disbanding the police, military, and all gov't workers from the fall of saddam regime. just because everyone had to be Ba'athist just to get a gov't job doesn't mean each and every gov't worker is a rabid fan of the regime. bureaucracy and leadership should not be confused...

imagine how much easier things would have been if we got our soldiers out of the cities, control the highways and key facilities only, and leave the cities to the bureaucrats who were there before... and imagine if we didn't get involved in the first place...

:eyes:

[dpibel]

18. What's yer problem?

Please show me one single case in those stories where US forces dragged a body one goddamned inch or cut up a body with a shovel.

There is nothing in the least barbaric or atrocious about blowing a child asunder, because it is not done with a shovel. Surely you can see the difference.

I mean, after all, if the forces of The Great and Mighty 38 Or So (Maybe) Coalition of the Righteous had committed anything even vaguely barbaric and atrocious, it would receive the very same multi-news-cycle coverage, because here in America we have freedom of the press and we are dedicated to, and wish always to know, the truth. That is why we are different from the savages in the rest of the world (especially France, but including all the indistinguishable varieties of Ayrabs), because they cannot get true news like we do. They only have propaganda erroneously depicting the US as barbaric, which must be propaganda because it is not true.

For instance, right this instant I am listening to NPR, the US's homegrown version of Radio Cuba, and they have been talking to experts for nearly an hour, and they all agree that what happened in Fallujah was an historic atrocity, and that Americans will properly demand, and get, major vengeance. If that is what they are saying on liberal/commie radio, how can you argue?

[Rex]

21. I so agree!

I mean, come on people! Don't you know the difference between GOOD bombs and BAD bombs?

GOOD bombs are those that are "made in the USA", kissed by Lady Liberty herself, and then dropped discriminatly (and sometimes not so discriminatly - whoopsie) onto houses, roads, villages, etc. These are civil weapons of war because they usually get dropped from high above or shot from a long distance at a target that just shows up as a blip in a monitor. GOOD bombs are impersonal - hey it's just business, afterall!

BAD bombs are those that the snake-like evildoers make (usually homegrown) and then sneakily place along a roadside or in the back of a truck to be detonated at a certain time. These bombs are barbaric because they are up close and personal! Sometimes even the snake-like evildoers will die in the explosion. That's how evil and barbaric they are! BAD bombs are personal - it's like these people hate us for our freedoms or somesuch!

[FDRrocks]

23. How about the mass graves in Panama

Or the mass graves from the modified bulldozers in the first Iraq War?

Is that as bad?

I think it's worse.

[Aidoneus]

27. There was a probably a shovel involved in the cemetary raid..

otherwise, um.. you got me. No shovel, no outrage. I see it all clearly now..

[FDRrocks]

22. America ROCKS

RIGHT, right?

Our Government is so badass.

In support of the war, my ass.

[Doomsayer13]

24. I question the credibility of that source

From a website that defines itself as the "Iraqi resistance" it's hard to look at that compliation and not wonder whether some or most of it is made up or at least tilted in an anti-American direction. In addition, there is no citation of any solid source, like a newspaper or something.

[dpibel]

25. You go, bro!

We should read/listen to/watch only real news, like what we get in America, because there's certainly no making things up or at least tilting in a pro-American direction.

That is why I know that Iraq was pretty much crawling with real, bona fide, weapons of mass destruction. Because Judith Miller told me so, several times, in the New York Times. And she would not make things up, and the Times would not have a pro-American tilt, because she is an American journalist and the Times is an American paper, and we do not make things up or tilt them in America.

Because they only do that in bad countries.

By the way, I also know that George W. Bush is a god-fearing christian man who is honest as the day is long and forthright as he can be who is really concerned about leaving children's behinds and is a man of peace and is really concerned about me. Because I read it in the paper. He's making jobs, too. Millions of 'em.

[IrateCitizen]

28. Yer killin' me, dpibel!

It amazes me how little skepticism is paid to bias within American mainstream media, but anything that presents what is not a "pro-American" view is dismissed as "biased" or "untrustworthy".

"Propaganda is to a democracy what force is to a dictatorship."

[Doomsayer13]

29. oh please

I'm skeptical of all media, just not American meida. So becuase I question this I'm some sort of blind sheep to be hearded by the big bad Media Moguls. Give me a break. The website is so obviously biased, it'd be like citing the National Review for facts about the nation.

[Aidoneus]

34. There is a point there I will concede

It is indeed biased, and such is the case with everything. Pretenses to the contrary are most often with the intent to deceive without the target's knowledge of such. In this case it is biased quite honestly and obviously, which is what I prefer--this way it is easier to get a "good strong whiff of it", as the line goes. with such right out in front like that.

As for the site itself, the medium was not necessarily my message (it was not by mistake, either). The reports of Muhammad Abu Nasr, collected and/or translated from a wide variety of sources, are a comprehensive and convenient reference for such matters, and albasrah.net is one of the more regular places to obtain it. I used to get it from a couple mailing lists or other pages by chance several days after the original release, but not with the same regular frequency as there (that is, within a day or two--much better than before). The site also collects articles in English and other languages from a very wide variety of sources. Knowing full well what it is, it is a useful reference.

