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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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November 26th,
2007 - Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians |
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Iraq Has Only Militants, No
Civilians “Tactical Perception Management” in Iraq By Dahr Jamail Atlantic Free Press November 26, 2007 "Sometimes I think it
should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to
know him before you can shoot him." - Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H Name them. Maim them. Kill
them. From the beginning of the
American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the U.S. military
have only killed "militants," "criminals,"
"suspected insurgents," "IED [Improvised Explosive Device]
emplacers," "anti-American fighters," "terrorists,"
"military age males," "armed men,"
"extremists," or "al-Qaeda." The pattern for reporting on
such attacks has remained the same from the early years of the occupation to
today. Take a helicopter attack on October 23rd of this year near the village
of Djila, north of Samarra. The U.S. military claimed it had killed 11 among
"a group of men planting a roadside bomb." Only later did a
military spokesperson acknowledge that at least six of the dead were
civilians. Local residents claimed that those killed were farmers, that there
were children among them, and that the number of dead was greater than 11. Here is part of the
statement released by U.S. military spokeswoman in northern Iraq, Major Peggy
Kageleiry: "A suspected insurgent
and improvised explosive device cell member was identified among the killed
in an engagement between Coalition Forces and suspected IED emplacers just
north of Samarra.... During the engagement, insurgents used a nearby house as
a safe haven to re-engage coalition aircraft. A known member of an IED cell
was among the 11 killed during the multiple engagements. We send condolences
to the families of those victims and we regret any loss of life." As usual, the version
offered by locals was vastly different. Abdul al-Rahman Iyadeh, a relative of
some of the victims, revealed that the "group of men" attacked were
actually three farmers who had left their homes at 4:30 A.M. to irrigate
their fields. Two were killed in the initial helicopter attack and the
survivor ran back to his home where other residents gathered. The second air
strike, he claimed, destroyed the house killing 14 people. Another witness
told reporters that four separate houses were hit by the helicopter. A local
Iraqi policeman, Captain Abdullah al-Isawi, put the death toll at 16 - seven
men, six women, and three children, with another 14 wounded. As often happens, the U.S.
military, once challenged, declared that an "investigation" of the
incident was under way. And So It Goes On October 21st, two days
before that helicopter strike near Djila, American soldiers, again aided by
helicopters, but this time in a heavily populated urban neighborhood, claimed
to have killed 49 "armed men" in a "gun battle" in Sadr
City, a sprawling Shi'ite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. Then, too, the
military initially insisted "no civilians were killed or injured."
A Shi'ite citizens' council and other Shi'ite groups responded that many
innocent bystanders had died. Among the 13 dead mentioned in initial reports
by local Iraqi police were three children and a woman. Other Iraqi
authorities announced that 69 people had been injured. The U.S. military had no
explanation for the widely varying American and Iraqi tallies of casualties. The official American
account went like this: "The operation's objective was an individual
reported to be a long time Special Groups member specializing in kidnapping
operations. Intelligence indicates he is a well-known cell leader and has
previously sought funding from Iran to carry out high profile kidnappings.
Upon arrival, the ground force began to clear a series of buildings in the
target area and received sustained heavy fire from adjacent structures, from
automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades, or RPGs. Responding in
self-defense, Coalition forces engaged, killing an estimated 33 criminals.
