US helicopter attacks Iraqi school killing 7 children

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Roadside bomb hits Australians in Iraq
May 12, 2007 04:33pm

A ROADSIDE bomb in Iraq damaged an Australian miliary vehicle but two soldiers on board were not injured, the Defence Department said today.

The incident happened last night during a patrol in southern Iraq's Dhi Qar Province, the department said.

A statement said the Bushmaster Infantry Mobility Vehicle was immobilised by the explosion near An Nasiriyah but had not been seriously damaged.

It has since been recovered and the two soldiers remain on duty.

Iraq's children between despair and death
One in every eight children will not reach the age of five in Iraq.

There are no oxygen masks, no medicines for such basic afflictions as diarrhea. There are no doctors in Iraq because the security situation under occupation is such that ALL doctors have been targeted by militia, foreign terrorists and the US military.

"According to the report, Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 percent since 1990. Some 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths were among newborn babies in the first month of life," says a report published by the US-based SAVE THE CHILDREN Organization.

Consider Iraq's future when you weigh the above statistics to the fact that 60 percent of Iraq's population is comprised of children.

The plight of Iraq's children began well before the March 2003 invasion. If you raise your head a tad and look at the intro to this blog, you will see Albright's famous statements that killing half a million Iraqi children is insignificant when compared to the zealous pursuit of foreign policy.

That was more than 10 years ago and today the statement still holds true.

Iraq's children not only suffer from malnutrition but have also exhibited severe trauma-based disorders because of the daily violence that has gripped the country since the great war of liberation and democracy.

During the war of liberation, thousands of Iraqi children were killed, heads severed, limbs amputated, disfigured, burned thanks to the precision bombing of US forces.

"Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq, describes what happened in Hilla as "a horror, dozens of severed bodies and scattered limbs". Initially, Murtada Abbas, the director of Hilla hospital, was questioned about the bombing only by Iraqi journalists - and only Arab cameramen working for Reuters and Associated Press were allowed on site. What they filmed is horror itself - the first images shot by Western news agencies of what is also happening on the Iraqi frontlines: babies cut in half, amputated limbs, kids with their faces a web of deep cuts caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs. Nobody in the West will ever see these images because they were censored by editors in Baghdad: only a "soft" version made it to worldwide TV distribution," reported ASIA TIMES in April 2003.

See my previous post on war propaganda.

Today throughout Iraq, children play in raw sewage. Water is cut and many families are forced to draw polluted and tainted well water. So desperate is the situation that this video from YouTube highlights how clean water is becoming a commodity as valuable as gold in some Iraqi districts.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9A_vxIOB-I&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Ftruth%2Dabout%2Diraqis2%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F[/youtube]

There is nothing but cruelty in the asinine banter and laughter of the US soldier who taunts Iraq's children this way. What have they done other than be born Iraqi - once again, a stark reminder of how war propaganda renders the Iraqi person inhuman.

Notice the street, it is strewn with garbage and sewage.

This is the new Iraq, this is the Iraq of the liberator, and this is the face of the liberator which some Iraqis are begging to remain in Iraq and protect the people.

Dahr Jamail, who has written extensively about Iraq, filed this report from there several months ago:

Social researcher Nuha Khalil from the Iraqi Institute for Childhood Development in Baghdad told IPS that young girls are now expressing their repressed sadness often by playing the role of a mother who takes care of her small daughter.

"Looking around, they only see gatherings of mourning ladies who lost their beloved ones," said Khalil. "Our job of comforting these little girls and remedying the damage within them is next to impossible."

More can be found here, but I also thought these to be pertinent:

"Children are the most affected by the tragic events," Dr. Khalil al-Kubaissi, a psychotherapist in Fallujah told IPS. "Their fragile personalities cannot face the loss of a parent or the family house along with all the horror that surrounds them. The result is catastrophic, and Iraqi children are in serious danger of lapsing into loneliness or violence."

The difficulties of children have become particularly noticeable this year. "The only things they have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the U.S. occupation," Maruan Abdullah, spokesman for the Association of Psychologists of Iraq told reporters at the launch of a study in February this year.

The report warned that "children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnapping and explosions."

