Falluja: A name that lives in infamy

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

The destruction of Falluja was an act of barbarism that ranks alongside My Lai, Guernica and Halabja

One year ago this week, US-led occupying forces launched a devastating assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. The mood was set by Lt Col Gary Brandl: "The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."

The assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. US troops cut off the city's water, power and food supplies, condemned as a violation of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur, who accused occupying forces of "using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population". Two-thirds of the city's 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters' camps without basic facilities.

As the siege tightened, the Red Cross, Red Crescent and the media were kept out, while males between the ages of 15 and 55 were kept in. US sources claimed between 600 and 6,000 insurgents were holed up inside the city - which means that the vast majority of the remaining inhabitants were non-combatants.

On November 8, 10,000 US troops, supported by 2,000 Iraqi recruits, equipped with artillery and tanks, supported from the air by bombers and helicopter gunships, blasted their way into a city the size of Leicester. It took a week to establish control of the main roads; another two before victory was claimed.

(...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1638785,00.html

[Cool Blue Reason]

1. I think it's worth mentioning

that Jon Corzine now has the power to appoint an anti-war Democrat to the Senate, versus a party insider we're not so sure about. We need all we can get.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

4. Thanks for that

& welcome to DU. :hi:

[tatertop]

2. The hideous face of terrorist America

[patrice]

3. Triggered, mind you, by an incident involving a Private "security"

contracting entity, Blackwater, who sent out a vehicle with a crew to do something (pick someone up? - or - take someone somewhere? I can't remember which), I say, sent them out to do something short 2 people, i.e. WITHOUT the 2 additional Blackwater "security personnel, who standard operating procedures prescribed as appropriate staffing for the circumstances in Iraq at the time. The vehicle was under-manned by 2, those who would have been the "tail gunners" when the Blackwater employees came under attack.

Blackwater cuts corners; this results in their employees being mutilated and killed. Fallujah was punished.

[Lerkfish]

5. actually, I have a theory about those contractors...

I have no factual basis, this is just a gut feeling.
I have always felt the contractors were recognized.
By people who knew their crimes..knew they had kidnapped and tortured Iraqis.
That's why I think the gleeful celebration of their dead bodies, and their mutilation.
That has always read to me as: revenge.

[Lilith Velkor]

7. Revenge for this

I don't believe America's reputation will recover in my lifetime.

[Lerkfish]

8. precisely.

we know that contractors were involved in Abu Ghraib.
It may even have been THOSE contractors who were killed...I imagine we'll never know.

[demobrit]

6. Fallujah: Where is the Outrage. The Story the Mainstream Media won't tell

by William Bowles

November 8, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact – Mohamad Tareq, a Fallujah resident

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051108&articleId=1213