WWB: civilian casualties from shootings

WHAT WAR BRINGS: civilian casualties from military shootings

Photo: "I hate the Americans," said Sufian Neda, 9, who was wounded when U.S. troops and insurgents traded gunfire near Baghdad. (By Ernesto Londoño -- The Washington Post)

Of course in every war and occupation, there will be cases of civilians being shot and killed by the superior military force. They really have no protection from that. The civilians just have to take it. Many civilians have been killed in Iraq and a significant number has been killed in Afghanistan too. In Pakistan, there are no US troops shooting at civilians, but there are drone attacks that have killed hundreds.

One blogger in Mosul told about her great uncle being shot by US troops. He was out driving his car, and he was unarmed. This happened in March 2006. This incident was never reported in regular news outlets and never made it into any US reports that were obtained by the ACLU…. I know because I checked.

Here is the blogger’s report:

We need help to stop the violence, and the disrespect of the humanity. I am giving some of the details about my relative's accident to seek for help, and investigation. On Wednesday afternoon about 5 pm. My dear grand uncle was shot by many American bullets from the right side while he was driving his car (Dark brown" Opel\vectra", model 1991.), in a residential neighborhood, "Al Tairan ". The report of the forensic doctor mentioned that the victim was turning his head toward the left, when he got the first bullet on his neck (that one caused immediate death), the other was in his upper right side of his chest, and the third bullet was on his upper part of his right arm. Such accidents, I mean shooting innocent people, had been repeated to a large extent that turned the appreciation of the Iraqis toward the American liberation from Saddams' regimen to hate or violence or at least suspicious about the intentions of the Americans' coexistence in Iraq

There are many more like this incident. I received the following information from an email sent to me by an Iraqi-American who posts at Daily Kos.

We all read about stories of horrors by soldiers in Colorado telling and explaining how being deployed in Iraq has affected their entire life, and if you did not here is the link.

As I was reading, I was feeling the pain in my heart toward both sides. Iraqis who were getting shot and killed left and right and those soldiers who were sent to hell for no reason at all and left them suffer what they suffer. It is really hard to have living heart that try to empathize and sympathize with both sides and that’s why I sometimes wish if I had a dead heart so I would not go through the pain and wonder who’s fault and who is to be blamed? Asking though is really the easy part of that.

I know a soldier who is a father of a very beautiful girl and a husband of a gorgeous wife. This guy was deployed to Iraq and came back to the States due to some injury. Every time I see this soldier and say to him hi I get that urging question to ask “how many Iraqi civilians did you kill?”. I know he has to defend his life and others. I know that he is doing his job but I am not talking about those terrorists who point their guns against the troops, or blow themselves and kill civilians. I am talking about those people who were in the wrong place on the wrong time. Those like my friend’s dad, Hamza.

Hamza was in his early fifties, still young to die. Any one is too young to die, especially if he was a loving father, a caring husband and beloved person by his community like Hamza. There was a rule of thumb over there in Iraq which it said that if you saw an American convoy, stay away from it as far as possible. Because you never know what would happen. And it was really a scary thing to share the road with the troops. Hamza knew about that rule and that’s why he got scared and confused when he saw the convoy, his fears and emotions made him act improperly by telling him to speed up and beat that convoy so he could get away from it. The matter that made him looked suspicious and ended up being showered with bullets. The car stopped so as the convoy but Hamza was bleeding inside his car which did not explode. He was not a suicider or anything; he was just a scared poor soul. So they took him thankfully to the nearest hospital and dropped him off there to face his fate, while I was trying to help him over here to get better treatment and care. I was trying to help Hamza as well as the troops to gain hearts and minds by facilitating better opportunity to survive. Operation give and its sponsors was my only choice since I did not know about other organization that may help in treatment back then. Fruitless my efforts were, and we were all late in doing so whereas Hamza’s time was coming to leave to a better place where is always peace and love and no hate.

He was not the only one who lost his life tragically like that my second cousin Ammar who was also another example. Ammar was in his twenties newly wed and enjoying life when he was driving his car down the roads of Baghdad sharing laughs and jokes with his mom and bride paying no attention to anything but his joyful moment. Forgetting about the rule of thumb and passing by the convoy of death. The shower of bullets started as soon as he passed by and the fate of the driver would be soon declared to dead. Ammar left this world without knowing that he was going to leave behind an orphan daughter whose life could have been definitely changed by having a loving father around to care and protect. Those were examples of people whom I knew about and there are many others whom I did not know, met, or heard about.

The question that remains in my mind is that whom to blame for that?

The above are but three examples of shooting by US troops in Iraq that never made the news. God only knows how many there are in total, but the number is not insignificant. Below are some reports that made the news – or at least, made the caption of a photograph.

This one is from May 2009 in Mosul, Iraq:

The US military says its forces have killed an Iraqi civilian who failed to heed warnings and stop his car at a checkpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

… The Monday killing comes nearly a month after US troops shot dead two members of an Iraqi family and detained four others in a raid on their house in the Iraqi city of al-Kut. Following the incident, the US military apologized and expressed sadness over its hostile conduct.

Sometimes, US troops wound someone and it is not fatal. This happened in Hilla, Iraq in May 2009:

U.S. forces on Saturday wounded a farmer northeast of Hilla city, according to a source from Babel province’s police.

