Civilians fleeing Baghdad to Najaf....lacking food, water, supplies.

[madfloridian]

We have done this. We have caused a humanitarian crisis on an unbelievable scale.

We declared citizens of Fallujah enemy combatants if they remained in their homes. A military spokesman said there was a similar plan for Sadr City, Baghdad....if needed. We have become a nation that invades a country that was no danger. We have had the utter unbelievable nerve to declare citizens enemy combatants for remaining in their homes.

Civilians are fleeing Sadr City just as they left Fallujah.

Prior to the second siege in November, its citizens were given two choices: leave the city or risk dying as enemy insurgents.

..."...."What of the estimated 50,000 residents who did not leave Falluja? The US military suggested there were a couple of thousand insurgents in the city before the siege, but in the end chose to treat all the remaining inhabitants as enemy combatants.

Overwhelmed Camps Running Short on Basic Humanitarian Necessities

About 9000 Iraqi families fled to the central city most of them from Baghdad, where they search for safety in camps for displaced people according to official sources from Najaf. The sources said that the increasing numbers of displaced people who are converging to the city's camps will soon suffer from a shortage of food and water supplies

Qassem Zein/AFP/Getty
NAJAF, IRAQ: An Iraqi displaced boy drinks water from a tap at a camp for displaced people in the central Shiite holy city of Najaf, 20 July 2007.



Qassem Zein/AFP/Getty
NAJAF, IRAQ: A displaced Iraqi woman cooks in a mud oven in a camp for
displaced people in the central Shiite holy city of Najaf, 20 July 2007.

And things are not going well in Baghdad...detainees, mostly men being held in deplorable conditions with little access to legal help. The blog says the US is concerned about conditions. I say the US is the occupier, the decider....it is time to stop blaming the Iraqis for it.
Just quit blaming the people of the country we invaded without cause. Just stop it.

Overcrowding Creates Deplorable Conditions

Nearly a thousand "detainees" are held in a series of rooms at the detention center, in an area intended to temporarily hold 300. Many have been held for months without trials or hearings. A human-rights observer employed by the U.S. government has repeatedly complained about the conditions, with problems including overcrowding, intermittent meals, backed up sewage, and long-term detentions in a short-term facility, but conditions have remained the same.

Chris Hondros/Getty
BAGHDAD, IRAQ - JULY 19: Iraqi men sit in a crowded room on the floor in a Iraqi government holding pen July 19, 2007 at Forward Operating Base Justice, a joint US-Iraqi base in Baghdad, Iraq.

We the citizens of America have every right to be angry at what our leaders have done to other human beings in our name.

[NNN0LHI]

1. We are committing genocide but we have football playing dogfighters dammit

Shiny thing over there. See it?

Don

[madfloridian]

3. I just read this about the use of incendiary weapons in Fallujah.

It did not help my mood very much at all.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3141

FAIR points out that the NYT took the side of the government on this issue.

"A documentary on Italian television on Tuesday accuses American forces of using white phosphorus shells in the assault on Fallujah last year not just for nighttime illumination, their usual purpose, but to burn to death Iraqi insurgents and civilians. The mainstream American news media, whose reporters had witnessed the fighting and apparently seen no evidence of this, largely ignored the claim."

But then FAIR shows where the military itself admitted the use.

Unfortunately for the U.S. government and for the Times, it turned out that U.S. forces were on record as discussing the use of white phosphorus (WP) as a weapon in Fallujah (Field Artillery, 3–4/05). (The distinction between civilians and insurgents, which Hoyt stresses in his response, does not seem to have been taken as seriously by the U.S. military in Fallujah--see below.)

Moreover, the U.S. military has admitted to using Mark 77 in Iraq. Hoyt points out that WP is not napalm at all, which FAIR did not argue. Rather, the point was that a chemical agent with potentially lethal effects was used in a battle in a major Iraqi city.