[Aidoneus]

26. response

Nasr is an independent writer and, on the contrary, there are indeed citations. For example:

...Al-Jazeera TV reported eyewitnesses as saying...witnesses reported that...according to the Qatari News Agency Qana...Eyewitnesses said...according to puppet police sources...A Reuters photographer reported seeing...Doctors reported that...The child's mother, May Qahtan, said from her hospital bed...A US officer in Tikrit acknowledged that...Al-Jazeera TV reported eyewitnesses as saying that...According to al-Jazeera...Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that...

I'm sorry that I didn't run it by CENTCOM first..

[Doomsayer13]

30. those citations are non-concrete

they could've easily been made up just as they could be true. For a website that professes to be the home of the "Iraqi Resistance" I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. That's not to say that what comes out in the American media is any more credibile, indeed I don't think I could trust any news sources reporting on Iraq becuase the situation is so volitile and the truth easily blurred. I just have trouble lending any credibility to a website that promotes violence against US troops.

That's not to say also that the tradgedies that are mentioned in the article, given the benefit of the doubt, are any less atrocious than the 4 American deaths in Fallujah. But are we willing to let the ends define the means in this case? The death of civilian Iraqis, no doubt horrible and tragic, deserve recognition, more recognition that the American media has been willing to give them, but what also deserves recognition is intent and I don't see any evidence of American troops intentionally harming innocencts, non-combatants, and little children.

[The Magistrate]

31. To Some Degree, Sir

It hardly matters whether the reports are true; they will be widely believed among the people of Iraq, and neighboring countries, and they will affect the feelings and actions of many people.

We are probably in agreement as well that U.S. soldiers did not intend to kill non-combatant civilians, particularly children. However, what is important is not just intent, but what steps were taken, in terms of tactical doctrine and target identification, to prevent such deaths from occuring. There will certainly be errors, for no military force can even guarantee not to kill some of its own members on operations, but it is certainly questionable whether sufficient efforts in that direction have been, and are being, made. For the relatives of those killed in such incidents, Sir, you may depend upon it, will not view the acts as anything but deliberate and intentional and malicious, and we would probably do the same in their place.

As to these reports themselves, there is certainly nothing inherently incredible about them. The first account seems to describe a perfectly standard anti-partisan round up; it may exaggerate the damage, or the intensity of fire, but this sort of thing is not unusual in the sort of operations U.S. forces now are engaged in. The second is nothing special, and desecrating a grave0yard does not mean much to me: people hide things where they think people will not look, after all, and if you think they will not look in a graveyard, that is where you put the contraband; if are a little more subtle, and feel many will be outraged by the enemy poking among the graves, you not only hide a few things there, you make sure the enemy knows something has been cached there, so he will come and give the desired offense. The third sounds like a standard check-point incident, and would seem to reflect poor training and discipline by the soldiers involved. It also seems pretty well attested.

It is also, Sir, beyond denial that the people of a country, or any element among them, have a perfect right to resist the invasion and occupation of their country. That right obtains whether one agrees with their efforts or not.

"They say war is an art, but it's not. It mostly consists of outwitting people, stealing from widows and orphans, and inflicting suffering on the helpless for one's own ends, and that's not art: that's business."

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[Doomsayer13]

32. and I agree with you Magistrate

none of the incidents in the report seem to be out of the ordinary to the point where it's not concievable such an event would occur, but the intent of the site is such a blatant attempt to demonize American troops that I have trouble believing their validity with a 100% accuracy. And what of American good deeds that have occured in Iraq? While we can all agree that civilian deaths, while accidental, have occured, is it not also concievable that our troops may be doing some good like brining food into starving parts of the country and providing protection to American loyalist Iraqis who are threatened by the resistance.

And it is also true that a soverign people has the right to resist and occupier, no mater who they be. But deaths caused both by the resistance and the occupiers, especially on civilians and non-military combatants, and a blatant disrepspect for humane treatment of human beings should not go unnoticed and unresponded to. I agree that more needs to be done to cut down on civilian deaths, and I think that congress should pass a bill compensating family members of civilians who have become collatoral damage of this war.

[The Magistrate]

33. There Is No Need, Sir

To speak much about "good deeds" done by U.S. forces in Iraq, and for two reasons. First, to the degree the place needs relief and assistance, this is largely because of the dis-order attendant on our invasion of the place, and second, because carrying out such works are an important and necessary part of any sensible strategy of partisan suppression. The first is the sort of "Munchausenism" that leads some disturbed persons to do some harm in order that they might strike heroic posture in mastering the resultant crisis, and the second is a matter of calculated self-interest: neither thing can be refered to properly as a good deed, done for the virtue and benefit to others of the doing.

Nor is there any doubt, Sir, that the Iraqi resistance frequently behaves in a criminal manner, and shows little regard for confining its attacks to combatants, although in the situation currently obtaining, it is hard for me to condemn such things as attacks on official employees of the occupation authority, or of the puppet government we are erecting, though these are not, technically, combatants. They are, from the point of view of the resistance, anyway, traitors.

"Revolution is not a tea party."

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"