“U.S. forces opened fire on a farmer in the Neel area, 5 km northeast of Hilla,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. He pointed out that the injured farmer was admitted to the Hilla surgical hospital.

Here’s another example of US troops wounding someone, again in Hilla in May 2009:

A professor working at al-Qadissiya University in the province of al-Diwaniya was wounded on Sunday morning when U.S. forces opened fire on him to the north of al-Hilla city, a police source in Babel said. “U.S. troops opened fire on a Caprice vehicle carrying al-Qadissiya university professor Abdulhussein Abbas, at al-Mahaweel district, (16 km) north of Hilla, leaving him wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

And here is another story of two civilians being wounded by US shooting in Mosul:

“One civilian and a woman were wounded when U.S. forces opened fire randomly in al-Adl neighborhood in eastern Mosul,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The two were in a bus when the forces opened fire on them,” he added. “The woman is a Mosul University employee,” he noted.

Here’s one that never made a news story, but made it into the caption for a Reuter’s photograph. This happened in May 2009:

A woman, whose her husband was killed during a U.S. raid, cries in her house in Kut, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Baghdad April 26, 2009. Hundreds of Iraqis protested against U.S. forces on Sunday after U.S. soldiers killed a policeman and a woman in an overnight raid that was condemned by the provincial governor. REUTERS/Jaafer Abed (IRAQ CONFLICT POLITICS)

And here is another one that made it into a caption of a photograph, and happened in 2005:

“After the shooting stopped, the American convoy continued driving. I thought only the driver was hit. His injuries were serious but not life threatening. When I looked into the back seat, I found my wife and two children covered in blood. I realized my wife was dead. My daughter was dead. I tried to lift my daughter. Parts of her brain fell from the wound on the side of her head. My baby boy was covered with blood and wounds. He survived. I don’t know why the Americans shot at us.” - AHMED MOAYDA, WITH HIS SON, HAMZA

This one happened in Iraq in July 2009:

NORTHERN IRAQ - U.S forces shot dead a civilian on a highway between the cities of Tikrit and Balad, north of Baghdad, on Friday, the U.S military said. The statement said a U.S. soldier opened fire on a man driving a truck after he failed to heed a signal to stop.

There was another incident in July 2009 in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Apparently, US soldiers had killed three civilians and wounded four more (including two children). This sounds like it might be a ‘caught in the crossfire’ type of incident, but an Iraqi officer tried to detain the US soldiers. I guess the Iraqi officer felt it was excessive force:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said an Iraqi officer who ordered the detention of US soldiers last week after they killed three Iraqis had acted "out of line."

The prime minister told The Washington Post in an interview the officer "did not understand the agreement" governing US military activities since US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities last month.

…… Four Iraqis, including two children, were also wounded in the incident when US forces returned fire and raided nearby houses after insurgents attacked their convoy.

That Iraqi officer is not the only one confused. I am confused too at this so-called sovereignty of Iraq where the US troops stay on their bases, except they don’t. And they are still shooting up Iraqi civilians and raiding Iraqi homes, just like they have been for the past six years.

Here’s what one of the injured children in this shooting had to say:

Neda's 9-year-old son, Sufian, said he was wounded when a bullet grazed his left shoulder.

"I hate the Americans," the boy said quietly. "I never liked them, even before this happened."

That article also states:

Interviews with residents, hospital officials and Iraqi army police commanders in the suburb of Abu Ghraib suggest that conventional wisdom holds the Americans killed civilians.

And here is a statement from the Haditha massacre that killed 24 civilians in their homes after a roadside bomb had killed a US troop (some graphic pictures of this incident at the link). This happened in November 2005.:

“The brains of at least one of the little girls were shoved through fractures in her skull by the impact of a bullet. This is a standard effect of high-velocity rounds fired into the closed cavity of a head. Later that day, when a replacement Marine came in to carry out the bodies, the girl's brains would fall onto his boot.” - William Langewiesche

But, Iraq is not alone. Afghanistan also has had it’s share of US troops shooting civilians, and the number of incidents has gone up lately.

This one happened in Afghanistan in July 2009:

US-led coalition forces have gunned down one civilian and detained 3 others outside Kabul The operation was carried out overnight in the Mohammad Agha district of Logar province, 40 km south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, a government spokesman said.

Din Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the provincial administration, added that the troops have killed a retired former head of the traffic department in Logar province.

…… According to the district governor, Abdul Hamid, the former government employee had no connections to any militant or terrorist groups.

This one also happened in Afghanistan in July 2009:

German soldiers killed two civilians Sunday when their van failed to stop as it approached a roadblock near Kunduz, Afghanistan, defence officials said.

….. A youth was killed in the van and one of the three people seriously wounded by the gunfire died while being rushed to a clinic operated by the German provincial reconstruction team in Kunduz.

And here is another one from Afghanistan in July 2009:

An Afghan girl has been killed in an accidental shooting by Canadian soldiers in Kandahar province.

….. When the driver did not heed signals to stop, a warning shot was fired and the motorcycle changed direction and sped away. Moments later, officials say the soldiers noticed a crowd gathering and discovered that a girl, whose age was not disclosed, had been shot.

And here is a report from Afghanistan in May 2009:

In a separate episode in Farah on Tuesday, one Afghan was killed and another was wounded when an American convoy on a supply mission fired on their car as it approached at high speed, according to the American military. Despite three warning flares and three rounds of warning shots, the car continued to approach the convoy, the military said.