Supporting aircraft was also called in to engage enemy personnel maneuvering
with RPGs toward the ground force, killing an estimated six criminals. Upon
departing the target area, Coalition forces continued to receive heavy fire
from automatic weapons and RPGs and were also attacked by an improvised
explosive device. Responding in self-defense, the ground force engaged the
hostile threat, killing an additional estimated 10 combatants. All total,
Coalition forces estimate that 49 criminals were killed in three separate
engagements during this operation. Ground forces reported they were unaware
of any innocent civilians being killed as a result of this operation." To be fair, the military
admitted that the target of this manhunt was not, in fact, among those captured
or killed. After the
"operation," television news outlets broadcast images of grieving
families in the streets of Sadr City. One man reported that his neighbor's
6-year-old child had been killed, and a 2-year-old wounded. Arab television
outlets caught scenes of ambulances with wailing sirens carrying the injured
to the Imam Ali hospital, the largest in Sadr City, where doctors were shown
treating the casualties, including children. Typically with such
incidents, those 49 dead "criminals" turned back into civilians
when local police began checking, including two (not three) children in their
final count. Iraqi Prime Minister Nour
al-Maliki vowed an investigation for which U.S. military officials offered to
form a joint committee; but, as is so often the case in such
"investigations," there have been no follow-up reports. In this
"incident," the U.S. military, as far as we know, still stands by
its assertion that no civilians were killed or wounded. Two months earlier, in a
similar incident, the U.S. military claimed 32 "suspected
insurgents" killed during an air strike, also in Sadr City, a claim
disputed by Iraqis in the neighborhood, followed by the usual promise of an
investigation - of which, once again, nothing more was heard. “Tactical Perception Management” For perspective, let me take
you back to Iraq in November 2003. I had been there less than a week on my
first visit to that occupied country when the U.S. military reported a raging
firefight between American forces and 150 of Saddam Hussein's former Fedayeen
paramilitary fighters. According to General Peter Pace, then vice chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, American soldiers, on being attacked by the group,
had responded fiercely and killed 54 of them. "They attacked and they
were killed, so I think it will be instructive to them," General Pace
had smugly observed. Most of the Western media
simply chalked up the number of "insurgent" dead at 54 and left it
at that. Local media in Baghdad, as well as outlets like Al-Jazeera, were,
however, citing very different figures taken directly from the hospital in
Samarra where the wounded were being treated. Doctors there announced a count
of eight killed in the incident, including an Iranian pilgrim, and 50 Iraqis
wounded. I traveled to Samarra that
week, visited the morgue at Samarra General Hospital, spoke with wounded
Iraqis at the hospital, and interviewed one of the leading sheikhs of the
city as well as several eyewitnesses to the event. What I found was general
agreement that a U.S. patrol had, in fact, come under attack - but by only
two gunmen while delivering money to a downtown bank. Jumpy American soldiers
had responded with a spray of fire that had killed neither of the attackers,
but eight civilians, while wounding 50 others. The streets in the city
center, where the firing took place, were riddled with bullets. The military, nonetheless,
stood by their figure - 54 dead - and insisted that the enormous force of
"insurgents" had attacked with mortars, grenades, and automatic
weapons. A man I interviewed, who had
been in his tea stall in the vicinity and witnessed most of the incident,
summed up the local reaction this way: "The Americans say the
people who fought them are al-Qaeda or fedayeen. We are all living in this
small city here. Why have we not seen these foreign fighters and strangers in
our city before or after this battle? Everyone here knows everyone, and none
have seen these strangers. Why do they tell these lies?" Another man, at the scene
had drawn my attention to a parked car scarred with 112 bullets. As I was
photographing it, a man with two children at his side approached. They were,
he said, the children of his brother who had been killed by the gunfire. "This little boy and
girl, their father was shot by the Americans. Who will take care of this
family? Who will watch over these children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why
did they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody told me. He was a truck
driver. What is his crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him with 150
bullets! Did they kill him just because they wanted to shoot a man? That's
it? This is the reason? Why didn't anyone talk to me and tell me why they
have killed my brother? Is killing people a normal thing now, happening every
day? This is our future? This is the future that the United States promised
Iraq?" My life as an independent
reporter in his country was just beginning and his questions felt like so
many blows to the gut. Of course, I was the only American reporter there to
hear him and I was then writing for an email audience of under 200. This is
what it means, in Pentagon terms, to dominate not only the battlefield, but
the media landscape in which that battlefield is reported. And that sort of
domination was, it turned out, very much on Pentagon minds in that period. Within days of the incident,
for instance, the New York Times published an article about how the Pentagon