In the context of the New York Times' acceptance of the false denials, a Times critic quibbling with a playwright about what particular form of incendiary weapons were used on which Iraqi city--in a phrasing that gives the reader no indication that any kind of incendiary weapons were used anywhere--is more than a little grotesque

This is more and more like Vietnam, only then we did not have a person in the White House who declared himself totally above the law.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/189

And when anyone began to say we were not winning, they were ripped apart, even by their own.

Well, we are not winning, we have lost.

[glitch]

9. They are both worthy of our attention. nt

[Kagemusha]

2. Of course, the people who ARE getting food, water, supplies there...

are getting it courtesy of al-Sadr.

[shadowknows69]

4. Genocide is much less obvious

when you do it slow and painful like this.

[madfloridian]

5. Dahr Jamail: "After Reporting in Iraq, America Feels Like a Bizarre Disneyland"

I don't think Americans want to hear or read this stuff. But we have to listen.

Apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

"In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory."

From a letter shared with him:

..."I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids."

And communications from a friend:

"He was concerned about the perception that there were vast differences between Islam and Christianity. "Islam and Christianity are not so different," he would say, "In fact they have many more similarities than differences." He would often discuss this with U.S. soldiers in his city.

Yet he was no admirer of imperialism. Last summer in Syria, he and I visited the sprawling Roman ruins of Palmyra. One evening, as we stood together overlooking the vast landscape of crumbling columns and sun-bleached walls in the setting sun, he turned to me and said, "Mr. Dahr, please do not be offended by what I want to say, but it makes me happy to see these ruins and remember that empires always fall because empires are never good for most people."

And then I hear we have people over there like Matt Sanchez embedded with the troops, spinning propaganda for the right.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3388367&mesg_id=3388367

[libodem]

6. This is awful

I know it's going on but it hurts to see it up close and personal. How in the hell can people, with more authority than I have, see this also and not take drastic measures to stop it. The mission to evict regular Iraqi families from their homes is pitiful. Being sent out into the desert is a death sentence. At least Saddam had the decency to gas them first.

[madfloridian]

8. I know. I can't believe we did this.

I made so many calls, still did until lately. Now I get so angry at the fact that no one has an answer that I just write about it the best I can. Sometimes it gets noticed, sometimes it doesn't.

[nam78_two]

7. K&R.nt

[proud patriot]

10. K and R

:(

[madfloridian]

11. How tragic....young Iraqi girls forced into prostitution in Syria.

I missed this report by Richard Engels, but someone pointed out it out.
This is just tragic.

http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/10/265072.aspx

"The girls circle the stage in a nightclub outside of Damascus, holding hands in protective pairs as they march, always counterclockwise, at the same slow pace, one unenthusiastic step per second.

It’s 3 a.m., but bright as a hospital ward in here. The club owners leave on the fluorescent lights so customers can get a good look at what’s for sale. The girls’ faces are painted in slashes of pink blush. Their lipstick is drab browns and beiges. They want it that way, so it doesn’t distract from their eyes, accented with glittering splashes of emerald green and sapphire blue. Many girls connect their thin, shaped eyebrows with a black pencil, and have orange and yellow plastic flowers in their long hair, blackened with henna.

One girl, gawky and about 13, has eyeglasses tucked into the top of her tight, lilac sequined dress. Her sister, who says she’s 14, chews bubble gum and keeps borrowing the glasses. She can’t see when she puts them on and waves her hands in front of her, pretending to be blind. It makes the sisters laugh. They are bored circling all night. I guess they also want to forget where they are. Maybe it helps if you can’t see. The 14-year-old also has a mobile phone stuffed into her bra. She pulls it out when men, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, call her over to their tables to exchange ‘missed calls.’ The men call the next day and negotiate a price and a meeting place.

There are dozens of clubs just like this one the outskirts of Damascus -- a red light district built on the slender shoulders of little Iraqi girls in belly dancing costumes. The girls are nearly all Iraqi refugees forced into what U.N. relief agencies call “survival sex.” The reason why is cold math. There are 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria. Syrian laws do not allow Iraqi refugees to work in Syria, which struggles to provide enough jobs for its own citizens. But Iraqi children can often slip under the law, especially if they work on the black market. They work to support their families. Many were traumatized even before they left Iraq, and had relatives murdered or kidnapped. Now they are forced into prostitution -- victims of war, victimized again every night."