Although an investigation is still under way, Col. Chris Kubik, a military spokesman, said the two Afghans were likely civilians “who did not understand our escalation-of-force procedures.”

I would not understand them either. Particularly if I didn’t see them.

Yes, shooting up civilians is a part of every war. And many of them end up dead or with terrible injuries. And then they are mostly ignored, but if there is any attention paid to them, then we will shed a few tears. And go out tomorrow and shoot some more civilians up.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: US troops shooting up civilians.

WWB: torture

WHAT WAR BRINGS: torture

Where there is war and occupation, there will ALWAYS be torture. ALWAYS. They are destined to go to together, and always have, and always will. If you want to see an end to torture, you must put an end to wars and occupations. Now, you can have torture without wars and occupations, but you will never have wars and occupations without torture.

There have been many, many blog posts written about torture on Daily Kos. They have covered this subject in more depth than I will today, but I wanted to include torture in the serious of WHAT WAR BRINGS because as long as there is war, there will be torture. We cannot end torture without ending war and occupation. Perhaps this man said it better than I can:

There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from the distance. War is only death and destruction. ~ John Cory

Here are some links to Daily Kos blog posts on torture:

Weekly Torture Round-up: Picturegate, MI5, Torturing Doctors

What Matters Isn't the Photos, It's the Torture. (Taguba Speaks)

Torture Autopsy Reveals Death by Enhanced Interrogation

Bagram AFB : America's OTHER Torture Chamber

Eric Holder Meets Asad Jaleel

There are many more. All of these were written in an effort to see accountability for the torture that was done in the last eight years by the US authorities, particularly for the odious men who authorized torture. But torture will not end as long as we have US troops fighting wars and continuing occupations of foreign countries.

By declaring a global ‘war on terror’, Mr. Bush enabled the picking up of suspects from many countries besides Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is one story:

Ex-Detainee Describes His 7 Years at Guantánamo

An aid worker with the Red Crescent, he was originally suspected of being part of a plot to blow up the American and British Embassies in Sarajevo, but charges were dropped. Still, he was sent to Guantánamo and kept there for more than seven years, and was interrogated about his connections to another of the Algerians, Belkacem Bensayah, accused by investigators of being an operative for Al Qaeda in Bosnia. Mr. Bensayah had come to his office at the Red Crescent, and Mr. Boumediene helped Mr. Bensayah’s family, according to The Post. During the 16-night period of interrogation, Mr. Boumediene said that “six or seven” interrogators would take turns questioning him, going from midnight to 5 in the morning, then resuming a few hours later.

The accusations around torture have been going on for awhile. The following is from a Human Rights First report from 2006. It talks about the prisoners who were tortured to death, and how few Americans faced any consequences for their actions.

Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan

Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global “war on terror.” According to the U.S. military’s own classifications, 34 of these cases are suspected or confirmed homicides; Human Rights First has identified another 11 in which the facts suggest death as a result of physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention. In close to half the deaths Human Rights First surveyed, the cause of death remains officially undetermined or unannounced. Overall, eight people in U.S. custody were tortured to death.

Despite these numbers, four years since the first known death in U.S. custody, only 12 detainee deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for any U.S. official. Of the 34 homicide cases so far identified by the military, investigators recommended criminal charges in fewer than two thirds, and charges were actually brought (based on decisions made by command) in less than half. While the CIA has been implicated in several deaths, not one CIA agent has faced a criminal charge. Crucially, among the worst cases in this list – those of detainees tortured to death – only half have resulted in punishment; the steepest sentence for anyone involved in a torture-related death: five months in jail.

To this day, there have been no serious repercussions for the higher up officials for the torture done by US troops or the CIA. The troops at Abu Ghraib in April 2004 who engaged in torture faced some consequences. But the officials in their chain of command did not…. And I will never believe that regular army privates would put photos on their computer as desktop backgrounds of any action that they had been forbidden to do.

Here is the story of two men who were tortured to death in Afghanistan in 2002:

In early December, the unfettered violence finally spilled over into homicide. The first victim was Mullah Habibullah, who was apparently the brother of a Taliban commander from Uruzgan. Stout and well-presented, he was described as “very confident” by the major in charge of the MPs. After kneeing a soldier in the groin during his anal probe [which all prisoners received on arrival], three guards took him to an isolation cell and shackled his wrists to the wire ceiling, and on the following two days, when he was still “uncooperative,” he was given several peroneal strikes by one of the soldiers, whose lawyer later noted that his client was “acting consistently with the standard operating procedure that was in place at the Bagram facility.”

By the fourth day, he was coughing and complaining of chest pains, and his interrogator allowed him to sit on the floor because he was unable to bend his knees to sit down. Despite this, the violence increased the next day, when two MPs gave him nine peroneal strikes while he was handcuffed to the ceiling in one of the isolation cells. When three soldiers came to his cell later in the day and pulled off his hood, he was already dead. A medic told the military investigators, “It looked like he had been dead for a while, and it looked like nobody cared.”