had awarded a contract to SAIC, a private company, which was to investigate
ways the Department of Defense could use propaganda for more "effective
strategic influence" in the "war on terror." The Pentagon
referred to this potential propaganda blitz (which would eventually come back
to haunt Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) as a "tactical perception
management campaign." The title of the document SAIC produced was
"Winning the War of Ideas." On December 2, 2005, the
U.S. military would admit that the Lincoln Group, which described itself as
"a strategic communications & pubic relations firm providing insight
& influence in challenging & hostile environments," had been
hired by the Pentagon to plant pro-American good-news articles in the new
Iraqi "free" press that the Bush administration was just then
touting. This was exposed during a briefing with Senator John Warner of
Virginia, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The admission would not, as
one might have expected, prove a step towards deterrence. Not only did the
Lincoln Group get further contracts, but a wide range of similar tactics
continue to be employed by the military in Iraq today with even greater
impunity. In Iraq, the propaganda and misinformation have, in fact, been
continual and on a massive scale. And, of course, the regular announcements
of Iraqi "insurgent" or "criminal" deaths in American
operations have never stopped, nor have the announcements of
"investigations," when those claims are seriously challenged on the
ground - investigations which, except in a few cases, are never heard of
again. All this is a reminder of something George W. Bush once said:
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over
and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the
propaganda." The Military Wrist is Slapped Even when one of those
investigations did lead somewhere, that somewhere was almost invariably a
dead end. Take Haditha. Witnesses told reporters that, on November 19, 2005,
in the western town of Haditha, 24 Iraqi civilians had been slaughtered by
U.S. Marines. It was no secret that the Marines had shot men, women, and
children at close range in retaliation for a roadside bombing that killed one
of their own. The Washington Post quoted
Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who was watching from his home as Marines went
from house to house killing members of three families. He had heard Younis
Salim Khafif, his neighbor across the street, plead in English for his life
and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the
Americans, saying: ‘I am a friend. I am good,'" Fahmi said. "But
they killed him, and his wife and daughters." A Post special correspondent
and U.S. investigators in Washington reported that some of the dead were
women attempting to shield their children. According to death certificates,
the girls killed in Khafif's house were aged 14, 10, 5, 3, and 1. After the news broke in the
U.S., the military ordered a probe of the incident. An Iraqi had actually
managed to film the interiors of the blood-soaked houses as well as scenes of
the wounded at the Haditha hospital, and had recorded statements of
eyewitnesses to the massacre. Even now, two years after
the massacre, investigations continue. Anonymous Pentagon officials having
admitted to reporters that there is an abundance of evidence to support
charges against the accused Marines of deliberately shooting civilians,
including unarmed women and children. Currently, Marine Corps and Navy
prosecutors are reviewing the evidence, and will likely ask for further
probes. As for the charges levied
against the soldiers involved in the massacre, on April 2nd of this year, all
of the charges against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, who was accused of killing
five civilians, were dropped as part of a decision that granted him immunity
to testify in potential courts-martial for seven other Marines charged in the
attack and in its alleged cover-up. On August 9th, all murder charges against
Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt and charges of failing to investigate the incident
against Capt. Randy Stone were dropped by Lt. Gen. James Mattis, well-known
for claiming of fighting in Afghanistan, "It's fun to shoot some
people." On August 23th, the investigating officer suggested that
charges against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum be dropped as well. On October 19th,
Tatum's commanding officers decided the charges should be lowered to
involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and aggravated assault. More
recently, on September 18th, all charges against Capt. Lucas McConnell were
dropped, and the investigating officer recommended that charges be similarly
dropped against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum. On October 3rd, an
investigating officer of an Article 32 hearing (a proceeding similar to a
civilian grand jury) recommended that Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich be tried
for negligent homicide in the deaths of two women and five children, and that
the murder charges for his involvement in the killing of 17 innocent civilians,
be dropped. In other words, so far, no one has gone to jail for the massacre
in Haditha. It is now commonplace for
such investigations, regarding heinous crimes against Iraqi civilians, to
drag on for months or even years. Equally commonplace: On completion of these
investigations, the low-level soldiers, who are charged with the crimes, are
often either cleared entirely or given laughably light sentences by military
courts. On November 8th, for
instance, Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley, a sniper, was found not guilty by
military judges on three charges of premeditated murder for killing three
