Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble

[DoYouEverWonder]

November 24, 2005

Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 23 (IPS) - A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.

The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies.

Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flame upon contact with air, inside Fallujah as an "incendiary weapon" against insurgents. Washington denies that it is a chemical weapon, as charged by some critics, and that it was used against civilians.

Compensation payments promised by Iyad Allawi, the U.S.-backed interim prime minister at the time of the operation, have failed to materialise for many residents in the city, who lack potable water and suffer electricity cuts on a daily basis.

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000322.php#more

I thought we were supposed to be making life better for the people of Iraq? Instead they now have bombed out homes and new mass graves, yet Bush insists we must stay the course. I guess we have destroyed enough of the country yet?

[dutchdemocrat]

1. Rare and unpublished video footage of Iraq-Fallujah

Rare and unpublished video footage of Iraq-Fallujah

There is a long BREAK in the middle of this video... please be patient as it streams into the second BBC video. It is in Macromedia Flash 8 format, has not been widely published - I am sure some of it has not been shown - the first part of the first video in particular where a British nurse/doctor enters a hospital in Fallujah after first passing through an insurgent checkpoint. The head doctor is highly disturbed with the slaughter that has taken place and is followed by an interview with an Iraqi women who talks about the snipers picking off everyone on the streets. After, is some footage that the BBC picked up from a freelancer which was certainly not shown in America. It shows the Fallujans burying their dead en masse... men, women and children after the sacking of their city. You can watch it here.

http://chris-floyd.com/fallujah/hospital.htm

________________

I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man.
Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying
to our nature than a waste of the blood
of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures?
~Thomas Jefferson

This video is a montage of war. It's hard, fast and not very pretty. I was told it was ad for the US army but I find that hard to believe. Click here for Video - Only available in Flash 8.

http://chris-floyd.com/fallujah/new1/army /
__________



This video, in Macromedia Flash 8 format, has not been widely published The video is of a surreal shooting up of an Iraqi bus where soldiers are killing one minute and saving lives the next. It really reflects the confusion of Iraq - and the mix of emotion that rumbles through the soldiers as they morph from killers to healers in an instant. Click to see it here.

http://chris-floyd.com/fallujah/bus.htm

__________________





All videos are here.

http://chris-floyd.com/fallujah/

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Thank you for posting these videos

Even though the M$M here tries to hide the truth, people need to see these images.

[dutchdemocrat]

4. I have a lot more... I am working on converting and editing now....

And it's clear that the Baghdad I saw under Saddam, travelling there before Gulf War 1 in the late eighties, was much, much better than the world that exists there today. And one that I am trying to make clear, is a horror, by collecting media from Iraq via various sources.

More to come...

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. So were most of the other founding fathers

Should we just tear up the Constitution because Jefferson wrote most of it himself?

BTW: Welcome to DU

[uppityperson]

12. Jefferson knows firsthand the ferociousness of man.

and the other stuff he quotes. The quote is apt. Peace.

[democrank]

3. War crimes.

The thought that this country can sit back and let our actions in Fallujah slide by like it`s not even worth talking about, makes be want to vomit.

[leftchick]

5. We knew this was going to happen

and it has... :(

<snip>

"So many schools are either destroyed or occupied by the Americans even now," Abu Mohammed, a resident of Fallujah, told IPS in a telephone interview. "Our children are either going to school in tents or staying at home because we are too afraid to have them outside."

Abu Mohammed, a carpenter and 30-year-old father of five, said that countless residents were sick from drinking dirty tap water. Others were falling ill from the lack of electricity coupled with cold nighttime temperatures that sink as low as 10 degrees Celsius now that winter has arrived in Iraq.

Deraji agreed, saying there were "many new diseases, especially cancers with children and with people who stayed in Falluah during the assault". He told IPS, "Maybe they took big doses from radiation and pollution inside the city during that time, so we have so many medical problems now."

This is complicated by the fact that hospitals in the city are not at full operating capacity.

[bpilgrim]

7. the neoCONs don't do 'focus groups' on such serious matters, though

i c the icc in their future if we keep pass'n the word and make sure the truthout :toast:

peace

[bpilgrim]

6. This MSG brought to you by the neoCON mad-men (GRAPHIC)

:cry:

peace

[leftchick]

10. Now that is perfect for the madman!

and perfectly horrible as well. :(

[dutchdemocrat]

11. Mopaul... hitting hard again. (GRAPHIC)

[leftchick]

13. the dead babies are just the worst ...

look at that little pacie...:cry:

[MisterP]

14. that monster Bush is making me age so quickly--I feel twice as old

as I really am