The second victim was a taxi driver named Dilawar, who was brought in the day after the death of Mullah Habibullah. According to his elder brother, he was “a shy man, a very simple man,” who lived a quiet life with his wife, his young daughter and the rest of his family. On the day of his capture, he picked up three passengers and was passing Camp Salerno, a US base, when he was stopped at a checkpoint by soldiers serving under Jan Baz Khan, the nephew of Pacha Khan Zadran, who were looking for the men who had launched a rocket attack on the base earlier that day. Finding a broken walkie-talkie on one of the passengers and an electric stabilizer for a generator in the boot of the car, they delivered the four men to the Americans at Bagram as suspects.

They were among the last men to be implicated by Jan Baz Khan, and Dilawar’s passengers — Parkhudin, a 25-year old farmer, Abdul Rahim, a 27-year old baker, and Zakkim Shah, a 19-year old farmer — were certainly the last three to be sent to Guantánamo on Khan’s advice, because the Americans finally realized that their supposed ally was actually using them for his own ends, and imprisoned him in Bagram in February 2004.

More information about Dilawar can be seen in the movie “Taxi to the Dark Side”. I found it a hard movie to watch. It is, of course, no surprise that someone who is supposed to be an "ally" is really a person with no morals whatsoever. It is no surprise that they would turn in anyone to make a buck or settle a grudge. That too, is part of all occupations: so-called allies who are totally immoral. If they had morals, they would not be cooperating with the occupiers.

Dilawar's picture is above.

Other countries got involved in our torture schemes. Like China, for instance.

Uighur detainees: U.S. helped Chinese interrogate us

U.S. soldiers followed Chinese officials' orders to restrain detainees they said weren't cooperating. One detainee testified that an American told him the harsh treatment he'd received after his interrogation had been at the direction of the Chinese.

In light of what happened to the Uighurs, Mr. Obama’s jokes about them is particularly odious.

And the Brits joined in the torture.

Inquiry launched into deaths of six Iraqi soldiers 'tortured and killed by British troops'

The move follows allegations that a number of Iraqis were tortured and killed by British troops. Six Iraqis were asking the court to order an independent public inquiry into accusations that soldiers may have killed up to 20 captives held after a gun battle in southern Iraq.

It was alleged Iraqi civilians were detained following 'the battle of Danny Boy', a fire fight between British soldiers and Iraqi insurgents near the town of Majar-al-Kabir in Maysan Province on May 14 2004.

I remember back in 2003 and 2004, I was arguing that US troops and British troops should leave Iraq immediately. Time and again, I ran into stupid Americans who argued that we should stay and help out the Iraqi people. Well, we all saw where that lead – to more hideous crimes by the occupation forces, including torture, murder, and various other crimes listed in this series WHAT WAR BRINGS.

It is very difficult for me to be civil to those American idiots who think we should stay in Afghanistan and totally destroy that country too. They are accomplices to torture and murder, and in my opinion, they should be arrested and put on trial.

Stupidity is no excuse.

And, as is always the case, the native government of an occupied country also engages in torture. No surprises here. None. And it is (again) not some rogue element doing this – it is coming from the highest levels of political power, just like it did in the USA.

Iraq government faces claims of prisoner abuse

Allegations of mistreatment have persisted since 2005, when U.S. troops raided an Interior Ministry lockup in a predominantly Shiite area of southeastern Baghdad and found scores of emaciated prisoners. The matter returned to the spotlight after the June 12 assassination of Sunni lawmaker Harith al-Obeidi, an outspoken advocate of prisoner rights.

…… "The cases are as bad as what took place at Abu Ghraib, but it is painful when these things take place in Iraqi prisons," said Sunni lawmaker Salim Abdullah. "We met some of those who were released and saw the scars on their skins. They use different kinds of torture like tying the shoulders and hanging the body, which normally leads to dislocation of the shoulders."

Well, I guess we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that it is not as bad as it was under Saddam….. but somehow, I don’t find that comforting. And I doubt the torture victims do either, since they have to live with the effects of torture for the rest of their lives.

The Lingering Effects of Torture

Today, in his native Pakistan, the sound of approaching footsteps or the sight of someone in a uniform can trigger bad memories and set off a panic attack. The former teacher and father of five now thinks of himself as a suspicious and lonely person.

"I feel like I am in a big prison and still in isolation. I have lost all my life," he told psychologists working for the non-profit Physicians for Human Rights. They diagnosed him as having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe depression.

Newly emerging research on large numbers of torture survivors shows that anecdotal stories like these are common and suggests that "psychological" forms of torture — often thought to be milder than the direct infliction of physical pain — can in fact have serious long-term mental health consequences.

And there is one difference between Saddam and US torture – Saddam did not hold them for so long.

"Now I Will Die": Beaten and Held in Prison Without Charge by the U.S. in Iraq

Clifford Acree, the Marine pilot tortured under Saddam, was freed after 47 days of captivity. Some prisoners at Camp Cropper continue to languish without charges six years after the invasion, and many more at Guantánamo have been held for nearly eight years. Last week The Washington Post reported that inmates at the U.S.-run Bagram in Afghanistan have been protesting their indefinite detention by refusing to leave their cells since at least July 1 for showers or exercise.

Yes, that brings up another issue – it appears the torture and abuse is still going on, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

Mr. President, we are still torturing?

The Bagram detention center itself has continued to operate with currently more than 600 prisoners and is being planned to expand its capacity to more than 1,100 as President Obama sends more troops into Afghanistan.