Iraqi civilians. He was instead convicted only of placing an AK-47 rifle with
the remains of a dead Iraqi during one of his missions - as evidence that the
man was an "insurgent." In January 2004, 19 year-old
Zaidoun Hassoun, and his cousin Marwan Fadil were forced off a ledge into the
Tigris River in Samarra at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers. Fadil survived. He
testified that the soldiers, after forcing the two into the water, had stood
by laughing as Hassoun drowned. Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins
was the only soldier tried in the case. Defense attorney Captain Joshua
Norris suggested that Perkins could not be convicted of manslaughter because
there was "no body, no evidence, no death." He was, in fact,
cleared of the involuntary manslaughter charge in a military court on January
9, 2005 and instead was reduced in rank by one grade and sentenced to six
months in a military prison for assault. Similarly, on June 6, 2006,
three British soldiers were cleared of charges of killing 15-year-old Ahmed
Jabber Kareem in May 2003 by forcing him into a Basra canal. Iraqis Dehumanized None of this - from the
unending "incidents" themselves to the way the Pentagon has
dominated the reporting of them - would have been possible without a
widespread dehumanization of Iraqis among American soldiers (and a deep-set,
if largely unexpressed and little considered, conviction on the American
"home front" that Iraqi lives are worth little). If, four decades
ago, the Vietnamese were "gooks," "dinks," and
"slopes," the Iraqis of the American occupation are
"hajis," "sand-niggers," and "towel heads." Latent
racism abets the dehumanization process, ably assisted by a mainstream media
that tends, with honorable exceptions, to accept Pentagon announcements as at
least an initial approximation of reality in Iraq. Whether it was
"incidents" involving helicopter strikes in which those on the
ground who died were assumed to be enemy and evil, or the wholesale
destruction of the city of Fallujah in 2004, or the massacre at Haditha, or a
slaughtered wedding party in the western desert of Iraq that was also caught
on video tape (Marine Major General James Mattis: "How many people go to
the middle of the desert.... to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest
civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be
naive."), or killings at U.S. checkpoints; or even the initial invasion
of Iraq itself, we find the same propaganda techniques deployed: Demonize an
"enemy"; report only "fighters" being killed; stick to
the story despite evidence to the contrary; if under pressure, launch an
investigation; if still under pressure, bring only low-level troops up on
charges; convict a few of them; sentence them lightly; repeat drill. At the time of this writing,
the group Just Foreign Policy has offered an estimate of Iraqis killed since
the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Their number: 1,118,846. Consider that
possibility in the context of the latest round of news from Iraq about
lessening violence. The estimate is based on
figures from a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University
in the U.S. and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, and published in
October 2006 in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, which found 655,000
Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion and
occupation. The report methodology has been called "robust" and
"close to best practice" by Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific
advisor to Britain's Ministry of Defense. Since that time, in addition to
Just Foreign Policy, the British research polling agency Opinion Research
Business has extrapolated a figure of 1.2 million deaths in Iraq. Based on
this, veteran Australian born journalist John Pilger wrote recently,
"The scale of death caused by the British and U.S. governments may well
have surpassed that of the Rwanda genocide, making it the biggest single act
of mass murder of the late 20th century and the 21st century." It is an indication of the
success of an effective Pentagon "tactical perception management
campaign," of the way the Bush administration has continued to
"catapult propaganda," and of the dehumanization of Iraqis that has
gone with it, that the possibility of the number of dead Iraqis being in this
range has largely been dismissed (or remained generally undealt with) in the
mainstream media in the United States. Add to that the refusal of the U.S.
military to bring justice to those charged with some of these heinous crimes,
the lack of accountability, and an establishment media which has regularly
camouflaged the true nature of the occupation, and we have the perfect
setting for a continuance of industrial-scale slaughter in Iraq, even while
the news highlights the likes of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and their
adventures in various rehab clinics. In what could reasonably
serve as a summary of the American occupation of Iraq, the eighteenth century
philosopher Voltaire wrote, "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all
murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of
trumpets." Dahr Jamail. an independent
journalist, is the author of the just-published Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books,
2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey over the last four years. He writes
regularly for Tomdispatch.com, Inter Press Service, Asia Times, and Foreign
Policy in Focus. He has contributed to The Sunday Herald, The Independent,
The Guardian, and The Nation, among other publications. He maintains a
website, Dahr Jamail's Mideast Dispatches, with all his writing. External link: http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2921/81/ |