The literature on Iraq's debilitated and destroyed children is overwhelming and heartbreaking. An article in the Christian Science Monitor in August 2004 said:

A report run on the German TV program Report Mainz (video) in July on the same topic included an interview with US Sgt. Samuel Provance. Sgt. Provance was one of the original whistleblowers who said US troops were abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Provance has since been transferred to Germany. He says he was ordered by his superiors not to talk to the media any more. In May, Provance said he was told by Army officials that he may be prosecuted because his statements were " not in the national interest."

Provance, however, did talk to the German TV crew about the treatment of children at Abu Ghraib. He alleges that children were sometimes abused in order to force their parents to give information to coalition authorities. Provance spoke about one incident in which he says he witnessed this happening with a 16 year-old boy.

He was full of fear, very alone. He had the thinnest little arms that I have ever seen. His whole body shook. His wrists were so thin that we could not put handcuffs on him. As soon as I saw him for the first time and led him to the interrogation, I felt sorry for him. The interrogation specialists doused him with water and put him in a truck. Then they drove with him throughout the night, and at that time it was very, very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his likewise imprisoned father. With him [the father] they had tried out other interrogation methods. But they had not succeeded in making him talk. The interrogation specialists told me that after the father had seen his son in that condition, it broke his heart. He wept and promised to tell them what they wanted to know.

Finally, a word to other Iraqi bloggers. Write, speak out - raise awareness of the horror chamber your country has become. Languishing in Amman or Los Angeles or writing petitions does not absolve you of the terrible burden you are entrusted with as English-speaking Iraqis.

There are those who come to this blog or email me calling me a Baathist and an Al-Qaeda sympathizer. I have no love for either. I have never been either.

There are others who call me a Nazi because I speak the truth no one wants to. I write of the conditions in my country because the ONLY way things can improve is when the world community wake up, when conscientious Americans wake up, when beguiled Iraqis wake up and are made aware of the problems, mistakes and crimes committed in Iraq.

Only when they understand the depth of the problem can they begin to find solutions.

This is sad, but what can a Canadian High-school student like myself do? Nothing, poor iraqis....

If everyone felt as unhardened by the propaganda and brainwashing as you do there would not be a problem

I DON'T "SUPPORT THE TROOPS"
And I don't support any "benchmarks" for the Iraqis

By Nick Mottern, Director, ConsumersforPeace.org

This is a letter I am sending today to my person in Congress, Nita Lowey D-NY. I attempted to run against Ms. Lowey in the 1990 Democratic primary because of her support of U.S. attempts to subdue Central American countries. Here we are 17 years later with our hooks into Iraq, with Ms. Lowey's support. Attempts to meet with her over the last two months have failed.

Dear Ms. Lowey:

I am writing to let you know that I do not "support the troops" in Iraq, and that you are not representing me when you vote more money to keep "the troops" in Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands of troops have been sent to Iraqi blinded by lies. There they have been and continue to be routinely ordered to take actions against Iraqis that violate not only our Constitution and international law but virtually every norm of religious and civil society. All "the troops" should know better.

I do not want any of my tax money to support this kind of behavior, regardless of the goal. I feel no sense of loyalty or obligation to individuals or commanders who are daily destroying Iraqi life and culture. In fact, I feel a need to take every non-violent step that I can think of to end this behavior.

Ms. Lowey, you know very well that the intention of sending our military into Iraq is to establish a base of deadly force for our long-term manipulation of the Middle East, in part to ensure our oil companies will have long-term, extremely profitable access to oil.

When you and your Democratic and Republican colleagues vote money to "support the troops" you know that you are taking advantage in a dispicable way of the innocence, ignorance, good will and sense of loyalty of "the troops" and the American public.

Furthermore, how can you allow to go unchallenged all this talk in Congress about the need for Iraqis to meet benchmarks? After killing more than half a million Iraqis, and with the abject suffering being visited on Iraqis by the United States each and every minute, what possible right does the United States have to even make a polite suggestion to one single Iraqi? What is due from America is simply immediate withdrawal, apology and commitment to reparations, with the latter totally managed by Iraqis.