In a continuation of the Bush-Cheney practice of deliberately keeping certain groups of suspects far away from our courts and our laws, as well as hidden from monitoring by international human rights groups, the Obama administration has told a federal court that our prisoners at Bagram, many held for more than six years without charges, have no rights under our laws.

Freed Guantanamo Detainees Claim Post-Obama Mistreatment

Boumediene claims that the abuse and humiliation of prisoners continues in Guantanamo and that detainees there are still harassed and tortured. According to Boumediene, a special guard unit continues to beat prisoners to get them out of their cells, and any official claims that such treatment has stopped are untrue.

The US is trying to destroy the evidence of torture.

Former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has launched an urgent legal attempt to prevent the US courts from destroying crucial evidence that he says proves he was abused while being held at the detention camp, the Guardian has learned. The evidence is said to consist of a photograph of Mohamed, a British resident, taken after he was severely beaten by guards at the US navy base in Cuba. The image, now held by the Pentagon, had been put on his cell door, he says.

Yes, it is all pretty depressing. We tortured in the past under the Bush administration, and there is every indication that we are still torturing. But that is what war brings: torture by the combatants, the criminals, the government and military of the occupied country. I have not covered torture by the criminal elements, but I am sure you have heard of it. Where ever there is war and occupation, there will be an out of control criminal element, and one thing you can count on them doing is torture.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: torture.

WWB: shattered families

WHAT WAR BRINGS: shattered families

Nearly every family in Iraq in the years 2003 to 2009 is a shattered family. Almost none of them are untouched by the refugee crisis, the poverty, the overwhelming violence and the high number of people killed and injured by the war that came to their country.

As Fisk said in 2006:

A Terrible Legacy of Hatred and Death

….. This, of course, is the hell we have bequeathed to all the Arab peoples of Iraq, this nightmare of genocidal threat and murder. All for non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

And, here is a more in depth story of an Iraqi family visited by rape and murder in 2006:

Killings shattered dreams of rural Iraqi family

The beautiful, dark-haired girl in the photograph stands near a wall in pre-invasion Iraq. What is unseen and now lost, her family says, is her dream of moving to the big city and getting married.

…. Al-Janabi family members testified at the guilt and sentencing phases of Green's trial, telling jurors through an interpreter about the al-Janabi family — Kassem, Fakhriya, Abeer, and Hadeel, who were killed in the attack, and two boys, Mohammed and Ahmed, who weren't home during the slayings. The family was close and dreamed of owning a home, sending the four children to school and living in peace, said a cousin, Abu Farras.

Kassem al-Janabi, a thin man whom jurors saw in a photo from his wedding day wearing a slightly too-large suit, was so fond of his sister Ameena's children he named his own girls after them. He called the oldest Abeer, which means "fragrance of flowers," and the younger girl Hadeel, which means "sound of the water," Ameena said.

….. Mohammed and Ahmed returned from school the afternoon of the attack to find smoke billowing from the windows. After going to their uncle's home, they returned to the house to find their father shot in the head, mother shot in the chest, Hadeel shot in the face and Abeer's remains burning. Since then, Mohammed and Ahmed said, they haven't gone to school. "I refuse to go," Mohammed said. "I don't have the mood to study."

Abeer, the “fragrance of flowers” and her sister Hadeel, the “sound of water” had their lives snuffed out that day in a horrific manner by US troops. The ones responsible did receive some punishment, but only the ringleader got life in prison. Let’s hope he never gets a parole.

And then there was the massacre in Haditha in 2005:

In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre

Then one of the Marines took charge and began shouting, said Fahmi, who was watching from his roof. Fahmi said he saw the Marine direct other Marines into the house closest to the blast, about 50 yards away.

It was the home of 76-year-old Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali. Although he had used a wheelchair since diabetes forced a leg amputation years ago, Ali was always one of the first on his block to go out every morning, scattering scraps for his chickens and hosing the dust of the arid western town from his driveway, neighbors said.

In the house with Ali and his 66-year-old wife, Khamisa Tuma Ali, were three of the middle-aged male members of their family, at least one daughter-in-law and four children -- 4-year-old Abdullah, 8-year-old Iman, 5-year-old Abdul Rahman and 2-month-old Asia.

Marines entered shooting, witnesses recalled. Most of the shots -- in Ali's house and two others -- were fired at such close range that they went through the bodies of the family members and plowed into walls or the floor, physicians at Haditha's hospital said.

A daughter-in-law, identified as Hibbah, escaped with Asia, survivors and neighbors said. Iman and Abdul Rahman were shot but survived. Four-year-old Abdullah, Ali and the rest died.

Ali took nine rounds in the chest and abdomen, leaving his intestines spilling out of the exit wounds in his back, according to his death certificate.

The Marines moved to the house next door, Fahmi said.

Inside were 43-year-old Khafif, 41-year-old Aeda Yasin Ahmed, an 8-year-old son, five young daughters and a 1-year-old girl staying with the family, according to death certificates and neighbors.

The Marines shot them at close range and hurled grenades into the kitchen and bathroom, survivors and neighbors said later. Khafif's pleas could be heard across the neighborhood. Four of the girls died screaming.

Only 13-year-old Safa Younis lived -- saved, she said, by her mother's blood spilling onto her, making her look dead when she fell, limp, in a faint.