:cry:

[demoleft]

16. Tragedy in the tragedy...

...endless and bottomless...

[madfloridian]

12. Early morning kick....lest we forget.

Sad, but it is being done in our name.

[superkia]

13. Where is the news coverage on this stuff?

All we see on the news here in Md. is bad weather, flight delays, dog fighting, steroid agendas, our politicians spreading fear and terror and Bush saying the Dem's. wont give the troops a raise ( when that bill wouldn't take place until Oct. 08 but they didnt tell us that )! How do we blast other nations for controlling the news when we have no truth in news ourselves? Oh and congress going crazy over the dog fighting but not as mad about this war and what is being done to our country? Makes no sense at all!

[ninkasi]

14. I am burning with shame

How, in the name of whatever anybody considers holy, can we keep permitting this torture? I used to think that Hitler, and Stalin, were the worst men ever. Bush and his neocon enablers have joined the ranks of the worst, most depraved dictators ever.

We HAVE to find a way to end this brutality. The Iraqis were never a threat to us, this whole sham is nothing more than a money grubbing scheme to enrich the republics and their cronies, and an excuse to seize power for the murderous chimp as a "war president."

[TheBaldyMan]

15. (Self delete)

What must it be like in the rest of the country?

If a fraction of the money that went missing had actually been used to employ large numbers of Iraqis to fix their own power, water and drainage I don't think this would have happened.

Instead it was handed over with zero oversight to a bunch of mercenaries who paid themselves exorbitant salaries and never did the work.

on edit: Doh! I should read the story before I post.

[leftchick]

17. and as usual The US is blaming the victims....

from yesterday...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070721/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_sectarian_challenge

On a recent afternoon, a convoy of Humvees brought Army Brig. Gen. John Campbell for a look. The deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division did not like what he saw.

To the east of a north-south boulevard the Americans have dubbed Route Spruce, Campbell surveyed the eerie emptiness of an enclave that until recently was populated mainly by Sunnis. It now resembles a ghost town.

"It looks devastated," he told an Associated Press reporter who accompanied him.

On display were rows of abandoned shops, empty homes, piles of debris. All were evidence of the retreat of hope for a reconciling anytime soon between two rival religious sects — Shiites and Sunnis — in a desperate battle for power.

.... gee it couldn't be they fled the violent occupiers!?!

[leftchick]

18. U.S. choppers kill ... who? Enemy or innocents?

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/18249.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq — This much is agreed upon: at least six Iraqis died overnight Saturday when American attack helicopters pounded a cluster of homes in a dusty, nondescript neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Baghdad.

But the story of why those homes were targeted and who was killed depends on the storyteller.

The U.S. military said the dead were insurgents and the homes in the Husseiniya district probably served as weapons depots; troops observed seven or more secondary explosions after the air assault. By the military's tally, six fighters were killed and five wounded.

Iraqi residents told a different version: the dead came from two Shiite Muslim families who lived in an area controlled by the powerful Mahdi Army militia. The bodies pulled from the rubble, locals say, were ordinary parents killed with their children in the middle of the night. Locals counted 11 corpses - two men, two women, and seven children. Another 10 were injured. Some Iraqi authorities put the death toll as high as 18.

In Iraq, where new bombings occur before authorities can even investigate the previous day's violence, the truth about Husseiniya might never come to light. Roadblocks erected around the neighborhood prevented reporters from reaching the scene.

"Lies, lies, lies," sputtered Salam al Rubaiye, 35, a computer technician who lives in Husseiniya and works in Sadr City. "The Americans always try to change the truth, especially when it concerns the Sadrists," the collective name for followers of the Mahdi Army commander, cleric Muqtada al Sadr.



A woman weeps for seven members of her family killed in a U.S. airstrike as their bodies are taken from the morgue for burial in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, July 22, 2007. Mahmoud Faraj and his family, including four women and one child, were killed in the Husseiniyah area of northeastern Baghdad on Saturday. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)