ONSLAUGHT
The Attack on Fallujah
11 November 2004 |
A
PDF of this briefing is available here
Posted: 15 November
2004 |
THE BRUTAL WEAPONS
The long-feared US ground assault on Fallujah began on Mon.
8 Nov., with air and artillery attacks, including the dropping
of eight 2,000-pound bombs. “Usually we keep the gloves
on,” said the head of the US 1st Infantry Division’s
Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command center. “For
this operation, we took the gloves off.” ‘Some artillery
guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of
fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported
being attacked with a substance that melted their skin.’
(Washington Post, 10 Nov., p. A01) ‘White phosphorus shells
lit up the sky as armour drove through the breach and sent flaming
material on to suspect insurgent haunts.’ (Telegraph,
9 Nov., p. 1)
Jackie Spinner of the Post visited a US unit with two M109A6
Paladin self-propelled 155mm howitzers. ‘The Paladin fires
rocket-assisted shells that can travel up to 22 miles and regular
shells that can cover 13 miles. The shells typically strike
within about five yards of their target and are likely to kill
anyone within 55 yards of the point of impact.’ Sgt. Fladymir
Napoleon, 25: “It’s a great thing blowing stuff
up. We’re getting the city free...”
Paladin crew chief, Brian Blakey patted a 155mm round: “Three
of these, and I can take out a whole building.” Just this
one unit’s two artillery pieces ‘fired more than
300 rounds in the first three days of the battle.’
‘At
the other gun a short distance away, Spec. John Kennedy, 26,
of Dallas, asked [ Sgt. 1st Class Johnny] Dotson about the rounds
his crew had fired that morning. “What were we shooting
at?” he asked. “Did we get it?” Yes, Dotson
told him. They hit the mosque. Twenty confirmed killed. “We
really get no glory,” said Staff Sgt. Jason Moye, 25,
of Phoenix.’ (Washington Post, 11 Nov., p. A33)
‘The American military has been using novel and devastating
methods to clear Fallujah's streets.’ Including the rocket-fired
350-foot-long string of plastic explosives known as Miclic,
which can clear a lane through a minefield 8 meters wide and
100 meters long. ‘The Miclic is normally designed for
open spaces because it generates tremendous pressure, setting
off mines over a large area. In Fallujah the Miclic, fired from
300 to 400 metres, is used to detonate roadside bombs and car
bombs. It is highly effective but also indiscriminate, and not
normally considered suitable for an urban environment.’
(Times, 10 Nov., p. 9; Miclic details from globalsecurity.org)
THE BRUTAL WARRIORS
‘After seven months in Iraq’s Sunni triangle, for
many American soldiers the opportunity to avenge dead friends
by taking a life was a moment of sheer exhilaration. As they
approached their “holding position”, from where
hours later they would advance into the city, they picked off
insurgents on the rooftops and in windows.’ After calling
in mortar fire on a suspected insurgent site, Sgt James Anyett
shouted: “Battle Damage Assesment – nothing. Building’s
gone. I got my kills. I’m coming down. I just love my
job.” (Telegraph, 9 Nov., p. 4)
In
April, a senior British officer serving in Iraq said of the
US attitude to the local people, ‘They don't see the Iraqi
people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen.
They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way
the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic,
it's awful.’ The Sunday Telegraph: ‘The phrase untermenschen—literally
"under-people"—was brought to prominence by
Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used
the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior:
Jews, Slaves and gypsies.’ (11 Apr.)
THE HUMAN COST
‘Randy Gangle, a retired US marine colonel recently returned
from the coalition base outside Falluja, said... the US military
expected [civilian deaths] to number in the hundreds, not thousands.’
(Guardian, 9 Nov., p. 2)
In order to manage perceptions of the human cost of the attack,
the first objective was Fallujah’s main hospital. ‘One
unnamed senior American officer also admitted that the hospital
had become a “centre of propaganda,” reflecting
the military’s frustration at the high death toll doctors
frequently announce after American bombing raids. It was accounts
of the hundreds killed during the first assault on Falluja in
April that brought the operation to a rapid halt.’ (Guardian,
9 Nov., p. 3)
‘Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the main Falluja hospital
who escaped arrest when it was taken on Monday, said the city
was running out of supplies and only a few clinics remained
open. “There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had
one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded. There are
scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can’t
move.” (FT, 10 Nov., p. 9) Having destroyed one clinic
before the assault (Observer, 7 Nov., p. 2), US forces reportedly
destroyed an emergency hospital after taking the main hospital:
‘Twenty Iraqi doctors and dozens of civilians were killed
in a US airstrike that hit a clinic in Fallujah, according to
an Iraqi doctor who said he survived the strike.’. (Independent,
11 Nov., p. 4)
Estimates of civilians remaining in Fallujah on 7 Nov. varied
from 100,000 (US military, FT, 9 Nov., p. 10) to 60,000 (Sunni
group, Independent, 10 Nov., p. 5). Estimates for the number
of fighters left in Falluja before the assault varied ‘from
600 to 6,000,’ meaning that the overwhelming majority
of people in Fallujah were thought to be non-combatants. It
was reported that ‘Anyone still in the city will be regarded
as a potential insurgent.’ (Observer, 7 Nov., p. 18) A
threat to kill every human being in Fallujah.