Townspeople led a Washington Post reporter this week to the girl they identified as Safa. Wearing a ponytail and tracksuit, the girl said her mother died trying to gather the girls. The girl burst into tears after a few words. The older couple caring for her apologized and asked the reporter to leave.

Moving to a third house in the row, Marines burst in on four brothers, Marwan, Qahtan, Chasib and Jamal Ahmed. Neighbors said the Marines killed them together.

Marine officials said later that one of the brothers had the only gun found among the three families, although there has been no known allegation that the weapon was fired.

Yet more children killed inside their own homes by the US military. Just another incident of many such incidents. There is a video posted in the first comment below of Safa Younis and her recollection of what happened to her family on that dreadful day. Her entire town paid close attention to the trials concerning this incident, and were dismayed but not surprised when charges were dismissed against the Marines involved in the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha. I was not surprised either. I was further not surprised when this massacre inspired almost no Americans to question what we were doing in Iraq and what we hoped to accomplish there. The pro-war folks don’t seem to give a damn how many innocents get killed in our quest to provide “freedom and democracy” around the world. They did not care about the massacre in Haditha in 2006 and they do not care about the massacres in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan happening today. Most of them do not even NOTICE these massacres, and when their attention is called to them, they deny them. Or hand you some bullshit about how ‘war is messy’ but somehow needed to make the world a better place. I think it is too bad that they cannot swap places with these victims and get a fuller understanding of the evil they have caused.

But it is not just the US military shattering families in Iraq. The following is a story of a family who lived through kidnapping, beatings and murder back in 2007.

Victims of the death squads: One family's harrowing story of kidnap and murder in Iraq

Anyone who believes that the American-led "surge" in Iraq is succeeding should hear the story of Mohammed and Nadia al-Hayali. Both fluent in English – Nadia, who was born in Montpellier, also speaks French – they were the kind of well-educated, modern Iraqis who should have been the driving force behind a new secular democracy. Yet Mohammed is believed dead at the hands of kidnappers who seized the whole family, and Nadia is living the miserable half-life of the exile with their two children in Jordan.

…..I learned what happened next in a phone call from Nadia in April this year. Her voice was flat, emotionless. The family had been kidnapped by an armed gang, she said. She and the two children, Dahlia, eight, and Abdullah, 10, had eventually been freed, but Mohammed had been kept captive, despite the payment of a ransom. It was not until this summer, when I saw Nadia and the children in Amman, the capital of Jordan, that the final tragedy came out.

"Do you remember how it was, even a few years ago?" asked Nadia. The confident, articulate woman I remembered had gone, and the trauma of recent months was written on her pale, drawn face. "We thought things couldn't get worse, violence will ease off, things will get better. How wrong we were."

The mother and two children were released by the kidnappers, after a harrowing ordeal. They returned home and paid a $10,000 ransom, but never saw or heard from the father of the family again. The mother and two children fled to Jordan, where they live as refugees. Here is how that report ends:

The greatest tragedy is that the story of the Hayalis is far from unique. No police report was ever made on Mohammed's kidnapping and probable murder, so it is not included in the figures purporting to show that the "surge" is working. The same is true of vast numbers of deaths, because going to the police, infiltrated and dominated by militias in many districts of Baghdad, is considered futile or downright dangerous.

And there are thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of stories like the above – stories of US troops shattering families, of armed gangs kidnapping and murdering families, of human destruction on a vast scale. But some of the stories do not even make it into the news.

Photo: An Iraqi woman, right, grieves for her husband and his brother, with her mother-in-law, left, at a hospital morgue in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2007. The women say the two brothers were killed in an overnight raid by U.S. troops in a village 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Baqouba. There was no report by the U.S. military about the raid. (AP Photo)

I don’t have any stories from Afghanistan and Pakistan (from a lack of time, not a lack of material), but you can bet your last dollar that the very same things are happening there. I did find a video of a young Afghan girl who lost her entire family in a coalition bombing earlier this year. She also lost her arm and a leg. Her name is Grana and she is 12 years old. The video is posted below.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: shattered families.

Video report of the Haditha massacre:

Afghan girl hurt by coalition bombing:

WWB: killing of nonviolent protesters

WHAT WAR BRINGS: the killing of nonviolent protesters

Pictures of non-violent protest in Iraq.

And there are many, many more pictures of protests in Iraq – peaceful, nonviolent protests. They started right after the invasion and they have continued to this day. They often involve burning the US flag, but I have not seen any burning of cars or buildings. In April 2004, there was a massive protest in Baghdad where they burned Blair, Bush and Saddam in effigy.

In this blog post, I am going to present only one example of nonviolent protesters being killed or injured by US troops. I suspect that there are MANY MORE, but do not have the evidence to refute US claims that the protests were violent instead of nonviolent.

But in Fallujah in April 2003, it is pretty well documented by various news agencies that there were nonviolent protests against the US troops who were occupying a local school against the wishes of the local people. This happened during a time when foreign reporters were still able to cover the events in Iraq, because the violence was still at a low level then.

Here’s a report from Reuters:

U.S. soldiers killed at least 13 Iraqi civilians who marched on a school west of Baghdad to demand the troops leave the building and get out of Iraq, doctors and witnesses said on Tuesday.

Medics said 75 were also wounded in the march by more than 200 protesters on the school after Muslim prayers on Monday evening in Falluja, 30 miles from the Iraqi capital. Some witnesses put the death toll as high as 17.