Sincerely,

Nick Mottern

Hastings on Hudson, New York

Posted May 9, 2007

Sorry, I can't respond to everything right now.

This is a basic mistake by whoever wrote the article. There is not "no doctors" in Iraq. Other articles clearly contradict this. Aso, the U.S. doesn't target civilian doctors.



Yet before he leaked it to the press the Pentagon had already announced in a statement they were launching an investigation into what had occurred at Abu Graib. The media only became extremely concerned when they got a hold of the photographs.



I'm not going to defend the abuse at abu Graib, but there are 16-year olds fighting within the insurgency. That doesn't provide any justification, but it does provide context.



There is very little that can be made of this information other then he was abused. The account is somewhat vague, and unspecific ("other interrogation methods" rather then mentioning, for example, methods of brutal torture). This, certainly, isn't to suggest that what occurred here was justified, and apparently the military didn't think otherwise since they proceeded with criminal proceedings.



Iraqi Bloggers Central. It has allot of links.



Fair enough, although you and I clearly come from differing perspectives.



I could proceed on some long boring thing on the evolution of, differences between, and similarity of the National Socialist German Worker's Party and the Baath parties of Iraq and Syria, and also touch on other topics in between; but...nah not this time.



Hmm...for some reason I wasn't sure what beguiled meant, although I know I did before...OK, looked it up...I could probably maybe sort of agree with that in a different context (although maybe not so generally as applied as "Iraqis" rather then individual persons/groups inside Iraq), otherwise I find this statement completely non-objectionable.

Manalitwist,

waiting for a reply from you is like waiting for a bus. None come for ages and then they all come at once - lol.

But back to the soldiers,

Perhaps there are 1 or 2 who like to shoot people just to watch them die, but for all others, I am sure if they shoot a civilian, they have a reason or else its a genuine mistake.

The real crime was making up stories about WMDs and lying about the reason for going to war. The fact is soldiers were sent to Iraq based on a pack of lies.

Actually the real crime is pointing a gun at another human being and pulling the trigger. That goes for all people, everywhere.

I do not agree, it involves context. If a soldier in an army kills another soldier in an army on the field of battle, that is not a crime. If you shoot someone defending your self, it is not a crime. I also don't think it is unethical in either case.

EDIT: Removed something because I don't want to start a multi-directional debate.

I hope you guys will understand my opinion and I'll only state it once. Suddam was a better man than what he was made out to be. Anarchiac places like iraq need a strong leader to bind them together, Suddam killing people kept them in line, and thus kept more people from dying. Once suddam died, iraq got screwed.

Hussein was regularly described as some kind genocidal maniac in the months leading up to the war. The media portrayed him as a blood-thirsty tyrant who maintained his control through a program of murder and terror. It was often reported that his victims numbered in the hundreds of thousands. I recall watching one press conference where Donald Rumsfeld said it was likely that close to a million Iraqis had been killed by Hussein. Later the U.S put Saddam on trail and convicted him for killing 148 Iraqis after an assassination attempt on him in 1982. That was all they could come up with.

Last edited by Jacob_Landshire on 14 May 2007, 7:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have seen the lion cages filled with bones of the rape victims.

I have seen the blood on the walls of the prison where the Chinese workers were butchered to keep the buildings secrets safe.

Ask the soccor team if they miss Uday.

Muslims are a bunch of backward ass 2nd century bastards who want to keep women uneducated so they can dominate them. The majority of these Muslim countries are worthless and should be wiped out by Christians. This IS A HOLY WAR. Muslims have been causing problems since time immoriable.

Lets kill them all.

Allah licks donkey balls.

All of you people talking to this piece of s**t Manaltwist are f****d.

He is a f*****g coward and I would love to put a bullet up his ass and watch him writhe in pain before dying slowly.

but apart from that, he is ok

crazedchef, the war is already lost. It was lost two years ago. Within two years time the U.S. will probably be out of Iraq.

Hussein was a secularist. His interpretation of Islam was fairly liberal. Tariq Azzis, Saddam's foreign minister, was a Christian. The people who take over Iraq when America leaves will rule the country with a much stricter form of Islam than Hussein ever did.

Didn’t the US barbecue a bunch of its own people in Waco Texas. . . .