At a hospital in Baghdad, the families of civilian victims evacuated
from Fallujah ‘claimed that US forces were bombing outlying
villages where refugees have regrouped as well as the city.’
(Times, 11 Nov., p. 9)
“From a humanitarian point of view, it is a disaster,
there is no other way to describe it,” Firdoos al-Ubaidi,
of the Red Crescent, said on 10 Nov. “We have asked for
permission from the Americans to go into the city and help the
people there but we haven’t heard anything back from them.
There’s no medicine, no water, no electricity.”
’ (Times, 11 Nov., p. 9)
GHAITH ABBOUD
Fadel al-Badrani, the only unembedded Western reporter in Falluja,
reported the fate of Ghaith Abboud for Reuters: ‘Mohammed
Abboud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death
at their Falluja home yesterday, unable to take him to hospital
as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down. “My
son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn,
but we couldn’t take him for treatment,” said Mr
Abboud, a teacher.’ (Guardian, 11 Nov. 2004, p. 4)
‘In two months – if the elections go ahead –
Mohammed Abboud will be able to play a part in what they call
democracy. Today, with his remaining family, he sits in a house
damaged by the bomb that killed his child. He said: “We
just bandaged his stomach and gave him water, but he was losing
a lot of blood. He died this afternoon.” It was the highest
price of all to pay for the right to vote.’ (Independent,
10 Nov., p. 5)
THE BRUTAL LIES - THE ELECTION
The assault on Fallujah was justified as necessary to create
the conditions for elections due in Jan. 2005. But as Kofi Annan,
the Secretary-General of the UN, pointed out in a secret letter
to Mr Bush and Mr Blair, a major military assault leading to
an escalation in violence “could be very disruptive for
Iraq’s political transition”, and is “likely”
to have a “negative impact... on the prospects for encouraging
a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process,
including in the elections.” (Washington Post, 6 Nov.,
p. A19)
Predictably, the assault led immediately to a call by the influential
Muslim Clerics Association for Sunnis to boycott the elections,
which would be held “over the corpses of those killed
in Fallujah”. (Telegraph, 10 Nov., p. 10)
THE BRUTAL LIES - THE TERRORISTS’ SAFE HAVEN
Another justification was the need to break the hold of ‘the
terrorists’ in Fallujah. However, in Oct., ‘local
insurgent leaders voted overwhelmingly to accept broad conditions
set by the Iraqi government, including demands that they eject
foreign fighters from the city, turn over all heavy weapons,
dismantle illegal checkpoints and allow the Iraqi National Guard
to enter the city. In turn, the insurgents set their own conditions,
which included a halt to U.S. attacks on the city and acknowledgment
by the military that women and children have been among the
casualties in U.S. strikes.’ (Washington Post, 28 Oct.,
p. A21) Rejected.
A later offer was put forward by a (mainly Sunni) coalition,
including the Muslim Clerics’ Association, for ‘a
plan to establish the rule of law in those areas through peaceful
means’, on the basis of six measures, ‘including
a demand that U.S. forces remain confined to bases in the month
before balloting’. This was ‘a dramatic shift’
by Sunni groups which had previously insisted that no election
would be legitimate until Western troops left Iraq.
“This initiative is very significant,” said an official
involved in establishing the transitional government. “They’re
no longer saying, ‘We’re not participating because
the country is occupied.’ They’re saying, ‘The
government is not right. The only way we can make it right is
by elections.’ If you look at their demands, they’re
not impossible. They are things that can be discussed.”
Larry Diamond, who served in the U.S.-led occupation authority,
said “If there’s a chance that this could be the
beginning of political transformation that could change the
situation on the ground, I think we’ve got to take it.”
(Washington Post, 6 Nov., p. A01)
These offers have been brushed aside and erased from the record.
They might not have worked, but they were not tried.
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