Residents said the marchers were unarmed. U.S. forces said the troops opened fire only after they were shot at by a group of gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles.

Some of the dead were not taking part in the protest. The journalists on the scene could not find any evidence to back up the US claims that they were being fired on. Above is a photo of one of the injured.

Photo: An Iraqi man lies injured in his hospital bed surrounded by his parents in Falluja hospital, 50 kms (30 miles) west of Baghdad, April 29, 2003. U.S. troops shot dead at least 13 Iraqis during an anti-American protest in the town overnight, witnesses said on Tuesday, in a clash likely to inflame anger at the U.S. presence in Iraq. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: the killing of nonviolent protesters.

Quote: Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!: Helen Keller. - Source: Told to an audience at Carnegie Hall one year before the United States entered World War I.

WWB: kidnapping

WHAT WAR BRINGS: kidnappings

This is a brief overview of who does the kidnapping, who is a victim of kidnapping, and what might be motivating this criminal activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, kidnapping is not a well documented event in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Sometimes we hear of the kidnapping, most of the time we don’t. Sometimes we hear of the outcome or possible motivations……..most of the time we don’t. Sometimes we know who did the kidnapping, most of the time we don’t. First, we have to establish that the US military, US contractors, the Iraqi government, al Qaeda, insurgents, common criminals and God-only-knows-who-else is involved in kidnapping. (I include civilians detained without charges or trials under the umbrella of “kidnapping victim”. The US military did a lot of that.)

In Iraq in the year 2006, kidnapping was widespread. Some are detained for a short period, some are never seen again.

Dozens abducted from Baghdad street

About 25 people have reportedly been released hours after being kidnapped off the street in a busy commercial district of Baghdad. Witnesses said police officers, shopkeepers and bystanders were among at least 30 people seized by armed men in military uniforms. Sunni and Shia Muslims were abducted, police said The kidnappers drove into the Sanak area of the capital in about 10 vehicles and began rounding up people from the shops and the street.

....... The Iraqi capital is plagued by daily kidnappings and in a similar case last month men in camouflage uniforms abducted dozens of staff and visitors from the higher education ministry.

The claim is made that it was easy to buy these uniforms, but I think it was also true that there were Iraqi police and Iraqi army actually doing some of these kidnappings. And it is not just in Iraq where men in military uniforms kidnap people. It happens in Afghanistan also.

Afghanistan's kidnapping industry

Six or seven men wearing military-style uniforms approached businessman Mohammed Easa and then pistol-whipped him. They dragged the money trader - who was by then barely conscious - into their vehicle and sped off. "When I woke up, I was tied up, and blindfolded," says Mr Easa, recalling his ordeal seven months ago. "They beat me and I thought any second I might die."

Mr Easa's kidnap is not an isolated incident - on average a businessman is kidnapped at least once a week in Afghanistan. According to the Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce (AICC), 173 businessmen have been kidnapped across the country in the last three years: a number of them have been killed.

In the stories below, there are allegations of foreign criminal collusion in the kidnappings. There are also allegations of Afghan government involvement, as in Iraq. At the very least, the Iraqi and Afghani government are unable to stop this growing epidemic.

Kidnap victims might be foreigners, such as this kidnapping of an American women in January 2008 in Kandahar.

And in Iraq, they might be foreigners who are long term residents of Iraq, such as Margaret Hassan.

She was kidnapped in the fall of 2004 and was shot dead in less than a month. This is one of the few cases where the kidnapper was arrested and tried in Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court. He was sentenced to life in prison. He claimed he was tortured into confessing to the crime. Another man was also convicted of this horrible crime.

Or just regular people:

Their mother, Nahida Jabbar, was kidnapped along with her sister a year and half ago during sectarian violence in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood while the two were visiting their own mother. Neither has been heard from since.

And kidnapping of young children is still going on in Iraq.

“On Sunday, Wassit police forces freed a three-year-old child from her kidnaper in Kut city,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

The operation has been carried out in light of intelligence tips, the source noted, adding that the kidnaper was a serviceman working in Basra city, who held the girl for ransom.

And here is another story of a child recently rescued in Iraq.

Khidir was just 6 years old when he was savagely ripped away from his family, kidnapped by al Qaeda operatives in Iraq. "They beat me with a shovel, they pulled my teeth out with pliers, they would go like this and pull it," said Khidir, now 8, demonstrating with his hands. "And they would make me work on the farm gathering carrots." What followed was even more horrific, an ordeal that would last for two years in captivity.

This child was rescued about six months ago, according to the CNN report. He was kidnapped because his father is a police officer in Iraq.

And kidnapping, and murdering the victims in Iraq, continues to this day.

MOSUL - Police found the body of a merchant with bullet wounds to the head and chest in western Mosul, police said, adding that the merchant was kidnapped a few days ago.

And here is a story of kidnapping and rape in Afghanistan, which is also quite common.

He pointed to two compounds of neighbors where pre-teen children had been abducted by police to be used for the local practice of "bachabazi," or sex with pre-pubescent boys.

"If the boys were out in the fields, the police would come and rape them," he said. "You can go to any police base and you will see these boys. They hold them until they are finished with them and then let the child go."

And who are the kidnappers? Well, they could be almost anyone, even the police. The majority are, undoubtedly, Iraqis and Afghan people. Over the last six years in Iraq, kidnapping was a profitable business. It was carried out by insurgents to get funding, and carried out by common criminals.

According to this report, it was very widespread in Iraq in 2006.

The photo caption for the above photo reads: An Iraqi woman holds a sign reading, "We demand Maliki's government to work hard in order to release our kidnapped children" during a protests in December 2006. Dozens of Baghdad residents are kidnapped almost daily, after leaving their houses, their offices or just finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. (AFP/File/Sabah Arar). I cannot imagine what these parents have gone through.

Kidnapping was done by American contractors also.

Xe Contractors Accused of Murder, Kidnapping

A just-amended lawsuit alleges six additional instances of unprovoked attacks on Iraqi civilians by Blackwater contractors.

Three people, including a 9-year-old boy, are said to have died.

Also added to the suit is a racketeering count accusing Blackwater founder Erik Prince of running an ongoing criminal enterprise involved in, among other things, kidnapping and child prostitution.

...... The companies are accused of carrying out three or more kidnappings using three airplanes, identified in the suit by their tail numbers. Susan Burke, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said Wednesday that the kidnappings appear to have been so-called "extraordinary renditions" in which suspects are taken to other countries for interrogation.

The US military is also involved in kidnapping, which is clearly evident in all the civilians who are detained with out charges or trial. Some are sent to Guantanamo, some kept in prisons in Iraq and some in prisons in Afghanistan.

This is just one story:

On January 17, 2002, Boumediene's hands and feet were placed in shackles, and he was put on a military plane en route to Guantanamo Bay. It was a time of high anxiety, and the Bush administration was taking no chances.

After 7 ½ long years, this man was released without charges or apologies. He was working for the Red Crescent at the time of his arrest. There was no evidence to hold him in the first place. And while Guantanamo prison may close, the prison in Afghanistan is growing.

And there have been numerous children who were kidnapped and detained by US troops.

The best kept secret of the Bush's war crimes is that thousands of children have been imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise denied rights under the Geneva Conventions and related international agreements. Yet both Congress and the media have strangely failed to identify the very existence of child prisoners as a war crime. In the Islamic world, however, there is no such silence.

And the Iraqi government itself was involved in kidnapping. The “MOHR” is the Ministry of Human Rights in this report from 2006:

With thousands of Iraqis kidnapped and arrested over the past three years, often in murky circumstances, the MOHR has become one more place Iraqis look for missing relatives. More than 34,000 Iraqis, according to MOHR figures, are held at one of the dozens of prisons across the country run by either the US military or the Iraqi Ministries of Interior, Defense, and Justice.

The system has become more organized in recent months, but prisoners are still "lost," says one Iraqi official.

There is, at this point in time, an effort by Iraqi government officials to search for the missing in at least one province:

A committee was formed on Tuesday in Ninewa under the governor’s second deputy to check for missing people in the province who went missing during the deteriorated security conditions in the past years, a media source said.

At least someone is making an effort.

And there is at least one group working to help the victims of kidnappings who have survived. Direct Aid Iraq is helping to resettle the family of Ali, a three year old who was kidnapped and tortured and then rescued after a ransom was paid. Please help Direct Aid Iraq if you can.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: kidnappings.

A letter to the NYT

In Ross Douthat’s column “The War We’d Like to Forget” he makes this
statement: “But the anti-war side often seemed far too willing to
leave Iraq to the furies, and far too reckless about the strategic
consequences of beating a retreat.”

This anti-war person felt that having the US military leave in the
summer of 2003 would have returned Iraq to stability by the end of the
calendar year. I believe that the fact that US authorities divided up
Iraqis by sect and race for political offices helped lead to the
sectarian violence we saw in later years. I believe that the US
forces themselves, in an effort to protect themselves from the Iraqis
who decided to become our enemies, killed and injured vast numbers of
innocent civilians. I believe the US forces in the country attracted
foreign terrorists to Iraqi soil.

Whether my beliefs were true or not we will never ever know, since the
US military is still in Iraq.

What we do know is that 20% of the population of Iraq is now
displaced, and probably another 4% is now dead. Probably at least
half of all Iraqis have suffered some grievous harm in the last few
years.

And we know that having the US military in the country DID NOT PREVENT
any of these horrific atrocities from happening. In short, we know
that the US military did not make life better for the majority of
Iraqis by the 2003 invasion and occupation.

So, the comment above about anti-war people being reckless shows the
height of hypocrisy. It was the pro-war people who were willing to
leave Iraq to the furies, and even today refuse to recognize that they
have wrought.

And you can bet your last dollar that the vast majority of Iraqi
people will never be grateful for all this destruction, even if they
do end up with a better government, which is doubtful.

Vets for Peace Convention

A bunch of folks that I really admire are meeting up in the DC area for the Veterans for Peace Convention.

Wish I was there!

Opening ceremony includes:

Opening Ceremony featuring The Honorable Donna Edwards, US Rep (D.- MD), Raed Jarrar, American Friends Service Committee, Camilo Mejia, IVAW, and David Barsamian, Director of Alternative Radio, Speaker Mike Ferner, VFP national president; M.C. Ellen Barfield, VFP chapter 105 (Baltimore).

More information here.

Roots & Rhythms class at Augusta July 2009 Part Two

Roots & Rhythms class at Augusta July 2009